I like fashion, but the pretentious Met Gala grotesquery made me physically repulsed

Igor Ogorodnev
RT

 

Just because “it’s like that on purpose” doesn’t mean that the look-at-me hideousness on display at the Met Gala is above criticism – in fact it arouses an almost visceral rejection. 

I don’t want to think of myself as too narrow-minded to understand the intent behind what is essentially a corporate-sponsored experimental fancy dress party for celebrities. In fact, I would venture that I myself have worn much riskier choices relative to the normal people around me (and I don’t have fawning assistants and fashion editors to validate my every sartorial idiocy).

But, seriously: Jared Leto in a crystal-harness gown holding his own head, corseted actor Ezra Miller with seven eyes on his face, performer Billy Porter carried in on a palanquin by six bare-chested buff men in lame trousers.

Yes, I know that the theme was camp, the justification for all the over-the-top gaudiness.
Yet I did not see any camp. Camp is playful and self-aware. The celebrities did not stand there and poke fun at how silly they looked, they posed with Blue Steel faces on the red carpet in the middle of not a burlesque cabaret, but one of the stuffiest invitation-only charity events in America. Pretension is the enemy of irony, and if there was any camp it was mostly unintentional. So, more like kitsch. Maybe Katy Perry, dressed as a hamburger and a chandelier, got it, though this seems to be just her taste anyway.

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Starving for Fashion

VICE

Above: The author in one of her first test shoots. She was 19 and 115 pounds. Photo by Michelle Ricks.

This week in New York City, hundreds of young girls will hit the runway for fashion week, the modeling world’s holiest and most competitive grail. Although participating in New York Fashion Week sounds glamorous, the lifestyle that some of these girls are engaged in—never sleeping, never eating, traveling endlessly, and constantly being judged and objectified—can be a catalyst for poor mental health.

In the past decade, at least 20 models have committed suicide—some famous, some not—and there are likely many more lesser-known models whose attempts may have gone completely unreported. According to a 2012 study done by the Model Alliance, a non-profit labor advocacy group where I work as a graphic designer, 68.3 percent of models admit to suffering from depression or anxiety. For several years of my life, I was one of those women.

I started modeling professionally at the age of 19, when I was in college. I was suckered into signing with a small boutique agency in San Diego in the summer of 2007. Having grown-up in a tiny suburb of San Diego misguidedly obsessing over shows like America’s Next Top Model, the opportunity to model and travel for free seemed like a no-brainer. But before my agency would allow me to sign the dotted line on my first contract, they wrapped a measuring tape over my jeans. You see, models aren’t measured in pounds, they’re measured in inches. I had to lose two inches, or roughly 15 pounds, all over my body to land the contract.

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