Clothier Slammed For Using 'Perfect' Virtual Model

Hugh Pickens writes "Swedish Clothing Giant H&M recently disclosed that the images from the company's website, showing models wearing the latest swimsuit and lingerie in generic, stock-form, are not just photoshopped but entirely computer-generated. 'We take pictures of the clothes on a doll that stands in the shop, and then create the human appearance with a program on [a] computer,' H&M press officer Hacan Andersson said when questioned about the company's picture-perfect online models. Advertising watchdogs elevated the controversy by criticizing the chain of lower-cost clothing stores for their generic approach to models, accusing the chain of creating unrealistic physical ideals. 'This illustrates very well the sky-high aesthetic demands placed on the female body,' says a spokesman for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, one of the groups most critical of H&M. 'The demands are so great that H&M, among the poor photo models, cannot find someone with both body and face that can sell their bikinis.'"

Comments

Cheaper

[l00sr]

Why hire a model, photographer, etc., every time you change product lines, when you can just mass-produce images on a computer? I'd guess that the motivation here is more cost cutting than aesthetics. Still sounds like a terrible idea, but I'm sure we'll be seeing more of this in the near future.

Re:Cheaper

[HBI]

For the models, though, this gives very immediate application to the common threat that "You can be replaced by a computer".

What will dimwit hot chicks do for a living now?

Re:Cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

You think it's more expensive to pay someone to put on some clothes and have their picture taken than to computer generate ideal human appearance for each item of clothing you sell?

Think again.

Re:Cheaper

[Chris Mattern]

What will dimwit hot chicks do for a living now?

Same thing they did before mass media made it possible to have a career as a model. They haven't come up with a computer that can do the world's oldest profession yet.

Re:Cheaper

[TheCRAIGGERS]

Perhaps, but the same could be said for real models. If all they really cared about was the clothes, they wouldn't show the model's faces, either.

But they do, and for obvious reasons. They're not just trying to sell you $2 of fabric for $55- they're trying to sell you a self-image boost. And they must have found that a beautiful face is a big part of a beautiful body.

Re:Cheaper

[Superken7]

Absolutely. I doubt they can't find a model with such a body; sure they can. It's about making the process much shorter and cheaper.

I don't see anyone complaining for the mannequins not being human beings and being too idealistic. Also, keep in mind that this was done for both women and men, and yet protests are raised only for the aesthetic demands placed on female bodies.

Re:Cheaper

[Baloroth]

What will dimwit hot chicks do for a living now?

Same thing they did before mass media made it possible to have a career as a model. They haven't come up with a computer that can do the world's oldest profession yet.

"Yet" being the key word.

Re:Cheaper

[CohibaVancouver]

What will dimwit hot chicks do for a living now?

Marry rich and bang the pool boy on the side.

Re:Cheaper

[Tarsir]

Yeah! A magazine full of faceless women isn't creepy at all!

Re:Cheaper

[Ihmhi]

Fashion designers apparently use rail-thin models because they lack the curves of your average woman and therefore the folds, lines, depths, etc. of their clothing will be more emphasized.

That is, fashion models are generally nothing more than walking, living mannequins. I'd be glad to see this particular part of the fashion industry disappear altogether. How many of these women are naturally that skinny, and how many torture and damage their bodies to fit into that archetype?

Re:Cheaper

[wisty]

Yep. And you notice that "super models" and actresses are a lot plumper, with decent curves, and sometimes even a tiny bit of body fat. Women have to look like they can survive pregnancy before they are sexually attractive (thought there'll be some weird fetishists who'll say otherwise). A rail-thin model is essentially a self-propelled coat-hanger, not the epitome of beauty.

Re:Cheaper

[hedwards]

It's far less creepy than mannequins with faces. Years back I walked by a display with several mannequins and a saleswoman that had the exact same body type it was really creepy.

As far as this nontroversy goes, I'd like to see some actual evidence that the mass media actually causes these problems. If it's really that serious a threat, I'd like to know why it isn't being taken more seriously with regards to unhealthy images of men. But, more to the point, I'd like to know how they explain incidences of similar disorders that predate the mass media or exist in countries where women aren't exposed at all to images of other women.

Re:Cheaper

[Alex Belits]

That you somehow think that modeling (or athletics) and education are mutually exclusive activities suggests that you've done neither.

I did neither modeling nor athletics. This is one of the reasons I got decent education.

Amazingly there are people who can carry both a modeling career and a full course load simultaneously.

Most however can not.

Indeed even people who have educational opportunities presented to them contingent on their participation in athletics.

And those are exactly the kind of people who should not be allowed within ten kilometers from any university. Then suddenly there would be enough scholarships available for people who actually can and want to study, as opposed to becoming an underpaid professional athlete with a student ID, and after retirement/graduation a fraud (and optionally a cripple).

