8 Naked Supermodels = Body Diversity

This just in! Diversity has apparently been reduced to the millimeter of difference between Kate Moss and Amber Valleta's naked hips!  Love Magazine is patting itself on the back for issuing eight separate covers for its third issue, each with a different naked supermodel holding her hands above her head in a not-very-subtle pose that, when laid flat on the tabletop, suggests something other than body diversity.

The issue, according to editor Katie Brand, is meant to show that "perfection is not fixed, timeless, or transcendent. It varies, as the measurements of our cover girls show." Yep. Varies kind of like the way honey blond varies from sunny blond.

Oh, but the farce gets better. Brand goes on to soberly explain that the models are naked in order to illustrate the differences between their bodies (because fashion is truly all about the public picking out minuscule differences in the bodies of spread-eagled supermodels) and that each model's measurements are included to demonstrate these vast, sweeping physical differences (example: Kate Moss' measurements are 34-24-34, whereas Daria Werbowy's measurements are ... 34-24-34).

Brand assures us that the issue has nothing to do with sensationalism or a cheap ploy to sell magazines, adding insult to the injury of using eight nearly identical supermodel bodies as an example of the range of female body types. Kudos to Brand for the triple whammy of reinforcing the skinny-is-the-only-pretty standard AND passing off naked models with arms and legs splayed in deliberate positioning as some sort of female empowerment AND inciting readers to carefully analyze the half-inch differences in a model's hip or stomach size. Bravo! A three-layer cake of objectification and unhealthy body image.

Also love the fact that the photographer added that it was "interesting to study them naked all in the same pose, as they are all so different, but all so powerful looking." I'm sure it was quite interesting. I'm sure it will be equally "interesting" for all those who will go shell out some cash for a copy of their favorite supermodel naked with some suggestive little bars blurring boobs and vagina.

Has it really come to this?  What gets me here is not even the sheer comic ridiculousness of passing off these eight women as examples of diverse body types, or the blatant use of women's bodies as objects to be studied, but the fact that it is all so obviously farce -- so obviously not intended as an embrace of any type of diversity or of female beauty beyond that of the objectified supermodel -- that it's truly insulting.

It makes me want to say, don't condescend to us. Don't insult us by purring about diversity and the variance of perfection while gesturing at your eight tall, skinny, supermodels naked with arms and legs spread wide.  We may have to put up with the pervasiveness of your standardized ideals of beauty but we don't, and won't, swallow for a second the rhetoric that this is diversity or empowerment.

Photo: Tammy Manet's Photostream