Okay, seriously what is with the obsession with "thin?"

[Dorian Gray]

I like Salma Hayek, Sofia Vergera and Christina Hendricks. These skinny people are doing something wrong.

 

[MikeMangum]

i find these women, who look like Auschwitz survivors, to be highly unattractive.

I saw them doing a photo shoot in the Lower East Side two months ago. the fashion folks were good looking, with healthy looking bodies.

the models, however, looked like god-damn aliens.

You're a heterosexual male. You are not the target audience of the fashion industry. Whether you find the models attractive or not is irrelevant.

 

[shadron]

From a marketing point of view, should they not be pushing for the large, fat, even obese types?

That way they get to sell more cloth.

V.

Absolutely not. It is not good marketing practice, when marketing commodities, to make the target comfortable. The idea is to make them want to change, preferably by using your commodity, usually to be more like the models (but there are also "reverse psychology" campaigns which use obese models held up to ridicule).

They aren't selling cloth; they're selling fashions.

 

[shadron]

Which is my point. "Attractive" they are not.

Not to most viewers, anyway.

You just self-tagged yourself as a male. Do you know why?

(EDA: I see I'm echoing MikeMagnum, probably for the first time ever.)

 

[Mark6]

You just self-tagged yourself as a male. Do you know why?

(EDA: I see I'm echoing MikeMagnum, probably for the first time ever.)

Are you saying WOMEN find these scarecrows attractive? Or think someone else does?

 

[INRM]

I don't see the problem, she looked fine as she was

 

[shadron]

Are you saying WOMEN find these scarecrows attractive? Or think someone else does?

Attractive? I dunno.

Believed to be attractive to males, and therefore worthy of emulation? You betcha.

 

[groupthinker]

I don't see the problem, she looked fine as she was

oh no way, she looked disgustingly thin still.

 

[pipelineaudio]

You know, is it just me, or invariably the "shopped" image has more male proportions. The broad shoulders and narrow hips are a masculine shape. (We guys don't have to be wide enough to pop out a baby down there.)

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6228031&postcount=17

 

[MortFurd]

You're a heterosexual male. You are not the target audience of the fashion industry. Whether you find the models attractive or not is irrelevant.

My wife, who presumably is in the target audience, finds them not merely unattractive but scary as well.

I'd have thought you'd want the models to be attractive to men. The women buying the clothes (presumably) buy them in order to be attractive. So, you'd want to offer the women (your potential customers) something that they can see attracts men.

Meh. I'm just a normal heterosexual guy and not a homosexual fashion designer. What could I possibly know?

 

[MortFurd]

Attractive? I dunno.

Believed to be attractive to males, and therefore worthy of emulation? You betcha.

Not my wife. She knows better. I wouldn't have one of those walking toothpicks if she showed up nude in my bed and volunteered - I'd have her (the twig) committed to a sanitorium with a big kitchen and a good cook.

I like curves. So do most men. I don't like women who look like they just escaped from Auschwitz. Most men I've met get the creeps looking at women like that.

 

[dafydd]

Not my wife. She knows better. I wouldn't have one of those walking toothpicks if she showed up nude in my bed and volunteered - I'd have her (the twig) committed to a sanitorium with a big kitchen and a good cook.

I like curves. So do most men. I don't like women who look like they just escaped from Auschwitz. Most men I've met get the creeps looking at women like that.

It's like going to bed with a bicycle.

 

[MortFurd]

It's like going to bed with a bicycle.

Not even. I'm pretty sure a bike wouldn't break in two if I really went to town with it. Not so sure about the twigs. I'm pretty sure she'd collapse and maybe end up with broken bones - not that I'm that rowdy, but they look that weak.

 

[commandlinegamer]

If fashion designers were really any good, they'd be able to dress anyone* to make them look fabulous.

* - I mean literally anyone: one leg, no arms, John Merrick, etc.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

You're a heterosexual male. You are not the target audience of the fashion industry. Whether you find the models attractive or not is irrelevant.

