5 Comments

1. You and me both…. feeling old that is! At first, I thought this was a skit from Saturday Night Live. Oh well.

   Comment by maria — March 31, 2007 #

2. And how about the maestro’s bon mot, spoken without irony, that it’s not what’s on the inside that matters, but what’s on the outside?

   The son came up with an interesting insight. He noticed that the guy considers himself an artist and that he treat his work as art. But his “canvas” is the models, so he is in fact objectifying people, and he thinks this is great. The stylist’s comments were therefore among the clearer expressions of how people are objectified by the fashion industry — even (or especially?) when it’s producing art.

   Maybe that’s a yardstick for measuring the difference between fashion and art?

   Comment by yulelog — March 31, 2007 #

3. That is an important distinction between fashion and art. I guess my definition would have been fuzzier and along the lines of an artist objectifying his/her ideas, while fashion, clearly, objectifying people for the sake of style. In other words, an artist would create an object to express the shape of an idea, while the fashion stylist would find the object (his or her material being people) to fit or contain the style, which is more important — or of a higher order in the hierarchy than the “material” capable of expressing it.

   Oh well, I am not sure what I am talking about, but the video was worth watching. Good find!

   Comment by maria — March 31, 2007 #

4. There are quite a number of avenues to explore here… It’s interesting.

   For example, the basis in religious or superstitious thinking for both art & fashion. Body modification is the basis of culture in many ways — and therefore for religion, insofar as religion is a way of staking out a human arena amidst nature. Body modifications say, “I am not-nature, I am culture.” Piercings, scarifications, all that sort of stuff, along with the temporary ones of painting or masking — they all say, “I (we) am (are) distinguishing / separating / marking / identifying, even!…” And the thing that’s identified with or, by distinguished from, taken in favour, is usually something “superior,” better, dare I say it?, …more stylish.

   But it has its beginnings in religiously inspired reveries.

   Another avenue: If I “fashion” myself, am I objectifying myself? Possibly. But is that my “right”? Probably. If a hair stylist who decides that he’s an artist objectifies me by using me as his living canvas, is that objectification different, qualitatively speaking? At first blush, I’d argue yes. But then we have to start talking about how to measure objectification.

   This is fun, innit? 😉

   If a religion objectifies a whole community, by asking it to wear certain clothes according to gender, what kind of objectification is that? Is it any better or worse than having hair extension on your pubic hair, and styling it to look like peacock feathers, given that it’s not you doing this, but the “artist” (the stylist-visionary), whose “canvas” you have willingly become? Are you a peacock for Allah if you wear a burqah, or for Jesus if you wear a cross?

   What’s objectification, anyway? And, while we’ve known about art’s role in religion on a superficial & on a deeper level, what’s the connection between fashion and religion?

   Comment by yulelog — April 1, 2007 #

5. That is strange! well well these things sometimes show up at http://www.feedshion.com aswell, but it’s mostly normal stuff even we older ppl can like.

   Comment by Angela — April 7, 2007 #

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