They are too thin, too tall, too young, too similar to each other … They are priestesses of a tyrannical fashion that imposes bodily standards on us and causes eating disorders. And yet we need these ethereal creatures, some psychologists say.
Long, ghostly processions of fashion models take to the catwalk twice a year, during the off-season. These cyclic sacraments – Fashion Weeks – have their own paradoxical logic: autumn here celebrates spring, and spring looks forward to the next winter. And it is as if this isolation from reality is emphasized by a series of ethereal creatures in beautiful out-of-season clothes that do not hide their almost incorporeal bodies. All sorts of media multiply these images, accompanied by admiring or annoyed remarks, and the voices of fashion critics are drowned in a chorus of worried doctors, worried mothers, nutrition experts and feminist activists. This glorification of thinness and androgyny harms the young psyche, causes dysmorphophobia and is considered one of the reasons for the spread of anorexia, negatively affects reproductive function, and also calls for seeing a woman as an object.
However, from the point of view of philosophy, every social phenomenon is generated by a certain need for it: the philosopher Véronique Bergen writes in her essay that “Their bodies “religious” on the catwalks, in the ritual of haute couture or ready-to-wear; they exist only to be “worshipped”, to be idealized.” This is exactly what 36-year-old Anna, a literature teacher who never misses a show, says: “I go online and immerse myself in the contemplation of beauty – this is really a dream, an art, just like music, painting or theater. Would this sight be just as beautiful with ordinary women? Of course not, and contrary to what many claim, these women are not here to be our mirror, but to embody something extraordinary, unreal.”
Like angels
The fashion models of today are very young, with Slavic features, very thin, their faces are very similar to each other. With their youthful, disembodied androgyny, they resemble hosts of angels emerging from ancient icon-painting scenes: according to the psychoanalyst Jean-Michel Hirt, our fascination with the spectacle of high fashion is generated by a kind of emptiness left from the religious sphere, which is naturally filled by the phenomena of mass culture. From the point of view of Veronica Bergen, they are connected with the images of angels by “asceticism in nutrition, silence in the process of action, a special aura of inaccessibility and an ethereal, luminous appearance of their body.” In her opinion, the emergence of such an ideal is natural in our society of overconsumption. With such an abundance and overabundance of unhealthy food, a body freed from excess flesh is idealized, unconsciously it is perceived as something inaccessible.
Read more:
- Dressing for the Party: Jung’s Analysis
Pursuit of Spirituality
According to Jungian analyst and educator Carole Sédillot, these angelic silhouettes evoke our numinosity—that inner awe and delight that evokes a sense of divine presence. And although “the awakening of the desire for the spirit” is not the main purpose of fashion, nevertheless “this aspect should not be underestimated,” emphasizes Karol Sedillo. “What we perceive as beautiful elevates the soul from both a philosophical and spiritual point of view.” This is how Ella, 42, an economist, describes her experiences: “The clothes on these unearthly bodies are not a commodity, they are a work of art, inaccessible to personal possession for most of us. I contemplate them like paintings by Titian or Velazquez, I perceive it as art that gives me access to something that is bigger than me.
It is impossible to argue with the fact that the priesthood of fashion weeks with their priestesses-fashion models lifts us above the ordinary. Philosophers and psychologists agree that the form of this spectacle is generated precisely by our need for the high, to feel the beautiful as the presence of the spirit. But in addition, according to Jean-Michel Hirt, this spectacle satisfies the need of the inner child that lives in each of us and needs the miraculous – a child who finds short-term solace in fairy tales for his anxieties and existential questions that are destined to remain unanswered. .