Re:Cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

You're so offensive. I've dated a lot of models, there are slutty, dumb girls, but there are just as many nice, smart, good girls. They're just normal people.

If someone came up to you and said "I'll pay you $1000 to let me take a picture of you,", and you say "ok"... that doesn't make you a dumb slut.

Re:Cheaper

[ShavedOrangutan]

There's a range for optimum fertility, and the cave man in me knows exactly what it is. Emaciated fashion models aren't likely to produce healthy offspring. Obese women will have more difficulty conceiving. If a woman wants to know what a man is attracted to, put down the Victoria's Secret catalog and look at a mens magazine. Those models are not skinny!

My wife is pregnant and starting to show it and my inner cave man thinks she's so HOT!

Thanks for the "self-propelled coat-hanger" quote. I'm using that next time I see her browsing a fashion catalog.

Re:Cheaper

[ironjaw33]

And those are exactly the kind of people who should not be allowed within ten kilometers from any university. Then suddenly there would be enough scholarships available for people who actually can and want to study, as opposed to becoming an underpaid professional athlete with a student ID, and after retirement/graduation a fraud (and optionally a cripple).

Athletic scholarships at American universities are almost entirely funded by alumni. These athletic scholarships aren't taking away any money from academic scholarships.

I was on an athletic scholarship which gave me an undergraduate education at almost no cost. I had both a successful athletic and academic undergraduate career; however there aren't many well paid professional opportunities for track athletes, so with the additional encouragement of an injury, I had to give that part up. I'm now in a Computer Science PhD program with several first author publications in A-level conferences. Being an athlete taught me the discipline and time management skills that have allowed me to succeed as a graduate student. As an undergrad, I was always practicing or traveling to competitions, so I learned to spend every bit of free time studying. Now, in graduate school, I can't believe how lazy many of the other students are -- they have nothing else to do but study, yet they waste so much of their time shooting the breeze.

Re:Cheaper

[cusco]

Ever work with any models? The reason that I abandoned a career as a theatre techie was because I couldn't handle dealing with the remarkable egos of actors, models, beauty pageant contestants, directors, etc. Swore I'd never go back until actors were replaced with holograms (at which point the lighting guy becomes redundant too, though). I really see no down-side for the company in doing this.

Re:Cheaper

[BlueParrot]

You know, as somebody who has always been slim enough to frequently get comments along the lines of "you need to eat more" (and it really isn't fun to get told that when I'm perfectly healthy ), I get a bit ticked off with sentiments like this. Yes, it's horrible that the fashion industry makes curvy women feel bad, but the reverse is not a good idea either. I think it was in the UK authorities banned pictures of a slim model as "socially irresponsible" recently, because she was too thin. Thing is, she looked very similar to myself, and my doctor thinks I'm fine ( as does the BMI scale , even though it is obviously not all that reliable ).

There's a wide range of healthy body weights, and calling people on the lower end of the scale names because you're upset with how those who are chubby are treated will only make things worse. Replacing one set of really harmful sentiments about body weight with another will result in people feeling pushed to fit some very narrow line between "omg, you shouldn't be so slim, you must have some eating disorder" and "too 'fat' to be a model".

Re:Cheaper

[Alex Belits]

Athletic scholarships at American universities are almost entirely funded by alumni. These athletic scholarships aren't taking away any money from academic scholarships.

Then alumni should open their own professional sports teams and stop shitting up education for future generations.

Re:Cheaper

[Alex Belits]

You're assuming that all college athletes a) don't care about academics, b) are worse students than the average non-athlete

On average, they definitely are, and if they were not, they have to spend their time training and participating in competition when everyone else is studying.

c) all aspire to be professional athletes.

It does not matter what they aspire to. They are for all practical purpose professional athletes, they are paid in tuition.

Re:Cheaper

[Grishnakh]

A couple of generations ago the average woman's dress size was much, much smaller.

Two points:
1) This isn't necessarily true, it depends on your definition of dress sizes. For instance, go to Gap and grab a dress that's size 2, and then go across the mall to Lane Bryant and grab a size 2 dress there, and compare. Dress sizes aren't really standardized.
2) It's not really a time thing, it's a place thing: go outside the USA, and you'll find that obesity is not the norm everywhere, it's largely an American phenomenon (though also a problem in the UK and parts of Western Europe).

There's several problems as I see it:
1) Lack of exercise. This is a giant problem in the USA because everyone drives everywhere. However, there are some exceptions. Go spend a week in Manhattan (NYC) and walk around the streets of midtown and downtown. You're not going to see many fat people there like you would on the streets of Omaha. People in Manhattan walk too much to get fat; they walk from their brownstone several blocks to the subway, then several blocks to work, then out to lunch, out to dinner, etc. They don't have cars (very few people in Manhattan do because there's no place to park them), so they have to walk everywhere, and while the subways are present and convenient, those don't exactly give you door-to-door service; the stations are a pretty decent distance apart, so unless you happen to live/work right next to a subway station, you're going to be doing some walking every day. After your week in Manhattan, if you're an average American, you're going to be in much better shape than you were the week before. Of course, there's a few exceptions: rich fuckers like Donald Trump don't get all this exercise because they take a limo everywhere. But then Donald doesn't look like he's all that healthy, does he?

