While poking around the internet on a lazy afternoon, I came across the VH1 online box set of Duran Duran videos. Interspersed between the videos are commentaries from band members. I think I was 11 when I first fell in love with Duran Duran, and I’ve never looked back. Well, I have, hence the perusing of online nostalgia, but you know what I mean.
I almost never come across a woman who lived consciously through the 80s that doesn’t remember this band. Love them or hate them, they were everywhere. You couldn’t pick up an issue of Teen Beat or Tiger magazine without staring at one of their handsome mugs. Thank God.
Duran Duran were responsible for shaping, in large part, my view of the world outside of Rensselaer, IN, my hometown. Rensselaer is a small town in the middle of farming country, population severely limited. Here are the details, for anyone interested in seeing what living a version of “Footloose” was like: http://cityofrensselaerin.com/.
You can fill in the details of small town life with your own imaginations. (Think loads of boredom, peppered with cruising down main street and hanging out at the tennis courts with wine coolers.)
Anyway, to make a long story short, I was a bona fide dork. GEEK. I wore glasses and fit into ‘pretty plus’ size clothing. I sucked at gym class, won the 7th grade math award, and I pretty much thought I’d go to my grave without ever having been kissed. To me, the world of Duran Duran videos were OZ. I may as well have been wishing to be Dorothy, whisked away in a storm to the heart of New York or London, to battle the evil reigning fashion models for the heart of John Taylor. (Oh, sure, I went through a ‘Simon LeBon’ phase, who didn’t? But, it didn’t last. My eyes and tiny preteen heart stuck like glue to John.) Instead of ‘Over the Rainbow’ I had ‘Save a Prayer’. (Needless to say, it took me awhile to figure out what a one-night stand was, but they made it seem romantic.)
Here’s a peek at why they were so exciting:
So, what did I do? I got it into my head that to have a good life you had to be or have these things: be model pretty, have oodles of money, live in a big city, travel to exotic places outside of the U.S., and have a rock-star boyfriend. Smarts and a sense of humor? Well, they might help you get there, but let’s face it – people only say they want intelligence and someone to make them laugh after they’ve experienced a bad or boring fling with a vapid, but gorgeous, person. And by 7th grade I had already learned the cold, hard truth: being smart was not going to get me a boyfriend. Period.
Anyway, flash forward a million years, and I’m living in New York City. Duran Duran is basically responsible for almost every decision I made until the age of 28. Why lie? Here’s the proof:
Which is me trying to look sexy/angry on a photo shoot in St. Maarten in 1995. Or how about this:
Get a load of those SHOES! Wow. Or, doing my best Rio impressions:
I spent the better part of my youth figuring out that life is definitively NOT a Duran Duran video. First off, New York was great, but not all that cheap. Secondly, being a model was fun for awhile, but not all that glamorous (maybe the 1000 models who have actually made it big would disagree with me). Third, while I came THIS CLOSE to actually meeting John Taylor before a solo gig in 1998 while I was also working as a reporter (I still have the taped phone conversation, where I desperately tried not to gush), I never dated a rock star. Or any stars, actually. A lot of bankers and business types, but no stars.
In other words, it took me a long time to recover from my love affair with Duran, and the rest of the 80s if we’re completely honest (I’m still holding out for my Sixteen Candles birthday cake with Jake scene). But, in the long run, I’ll probably always have a tiny shiver when I hear the first chord of one of their songs. Shit, I dated British guys exclusively throughout the 90s, in part so I could hear the Duran accent. (I’m sick, I realize.) And, truth be told, there’s nothing really wrong with the occasional hit of Duran Duran, it keeps me young-ish and sexy. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Duran Duran is, for better or for worse, part of the soundtrack of my life and the birthplace of my wanderlust for life outside of the borders.
Miley Cyrus Vanity Fair Pics vs. Pictures of Underage Models: What’s the diff?
30 04 2008[Is this also a 'sick' or 'sexual' photo? I suppose it's what we make of it. You could see a loving father/daughter or incest. I, personally, see a picture of two beautiful people who happen to be related.]
The backlash against Miley’s pictures in Vanity Fair should have been timed with a stopwatch. The reaction would have been fast, maybe even a world-reactionary record (where the ‘world’ is mostly confined to the United States, natch). The problem? People seem to be outraged that a 15-year-old girl is draped in a sheet, looking all ‘post-coital’.
Um. Yeah.
It is definitely disturbing, but hasn’t anyone been paying attention for the past 30 years or so? Fashion models are often naked, and barely 18. Other models, under 18, are scantily clad ALL THE TIME in fashion ads. But, maybe ‘fashion’ gets a pass. I’ve always been a little suspicious of the barely legal girls, looking dead sexy, trying to sell me a bra, or jeans, or whatever. You rarely see, however, any real backlash against them. Perhaps because they aren’t on the Disney channel, hardly anyone thinks of them as ‘role models’, and none of them are easily recognized except a few big names. And anyway, can you imagine your daughter worshiping Kate Moss as a role model? What would the Kate Moss merchandise look like? A small pile of cocaine, a meth-ed out boyfriend, and a fashionable bag and hat to match?
These photos are beautiful, no matter what you think they mean. Meaning is applied by the viewer. You’d have to ask Leibovitz about the intent. And who knows? Better yet, who cares?
Why is this ad any less disturbing? To some – especially in fashion – it was a direct strike at what the media and marketing/PR companies promote to us as ‘beauty’. This women is naked, but she isn’t half as sexualized as Miley.
How young do you think the girl in the middle of this ad is? Does it matter if she is actually 23, but looks 16? Isn’t it the looking 16 that the advertisers are really after?
Now, I know that most people who have been calling Miley a whore will also think these girls are whores, too. And, because of my own picture above, I’m probably in the same bag. But before we cast stones at Miley, shouldn’t we analyze the culture in which she exists? Shouldn’t we look at what we take to be normal in 2008 and ask some questions? Shouldn’t we ask ourselves some hard truths?
Sex sells. Until it doesn’t, this is just going to be ‘business as usual’. As a feminist, I waffle about my own sexuality, wearing bikinis, and trying to look good all the time. But, then I think, why not? Why can’t a woman be beautiful, celebrate it, and also be savvy or smart about how she uses it? Certainly, women in Rome wouldn’t have blinked at this picture, if they had had pictures back then. And, Greeks and Romans did provide the model for all the freedoms we so passionately support.
Maybe this is just all to do with our Puritan ancestry. We just can’t escape from our own prudery. And the irony is that prudery leads to more underground perversion. The more you make sex into a big deal, the bigger problem you will have. Which is great for the advertisers and anyone selling us anything. It’s a vicious cycle, and I can’t see it disappearing anytime soon.
These are my two cents. But, then again, what do I know? I’m just a cultural anthropologist trying to make sense of how we see China. And that’s a-whole-nother can of worms.
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Tags: art, celebrities, commentary, culture, fashion, fashion models, humor, Miley Cyrus, models, naked, nudity, photography, satire, society, Vanity Fair, women's issues
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