Saturday, Jul 19, 2008
American fashion mags get democratic,embracing fat women, old women, etc.
Dec 8, 1998 | In 1993 our commander in chief promised to give us an administration that "looked more like America," and credit the man for this: In his own inglorious way, he kept his word -- he improved on the Kennedy legacy with pluralistic sexual flare-ups involving, first, a plus-sized intern and,second, a White House volunteer of a certain age. Once again Clinton proved his finger to be firmly on the ass of the Zeitgeist, not only because the public rallied 'round its leader with obvious-in-retrospect affection (he thinks we're pretty!), but because the media has rushed behind him for a double date with the average American body.
This year the word in magazine fashion was attention to niche audiences-- "niche" here meaning the statistical majority of the readership -- with an increased emphasis on previously overlooked age groups and body types. One of the most praised recent start-ups has been Mode, a fashion glossy targeted at size-12-and-up women, which just announced that it's going from 10 to 12 issues a year. And this fall saw the premiere of More, from Ladies' Home Journal, aimed at women over 40. More's title must vex Mode's editors no end -- it's not only identical except for one letter but actually sounds more like the name of a plus-sized women's magazine than "Mode" does -- but More tries to resolve any newsstand confusion by helpfully putting the 49-year-old and still rail-thin Twiggy on the cover of its December issue (let's smash one pernicious body image at a time here, folks!).
And now the publishing mainstream actually seems a little anxious about the trends: Time Warner reportedly is considering its own magazine launch for older women, and the fashion-mag establishment is making increasing, if awkward, attempts to show a Clintonian affection for the meat on our bones. The December W magazine, for instance, includes a feature pegged with the, um, tasteful teaser "Living Large: Fat Is Back," lumping Emmy-winning queen-size icon Camryn Manheim of "The Practice" (who dedicated her award to "all the fat girls") in with marginally fleshy starlets like Kate Winslet and Christina Ricci. Of course, the tag line runs next to a cover photo of Gwyneth Paltrow's concave chest and collarbones with which you could slice tomatoes, but that W sees the story as a draw for readers is noteworthy in itself.
Now, the New Inclusiveness may be an old, recurrent story in fashion, but it's different in at least one way this time. The fashion world has long claimed it's starting to pay more attention to the rest of us. This time, however, the rest of us are finally deigning to pay attention to it: On TV in particular, fashion coverage is going truly populist. MTV, home of the long-running "House of Style," has added the star-search show "Model Mission" and the extreme-couture bash "Fashionably Loud," a runwayshow/concert with the ingenious added bonus of a camera in the changing area (can it really have taken this long for someone to discover a classy excuse for full toplessness on basic cable at 4 p.m.?); patrician fashion writer Carrie Donovan has signed on as the main pitchster for the Gap'splebeian Old Navy chain; even VH1, America's favorite network to vacuum to, celebrates the cutting edge of design with its own fashion awards. But the true pioneer of fashion TV is the E! entertainment network, which fills several hours a day with programs like "Fashion File," "Model TV," "Fashion Emergency," "VideoFashion!" and numerous specials such as JoanRivers' Oscar-night fashion critiques and Golden Hanger Awards; it's even spun off the Style. (sic) channel, "the first and only network dedicated to doing everything with style."
Exactly how did fashion become mass entertainment? Certainly, E!'s shows dovetail well with its general programming strategy: namely, to make sure that no program costs more than about $43 an episode (the network notoriously fills air time with waste-not-want-not collections of talk-showclips, movie trailers and cannibalized interviews from earlier programs -- and leaving Joan and Melissa Rivers to swelter for hours on the carpet at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion is a dirt-cheap way to garner face time with multimillion-dollar marquee names).
More important, though, E! seems to have figured out how to make fashion relevant to those of us eating Pringles in our sweat pants. Flipping through a fashion magazine, even an empowerment-minded one like Mode or More, is essentially passive. On the new style programs, however,fashion is a participatory sport. As opposed to the more staid fare of,for instance, CNN's "Style," with the imperious, Mel-Brooksian-named ElsaKlensch, E! offers the audience stand-ins like Rivers, the wondrous walking id who greets rope-walking celebs with comments like "He lookslike a CPA dating a hooker!"
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