As a consolation for the stain post, new textile nanotechnology may allow us to lead stain-free (and shame-free) lives.

Read more here: http://www.nanoandme.org/nano-products/textiles-and-clothing/

This morning I read a story that raises some of the very same questions about the fashion industry and the responsibility it holds that we will be dealing with in the upcoming issue of Vestoj. A former model who prefers to remain anonymous writes on Jezebel.com about one of the original 1990s supermodels, Karen Mulder, who in 2009 made headlines again after being arrested for allegedly threatening her plastic surgeon. A couple of years earlier Mulder was again the talk of the town after attempting suicide after revealing both on TV and in several interviews that she had been raped repeatedly by men all her life, from her own father to several of her bookers, clients and the director of her agency, Elite, Gerald Marie, while he was still married to Linda Evangelista. The fashion world reacted to the allegations by being ‘shocked’ and ‘surprised’. As the article on Jezelbel.com states:

“What amazes even more than how little the story actually differs from telling to telling, how fundamentally the same its elements remain, is our capacity for disbelief. It takes a certain dedication to one’s own credulity to insist on being ‘surprised’, ‘alarmed’ and ‘shocked’ by a situation that has been the subject of interest from such under-the-radar media venues as 60 Minutes going back a generation. As a culture, we have so far managed, through every news story and blog post and exposé, to maintain an innocence of the realities of the modeling industry that is almost touching. Or nearly culpable.

Our persistent willingness to be taken aback by the notion that wealthy, powerful, older men, when left in charge of a younger, poorer, female workforce, might generally act as something less than gentlemen, is testament to the power the multibillion-dollar fashion industry wields as an expert creator of narratives. It’s this attitude of disbelief that allows agency directors to claim they had no idea some of their models were using cocaine and that some of their bookers were dealing it to them, or that some photographers like to sleep with models and some bookers encourage models to go along with it. Our endless capacity for shock is what gets Karen Mulder sedated and lets Gerald Marie retain, to this day, his position as head of Elite Paris.

The longer we keep up our charade of disbelief, the less the industry will change. One of the most chilling scenes in Sara Ziff’s documentary, Picture Me, didn’t make the final cut. A model was talking about a photo shoot that took place she was 16, with what Ziff has described as ‘a very, very famous photographer, probably one of the world’s top names.’ When the girl left the studio to go to the bathroom between shots, the photographer cornered her in the hall. Then he started touching her dress. ‘But you’re used to this’, Ziff reported he said. ‘People touch you all the time. Your collar, or your breasts. It’s not strange to be handled like that.’ Then the world-famous photographer put his hand to her crotch and forced his fingers into her vagina. The teenager, who had never even kissed anyone before, just froze and waited for the man to walk away. They finished the shoot, and she never told anyone. The day before the New York premiere, she begged for the scene to be cut.

But more and more models are speaking out. (I have.) If only we can dispense with our ‘shock’ at what they have to say, perhaps this is an industry where some realistic chance for improvement remains.”

Read the full story here:

http://jezebel.com/5304706/modeling-and-the-tragedy-of-karen-mulder

Fashion is symbolic, sometimes overt and sometimes subtly communicated by arrangements of visual motifs on the body. A stain or mark could be suggested as a symbol of shame. Spilt blood, lipstick, food drippings communicate clearly a disruption of the “(…) continuity of the cloth” (Sorkin, J 2000-2001 ‘Stain: On Cloth, Stigma and Shame’) on an otherwise inconspicuous appearance, a self-conscious symbol of clumsiness or misbehaviour. A stain on clothing is a potent concept, a business man with a food stain on a white shirt communicates a weakness and a cause for shame. The discovery of a stain on oneself particularly in a public context by and large generates an experience of shame. If we are to believe that clothes offer socially protective characteristics, the stain compromises an individual’s exterior, our carefully arranged presentation of self.

In A Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorn the heroine Hester Prynne wears an ‘A’ on her breast as a mark of shame for her adultery. An imposed stain, that is, using the experience of shame as a lawful reprimand but altogether intended to disrupt the connotations of an otherwise acceptable exterior.

Following on the Amish-on-Amish hate crimes of last year (see our blog post from 10.11.11) there is much to be said about the symbolic power of hair. Samson famously lost his strength when Delilah cut his seven locks as he slept and in religion hair, long, shaved, covered or flowing has always played a significant role in symbolizing devotion and humility. Hasidic Jewish women often shave theirs when married and instead cover their head with a scarf or a wig, orthodox muslim women customarily wear a headscarf and the Amish, stop shaving their beards, in the case of men, or cutting their hair, in the case of women. In the Corinth letters St Paul writes:

“Doth not nature itself teach you, that if a man have long hair it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her.”

(1 Cor. 11: 14-15)

Sociologist Anthony Synnott wrote in the introduction to his 1987 paper Shame and glory: a sociology of hair that

“[...] the shame of one sex is the glory of the opposite sex. Indeed the debate over hair symbolism is both ancient and complex, and applies not only to gender but also to politics, as Hippies, Skins and Punks, amongst others, have recently demonstrated. Hair is perhaps our most powerful symbol of individual and group identity – powerful first because it is physical and therefore extremely personal, and second because, although personal, it is also public rather than private. Furthermore, hair symbolism is usually voluntary rather than imposed or ‘given’. Finally, hair is malleable, in various ways, and therefore singularly apt to symbolize both differentiations between, and changes in, individual and group identities. The immense social significance of hair is indicated by economicss: the hair industry is worth $ 2.5 billion in the USA (New York Times, 7.1.85).”

Have you got any more examples of the link between hair and shame? Do share with us!