Why UndeadModels

We suspect the above BCBG model was attempting to paint the name of her killer before she died. Image originally appeared in the 2008 Spring II catalog.

Why This Project Is Important

A Short, Obligatory, Feminist Rant

There is no such thing as "just a picture."

Images that we see always impart a narrative or an ideology. Just by looking at the history of imagery as human culture has grown - from prehistoric pictographs to metaphorical oil paintings of the Renaissance to Post-Modernist "sculpture" that questions mass production and objectification - absolutely everything we come into contact with communicates a message.

As media delivery systems become more savvy, more targeted, more imbedded into our lives, it is no accident that billions of dollars are poured into the design of objects around us. And billions more dollars are poured into ascribing a particular ideal to those objects. Think of iPods, cell phones, style of homes, the development of town squares, the marketing of a particular political candidate…

A quick example from IT consulting, is what happens during the first meeting with a web client. One of the first questions a designer should ask is, "who is the audience for this web site?" The second question, although not always in this form, is usually a variant of, "what is the look and feel for the site" or really, "what is the narrative or ideology that you are ascribing to the content of your web site that you want a specific demographic to have an emotional response to " (whew...that is a mouthful).

Think of it this way: How often have you been told that a client wants a "sexy web site" or a site where "people feel comfortable." Inversely, have you ever been told, "This site looks like it is for old people." Obviously, there is some design element that people have learned to assign an age group to. Another common example is that people have given gender-specific roles to colors when it comes to children. Think about how easy it is to "tell" if some article of children’s clothing is for a boy or a girl.

Question content. Create your own narratives.

This all gets back to far larger ideas. As a former marketer, I am acutely aware of how our desires and sub-conscious can be subtly shaped by savvy marketing. Certainly, the women’s fashion industry and corollary body image of women exposed to that industry can be held up as a prime example of how a culture’s perceptions are shaped externally. It is arguable that there is little free choice in the free market.

And again, as media becomes more savvy, the audience is no longer a passive entity, absorbing information. The relationship, and the very nature of authorship, has changed. (! But don’t mix up creating within the media, and actual choice. Just because you can put a skin on your MySpace page, does not mean that you beat the system, it merely means that you are embedded within the system, just playing by the rules. Instead, think of mashups).

And that is sort of what undeadmodels.com endeavors to do. We are finding images and messages within our culture, and not only rejecting them (by not buying the product and hating the message), but also attempting to subvert and explore the ideology the image conveys. (I mean, really, what is the link between sexuality, objectification, and corpses? Death = sex = procreation? The models in question just look stupid. ;-) I haven’t seen scholarship on such a topic, but it must exist.)

Again, such a broad topic cannot be covered within the context of this project and this short rant lacks the extensive scholarship necessary to truly address subjects of semiotics, authorship, and feminisism. I doubt that a semester worth of study would even scratch the surface, however if you are interested in exploring the topic more, additional resources can be found here: