Reality Check | Marion Cotillard, Edita Vilkeviciute, Guinevere van Seenus, Lizzie Miller

Usually I try to stay with substance and not superficialities, but it’s newsworthy when Marion Cotillard appears unretouched on the cover of Italian Vanity Fair.

The move for authenticity is real among Smart Sensuality women like Cotillard, who makes her own statement about natural, one reinforced by her extensive environmental comments to Nicole Kidman in the August 2010 issue of Interview.  The French actress who appeared in “Nine” with Kidman, is trying to save an ancient forest in the Congo.

It’s been a good day for ‘real’ women, although not every photographer agrees that women shouldn’t be retouched to death. The tool has reduced beautiful women to plasticized Barbie dolls, with skin no man or woman would want to touch in real life.

Some artists and their muses are saying ‘enough’.

Edita Vilkeviciute | Camilla Akrans | Numero #117

A negative comment about the real-life lines around Edita Vilkeviciute’s eyes launched aggressive dialogue about why she required retouching in the first place, with at least one young photographer asking why then bother with a stylist, makeup artists or any professionals, if the intention wasn’t to make the woman perfect.

It takes a lot to rile up a bunch of young fashionistas who tend to be swept up with la glamour of anything associated with the industry, but they came down pretty hard on this guy, who always believes that no woman with a BMI over 16 is fit for his discerning photographic eye.

I smile, not sure that we’re actually making any progress on the topic of allowing women to be our beautiful, sensual selves but encouraged that he got hammered for his views.

Guinevere van Seenus | Mario Sorrenti | 10 Magazine Fall 2010  Private Studio

Imagine waking up to this glorious photo and many more, lensed by Mario Sorrenti, who has enormous credibility as a photographer who loves women. Mario sees the spirituality in female sensuality and feminine values.

One of our readers David Houston wrote on the Sensuality News FB fan page about the Sorrenti photos:

Very interesting. It does a great job of sidestepping the overt titillation and instead, as you note, gives a sense of honor. The question is (for me): how might that same sense be brought into the porn world?

This is a fundamental difference between porn in America and erotica in Europe. I’m not suggesting that the Europeans never do anything sleasy, but their erotica (for the mostpart, they don’t use the word ‘porn’) leaves much more to the imagination.

The challenge to David’s question is how do we impact America’s portrayal of women in porn?

Lizzie Miller Body Image Model and Beauty Debate Update   Body|Beauty | Culture

 
Rounding out this 24 hr. period of ‘real woman’ thinking is my revisit to Lizzie Miller’s Glamour photographs, the Ralph Lauren photoshop fiasco in which Filippa Hamilton’s head was bigger than her hips, and the reasons why fashion overnight dropped a woman’s ideal beauty look from a size 4-6 to a zero.

If it’s any consolation, most of the fabulous ones — the only supermodels who actually earned the title — would not be hired today, had not some pragmatic business sense overtaken fashion sylists and certain editors, putting them back to work again.

Cindy Crawford makes no bones about the fact that she is too fat and a disgrace to the industry, except that she has other redeeming values that make her editorial worthy. Never let it be said that the fashion industry didn’t make compromises in favor of bottom-line profits in a bad economy.

Plus, some of us women have been getting quite mouthy about canning the women with muscle lust, in favor of girls who couldn’t climb over their Mayberry picket fence, waiting instead for Mr. Big to rescue them in the New York equivalent of a California earthquake.

Truly, I will never understand the third wave of American ‘feminism’.

Crawford, Schiffer, Evangelista, Campbell, Turlington and company are all working again and this time as hot mamas. Personally, I believe the supermodels were just too big a threat to the fragile egos of tempermental male designers. I don’t throw around words like Amazonian goddesses, but those women were potent and confident role models, very good for women’s confidence.

In a word, the tempermental fashion patrarchy said “get them outta here.” And there was that stupid Linda Evangelista remark about not getting out of bed for $10,000. Not smart, and especially from a woman who smokes cigars.

Here’s hoping that with women like Lara Stone (size 4) and Crystal Renn (size 10) joining Lizzie Miller’s revolt against a number more than nothing, sensual women with hips and breasts, a few lines around the eyes and a touch of cellulite on their soft skin will be allowed back in public.

Any male designers who can’t handle the trauma can just rest in peace, as far as I’m concerned. And they can take their brands with them to that beautiful brand heaven in the sky where they belong. You will note that I’m not a vindictive person, wishing them well in a warmer climate. Anne

More reading:

Marion Cotillard | Interview | Niole Kidman & Mikael Jansson