和訳お願いします
和訳お願いします
In the 1960s and 1970s, ethnic women were much more visible in fashion. That was a time of exuberance and change; the time of the Black Power movement, the mantra “black is beautiful”, Roberta Flack singing Be Real Black for Me. This mood continued into the 1980s, with models such as Iman, Pat Cleveland and the young Campbell splashed everywhere.
Fashionistas will admit that it is now extremely rare to see a black girl on a magazine cover, and that there were almost no ethnic girls at the catwalk shows in Paris, Milan and New York in February. One or two Chinese models made it, but otherwise, the Aryan look dominated.
The question is: why? The standard answer is that it all comes down to money. Beauty is what sell---the magazine, the label, the skincare and the bag. Editors and managers say that, however much they want to use ethnic girls, putting one on the cover of a glossy magazine will depress sales. If ethnic women brought in big profits, nobody in the industry would be in the slightest bit interested in their skin tones or their racial type. Rightly or wrongly, though women from ethnic minorities are considered a bad commercial bet.
As one insider said to me regretfully:“Fashion is aspirational, magazines are aspirational and, to aspire, you need to be able to identify with someone---at least a little. And readers don't identify with ethnic women. They don't see them as aspirational.”
So,neither the editors nor the advertisers will take any risks on them. This is particularly true in new markets---marketing aimed at the new mega-rich consumers in China and Russia cannot afford to ignore the fact that those countries are more racist than the west.
I'm sceptial about this view. If the assumption that ethnic beauty is unprofitable is right, you would expect advertisers to be even more reluctant to use ethnic models than magazine editors. Editors can afford to take a few risks, perhaps, as fashion leaders, whereas advertisers are much more reactionary, driven by the pursuit of profit. Yet in my snapshot of April magazines, is was the advertisers who were using more ethnic girls.
In all those kilograms of pases, there were only four black women in editorial fashion shoots, and 10 Asian women, whereas there were 71 black women and 48 Asian in advertisements. Four black women in editorials against 71 in advertisements is a striking contrast. It suggest that, in reality, ethnic beauty has greater commercial value than the fashion mavens assume, and that the market has latched onto is first. As Hilary Riva, chief executive of the British Fashion Council, points out: “It is important that we see aspirational imagines of all type of women in the media. One of the biggest UK ad campaigns, for M&S, has done just that.” Perhaps the punters are a bit less racist than the pundits.
This is only speculation, but it is hard to find much else about this extremely awkward question. British Vogue refuses point black to comment, and most people I contacted preferred to talk off the record. One suggestion is that the absence, particularly of black girls with African features, has to do with the tiny minority of people who make the fashion weather: the arbiters of fashion. These are the top casting agents and designers who decide whom to send on photoshoots and the catwalks, and many of them are gay white men. I'm told they really don't like black women. again, the question is, why? Or, rather, why not? As ever, if it's not something to do with money, it is probably something to do with sex
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