Reality Check: Project Runway
The American Culture affects all aspects of our lives: from what we eat to what we wear, from what we watch on the television to which model we want to look like. Among these many aspects of our culture, the issue of weight plays an important role in our lives, while our culture plays an important role in shaping us. We live in a highly competitive society in which the norm is to look around and compare ourselves to everyone else. “If you fall into the trap of constantly evaluating your body according to others, it seems natural to buy into society’s judgment that you’re bad for being fat and good for being thin” (Koenig). This issue doesn’t seem like a huge problem since the media does not do a good job in showing us the reality behind this matter.
Project Runway
Images of females are exposed all over the media. We see women all over the Top Box Office movies, the Emmy Award winning television shows, as well as the most read celebrity magazines. Television and movies highlight the importance of a thin body to determine a woman’s sense of worth. The media either bashes or humiliates those who are overweight and glorifies and admires those who have the perfect body. Among the many shows aired on primetime television Project Runway, aired on Bravo, admires those who have the perfect body. Project Runway is a reality series which takes a look behind the scenes of the fashion industry and the long journey from the formation of a design to its showcase on the runway. Ten fashion designers are chosen to work in a New York City warehouse where each week they must succeed in the different challenges. The remaining three finalists, designers as well as their models shall then premiere their designs during Fashion Week.
The challenges these designers face mainly focus on creating clothing for what they feel the “average” females should wear in their daily lives. If you’ve seen the show, you have probably realized that the models are not like the rest of us. The main message that many of us get from the show is that in order to be in the fashion industry or look like these celebrities and models we have to have a certain look. That certain look is to be a size two and be as skinny as a twig. This issue is the one of the reasons why hundreds of young females starve themselves because they are insecure with how they look. More specifically, the young teenage girls whose main goal in life is to look like one of those Victoria Secret models, weigh about a hundred pounds, and have everyone drooling all over them. There are many individuals in the world who do not “have the ideal body type and the aggressive advertising campaigns waged by numerous fashion companies, portraying beautiful and skinny models”, while creating this deception that this is the perfect body type and everyone should make every effort to look exactly like this (Shoman).
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Project Runway premiered in December of 2004, hosted by Heidi Klum, had been nominated for an Emmy Award countless times. Among the many episodes aired I feel that two of them ties in what many people feel about this issue. One of them is the Final Runway Show on the Season 5 finale, which basically has a bunch of skeletons walking down the runway with their bones protruding out. I feel this episode can show people because it showed the models but mainly the “look” that many people are trying to accomplish. When watching any fashion show you would think that you would focus on the clothes but end up not only looking at the clothes but also at the models. Millions of females dream to become one of these “dream girls” and strutting themselves down the runway. This however is the mindset the media wants to put into your head. Author Sabine Wilhelm had said that her book was for people who feel they worry too much about how they look and want to do something”. She actually gives people the right and healthy way to be happy with how you look, which is the opposite of what the mainstream media tells us. |
What's the Skinny?!
The second episode I’d like to talk about is the “What’s the Skinny” episode of season four. Host Heidi Klum had brought a group of “normal” women and had presented the designers with the challenge of creating an outfit for them to wear in their everyday lives. These women had lost a large amount of weight and were wearing their favorite outfit they liked before their dramatic weight loss. The challenge was to create a new look with the original outfit off the back of these “average” models. What’s interesting about this is that the main idea revolved around the show are the size two models, and now all of a sudden producers feel that they should bring the average female to show that they’re not only trying to make these clothing for everyone but actually making clothes that are realistic and the society might actually be able to wear. One reason many shows try to bring the average or normal person on air is to provide twists and turns in the challenges and what not which would make the show worth watching. The concept of redesigning a favorite outfit for a woman who had lost a significant amount of weight is excellent! It is a better kind of competition, and infinitely more practical, than taking trash for example and making an outfit. This idea of a competition also brings hope to the “real” females out there.
I Wanna Look Like Gisele!
Television and the fashion magazines keep telling us there is a perfect look “we should try to achieve and these messages have a strong impact on our body image. The desire to enhance physical beauty is nothing new” (Wilhelm 20). Take for instance I had this one friend who was too concerned with the way she looked and they way she appeared to others, especially to the guys. So she had once told me that she watched the Victoria Secret fashion show and immediately built an obsession with model Gisele Bundchen. So for the next six or so months she went on a crash diet, she felt that she had to look like Gisele and get “the look”. So every day she would skip meals and would hardly ever eat. She would also work out so much that she would be so tired and worn out every day in school. So towards the end of the school year she ended up weighing a little over 98 pounds, the goal of her “diet”. However, on our schools annual “Culture Day” she had fainted and was rushed to the hospital. It was very scary to see how she was punishing herself just to look good. I was concerned from the beginning of her diet, I had always tried to give her food, tell her that it wasn’t worth looking like them yet she was still determined. She did get the body she had been dreaming of for the past year and a half however I don’t think she had expected herself waking up in the emergency room. I didn’t want to rub it in her face and make her feel terrible but that was what I had wanted to do. You see the price these people pay to look the way they do and how easy they make it look to have their body.
The American Culture is beautiful in some ways and horrific in others. One of the downfalls is that American culture strongly values success, suggesting that if you don’t achieve your weight goals, you must be a disappointment. Along with success comes our obsession with exterior beauty and rewards. “Chasing a shallow ideal such as thinness rather than just putting energy into developing correctness and deeper features of self is a typical American and an ultimately meaningless attempt” (Koenig). Overestimating outer appearance and materialistic things makes what we have seem more important than who we are. Hopefully what I’ve brought up in this blog can a will open up your mind to this culture that makes up a huge part of our lives.
Works Cited
· Koenig, Karen R. "How Culture Affects Eating and Weight." Weblog post. Eating Disorder Blogs- "Normal" Eating. 23 Aug. 2007. 19 Dec. 2008 <http://www.eatingdisordersblogs.com/healthy/2007/08/how-culture-aff.html>.
· "Project Runway: Home - Season 5 - Official Bravo TV Site." Bravo TV Shows: Fashion, Comedy, Celebrity and Real Estate Shows - Official Bravo TV Site. 19 Dec. 2008 <http://www.bravotv.com/Project_Runway/season/5/index.php>.
· "Project Runway: What's the Skinny? Episode Reviews - TV.com." TV.com: TV News - TV Shows - TV Listings - Entertainment News. 19 Dec. 2008 <http://www.tv.com/project-runway/whats-the-skinny/episode/1154936/reviews.html?tag=episode_tabs;reviews>.
· Shoman, Jordi. "Problems with the Fashion Industry." 19 Dec. 2008 <http://ezinearticles.com/?Problems-with-the-Fashion-Industry&id=284735>.
· "Synopsis." Project Runway. 17 Dec. 2008 <http://www.film.com/tv/project-runway/18787654>.
· Wilhelm, Sabine. Feel Good about the Way You Look. New York: Guilford P, 2006.