Abstract:

The body of the fashion model is not always an object of admiration. Extensive criticism has been directed at the sordid and sometimes grotesquely unhealthy and inappropriate bodily appearance of the fashion model body. The disorderliness of the model body is particularly conspicuous in research literature that interrogates the fashion model in terms of illness and possible treatment. Such accounts are often limited by particular assumptions about the model body as intrinsically disorderly, even dangerous, imbued with the capacity to 'infect' a healthy population. This paper analyses these research accounts, taking as its particular point of interest the ways in which the model body is constituted in discursive ways as a 'naturally' disorderly entity in need of medical intervention. In doing so, it seeks to challenge these accounts by arguing that, in the rush to 'treat' her disorderliness, the degree of disciplined precision that the fashion model practises with her body may too easily go unnoticed. The paper suggests that the fashion model body is a precisely disciplined body of knowledge which has a pedagogical impact.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.2752/136270404778051573