So who would it then be?

Homosexual males, well, I'm guessing it doesn't really matter whether they find that woman attractive. 'Cause, you know, they're still not into women. Even with the hips narrowed and the boobs flattened, she still has the facial structure of a woman.

Homosexual women are into things that look like women, not things that look like men.

And I'm guessing that most heterosexual women would know the point is to look sexy to a guy not to herself or to another heterosexual woman. Plus, see the part about facial structure again.

So exactly who is the target market which would find these sexy.

 

[Cayvmann]

So who would it then be?

Homosexual males, well, I'm guessing it doesn't really matter whether they find that woman attractive. 'Cause, you know, they're still not into women. Even with the hips narrowed and the boobs flattened, she still has the facial structure of a woman.

Homosexual women are into things that look like women, not things that look like men.

And I'm guessing that most heterosexual women would know the point is to look sexy to a guy not to herself or to another heterosexual woman. Plus, see the part about facial structure again.

So exactly who is the target market which would find these sexy.

The target audience isn't probably the general public, but store buyers.

 

[Mark6]

The target audience isn't probably the general public, but store buyers.

Logically, store buyers should be buying whatever "general public" wants to buy. Unless all store buyers are gay misogynists?

 

[Bikewer]

I admit the entire fashion thing eludes me, but then I'm an inveterate slob...

Each year, the big "design" houses come out with lavish shows of their haute couture...Creations which are intended to show off the design chops of the house. Very few if any of these things will ever be sold, save perhaps to vastly well-heeled fashionistas.

At the same time, they come out with their "off the rack" line which is what the buyers will actually be interested in.
At the same time, lower-end folks in the garment industry will very rapidly copy those items they think will sell and will have them mass-produced to sell to retailers that average folks will likely buy from.
All of this gets constantly recycled. Just last year, all the local stores were showing outfits that looked amazingly similar to stuff that my wife was wearing when me met...Almost 40 years ago. Even the fabric prints were the same.

Meanwhile, men's "fashions" seem to agonize over whether the suit-coat will have two buttons or three, or whether to wear solid-color shirts or patterns and perhaps if the tie should be 1/4" wider than last years....

Meanwhile, in my neighborhood, the uniform of the day is black heavy-metal t-shirts, baseball caps, blue jeans, boots, trucker wallets.... Stuck firmly decades in the past.

 

[Eddie Dane]

I don't know of any research concluding that the thin models sell more clothes (or the look, as someone remarked).
But the campaigns often project an image that is as far from ordinary as possible. Other-worldly, almost.

Shockingly: people "put on" a few pounds in pictures. So the models are in fact thinner than you perceive them to be in the photo (before photo shopped).

My theory is this:
The fashion industry does a very difficult trick every year: all those brands make clothes that have to "work" together on some level so that consumers can combine the clothing. So the color, cut and style of the brands have to match each season.
The system is that some leading haute couture brands set the style and the rest follows. Fashion fairs, magazines and brochures make it possible to communicate what is "in"this season.
If your brand gets it wrong, you will be stuck with a warehouse full of clothes that lose value at an astonishing rate.

As a result of this system, the same happens to how fashion brands are presented.
So, all the brand look at the five haute couture brochures and websites. If these use concentration camp victims as models, the other brands will follow suit, so they will fit the current look.

The results are distressing: women get eating disorders and men cannot masturbate to fashion brochures.

Sad, really.

 

[Modified]

All of this gets constantly recycled. Just last year, all the local stores were showing outfits that looked amazingly similar to stuff that my wife was wearing when me met...Almost 40 years ago. Even the fabric prints were the same.

"Mad Men" probably caused that.

Meanwhile, men's "fashions" seem to agonize over whether the suit-coat will have two buttons or three, or whether to wear solid-color shirts or patterns and perhaps if the tie should be 1/4" wider than last years....

I always thought the wide ties looked goofy, never bought one, never wore one.