Beyond Photogenic Feminism
The model-exploitation story works on two registers: liberation and titillation
“This essay crushed me. Everyone should read it. There’s a little piece of every woman’s past in there.” So tweeted writer Heather Havrilesky, in reference to model and actress Emily Ratajkowski’s New York Magazine essay, “Buying Myself Back: When Does a Model Own Her Own Image?”
The essay begins with Ratajkowski reflecting on what the headline suggests: the strangeness — and ethical conundrums — of fashion models not having control over photographs in which they appear. But the story takes a jarring turn when she recounts a specific instance of a photographer sexually assaulting her during a photo shoot, then profiting from those photos.
The assault itself is upsetting to read about (and many who share the piece on Twitter are including trigger warnings). Ratajkowski was personally and professionally courageous to share what happened to her. And yet, the piece left me with qualms I at first had trouble articulating.
Was it something about how Ratajkowski’s brand of feminism, at least prior to this piece, had been sexiness-positive: in favor of the feminist cause of being spectacularly good-looking in a bathing suit? Was I just a jealous woman who looks merely OK in a bathing suit?
Then it struck me that my wariness wasn’t exactly about anything to do with Ratajkowski, but rather how stories like hers fit into the media landscape. It was also the expectation I felt, seeing the piece’s reception, namely that I would not merely empathize, but see my story in hers, which despite having also had some bad experiences with men, I did not.
The article in New York is illustrated by numerous images of Ratajkowski, in varying states of (un)dress. Her gorgeousness is part of the story. She writes, matter-of-factly, “I’d been told by plenty of photographers and agents that my body was one of the things that made me stand out among my peers.” The reason her photos are in such demand is that she has a good body by model standards.
The story is being solemnly shared by feminists, for noble reasons. It also lends itself to other readings. I haven’t read the minds of all straight men who clicked, but it is — pardon the cynicism — the story of perhaps the world’s most beautiful woman, naked and in sexual situations. Sex sells, but more specifically, sex-related stories with broad titillation appeal, which isn’t all of them.
Feminism gets divided into waves and branches, descriptive as well as pejorative: third-wave, intersectional, bourgeois, etc. But there’s a missing category, one I refer to as photogenic feminism. These would be the feminist issues that lend themselves to two readings, one earnestly feminist, the other lowest-common-denominator titillation.
Photogenic feminism is unavoidably about race and class (racial and sexual harassment by a fast-food boss is not photogenic feminism), but cannot be conflated with White Feminism, as it excludes the vast majority of even white, professional-class women. (A middle-aged white woman passed over at the law firm for a mediocre white male colleague, also not photogenic feminism.) There needs to be an element of glamor. The woman herself needs to be young and pretty in a way that reads as such, without prompting, to mainstream audiences.
Consider the subgenre of journalism dedicated to exposing the unsurprising fact that fashion models are too young and too thin. Or Paris Hilton reappearing in the news cycle to open up about time spent at an abusive boarding school. But also, more recently, there’s been the #MeToo meta-story, in which a woman in her early 20s, at a coveted entry-level media or entertainment job, is sexually harassed by a boss, or hit on by men who at first seem genuinely interested in their careers.
In The New Yorker, Jia Tolentino wrote of “a basic and familiar pattern: a powerful man sees you, a woman who is young and who thinks she might be talented, a person who conveniently exists in a female body, and he understands that he can tie your potential to your female body, and threaten the latter, and you will never be quite as sure of the former again.”
There’s nothing whatsoever wrong with sharing these stories. It’s helpful and powerful to do so. The problem comes from the cultural insistence that this is the female experience, essential and universal. It’s as if feminism forgot about aging and invisibility, about unfair beauty standards, and agreed with feminism’s opponents to treat the women men don’t notice as nonentities. Caring about the impact of media imagery on women’s self-esteem is, if not elite feminism, then stale, passé. It’s not merely that the plight of the ugly or passed-over got de-centered. It’s that plainness has been recast as itself a form of privilege. If you don’t find the testimony of women who attract constant unwanted attention from men relatable, then you should count yourself lucky.
And yet, beauty has advantages, which Ratajkowski indirectly addresses in her account of what initially drew her to modeling as a profession:
“The money was better than what any of my friends were making as waitresses or in retail. I felt free: free of the asshole bosses my friends had to deal with, free of student-loan debt, and free to travel and eat out more and do whatever the hell I pleased.”
Some of these friends doubtless have their own stories of being sexually harassed or assaulted in unglamorous work environments, but also of applying for jobs or promotions and not getting them because of their own physical ordinariness.
Journalist Marie Le Conte is one of the few to highlight the relevance of women getting ignored for lack of sex appeal to the #MeToo cause:
“In a professional context, this will lead to women missing on work opportunities, not being considered for jobs they damn well deserve, and not having their thoughts and opinion taken into account, all because of the crime of not being considered fuckable enough by predatory men.
There is absolutely no doubt that one of the scenarios here is far worse than the other, but escaping from the threat of being sexually assaulted doesn’t even mean that women will get to be treated as human beings.”
Le Conte is entirely right to point out that this isn’t even about two separate groups of women, but rather two roles the same women wind up in, depending the tastes of a specific lecherous man or their own self-presentation on a given day. The bigger issue may be sexual misconduct, but the underlying one is women being viewed solely in terms of sex appeal or lack thereof, not just by potential romantic partners (as is fair; women also make such judgments) but by the world.
A more expansive feminism includes the traumas of the young and gorgeous, but also addresses the sexism of a society where women are judged on the basis of looks, even in fields with nothing whatsoever to do with lingerie. This feminism might also dispense with the category of “pretty privilege,” recognizing instead that beauty has plusses and minuses (you get in the door, but are not taken seriously), and that a society where women are visible only when young and hot is bad news for all women, as the “young” part is by definition ephemeral.
Being young, vulnerable, and exploited is an all-too-common part of the female experience. The question is how to make room — and get clicks — for women’s experiences that matter just as much, but can’t be so appealingly illustrated.