2) Bad food. The quality of food in the USA is downright horrible compared to 50 years ago: GMO produce, fruit with no taste, nasty grain-fed beef pumped full of antibiotics, cows forced to eat ground-up cow parts and cow brains, chickens that live their entire lives in cramped cages, etc. You can avoid much of this by buying organic produce and meat (like grass-fed free-range beef, free-range chicken, bison meat, etc.), but most of the population doesn't. Of course, much of the population does much worse than this, not only eating bad-quality food, but eating too much red meat (and the shitty quality stuff too), eating garbage loaded with trans fats, not eating any fresh fruit, and in general having a very poor diet.

Poor diet with shit food plus little exercise = obesity and early death. It's not rocket science.

So what

[Anonymous Coward]

'The demands are so great that H&M, among the poor photo models, cannot find someone with both body and face that can sell their bikinis.'

Deal with it. Modern concepts of beauty as promoted by clothiers might be unrealistic, that doesn't mean anyone has the right to tell them what they can consider beautiful.

Re:So what

[nyctopterus]

Deal with it. Modern concepts of beauty as promoted by clothiers might be unrealistic, that doesn't mean anyone has the right to tell them what they can consider beautiful.

Oh yes they do, they just can't back it up with force. Deal with that.

Look at all the fucks I don't give

[paiute]

A significant portion of the world goes hungry each day. These people would see even the most emaciated bikini model H&M might pull off the streets in Sweden as looking relatively unstarved.

Rules

[masternerdguy]

First to invoke rule 34.

Photoshopping

[Dan East]

This is just plain old photoshopping. The blurb makes it sound like she's a 3D computer model or something similarly advanced. I'm sure the originals were based off of a real person, and probably touched up a bit with photoshop like practically every social magazine and advertisement had has done for decades now. I'm not sure what all the uproar is about. Do people really think that amongst the billions of people on this planet that no-one has a body that looks as good as this "virtual" model? Sure it's not representative of your typical, average female, but it most certainly is not unrealistic. I just don't understand the evil / anti technology slant to this story. That's just a money saving / convenience type thing.

If you can computer-generate the models...

[DeathToBill]

...couldn't you come up with some that are attractive? I'm not into fat chicks, but bones sticking out is not a good look. Curves, please!

Re:They're missing a trick here...

[migla]

Hmm... One could step into the booth at H&M and strip to have a kinect (pehaps enhanced with robo-tweezers to detect firmness) make a 3d model of your body which could then be used to show off any clothes (physics properties of which of course have been entered into the machine).

The clothing-simulator would of course try to lie, pulling certain parameters in the direction of perfection to more efficiently get you to close the deal.

Doesn't Matter

[RivenAleem]

Had Sales.

Re:They're missing a trick here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternatively, one could step into the booth at H&M and try on the damn clothes.

so what?

[v1]

Photoshopping is so common nowadays (not just for body retouching) you'd be a fool to believe any printed ad didn't have something adjusted. Might be litter removed off the ground, more people in the crowd, a tummy tuck or two, or it could be the entire shot was assembled from a dozen pieces. If you're crying foul when a CGI model is being drawn in, you probably have no idea how gullible you already are.

As long as the product itself isn't being photoshopped or a fake scale comparison (like that pool we saw recently where they'd pasted in kids of pics at about 50% normal size to make the pool appear larger) then I'm ok with it.

This is like complaining that the store has the clothes on mannequins instead of live models. Actually, I wonder if there was a similar ruckus back when stores started using more realistic mannequins?

Re:Excellent

[uncle slacky]

All very well, but I get the feeling that the things that most people would be "freed up to do" in those circumstances are likely to include starving and becoming homeless.

It *should* of course be used to create a basic income for everyone in order to allow us to pursue higher things, but I'll bet you it won't.

Re:I'm not seeing the down side here

[GameboyRMH]

The argument some women put forward is that idealizing these models perpetuates anorexia in the population due to women starving themselves to achieve the same body shape.

But if you hear the argument that it's the fault of men, don't buy it. It's not men, it's the fashion industry who wants living mannequins. Best case in point: Most porn stars do not have this kind of figure.

Re:What they have done for century

[Runaway1956]

You forgot "newscaster". There are dozens of them now, who can't boil water without burning it. Can't pour piss out of a boot, if the instructions are written on the bottom of the sole. People who can fall of the Empire State Building, and get lost before they hit the ground. Dumber than any rock you've ever met. But, they've got great asses, and at least moderate cleavage, so they get on television!