Spotted on PageSix:
Victoria’s Secret model Doutzen Kroes
Doutzen Kroes is happy about the new Model Alliance bill to protect underage models, but admits the job can affect women’s self-esteem.
“Sometimes it makes me feel guilty now that I am in this profession that makes certain girls insecure,” the Victoria’s Secret beauty, 28, told us. “I always say, I don’t look like the picture . . . If you put me in bad light with no hair and makeup, it’s not good . . . I wake up sometimes like, this is not what I see when I look at the magazine, who is this visitor in the bathroom?” [source]
Now, pardon me for asking, but I do have a few quick questions:
1) What does it mean when the real life model says that her own photographs don’t look like her?
2) Why don’t these kinds of quotes get more attention? Why don’t we show more girls and women these kinds of quotes to help them get a little insight into how much of a fantasy world the woman in these images live? Should we?
3) I think it says an awful lot when, instead of asking “who’s this girl in the magazines,” she asks “who is this visitor in the bathroom.” Even though she can admit that the images are fantasy, she identifies more with the fantasy than her own reality. It just…it says a lot.
I think we just need to get to a point where we look at these images and appreciate them for what they are – science fic— er, I mean, simple fantasy. Start explaining to our young girls early that these images are altered from reality, these pictures are photoshopped badly and totally retouched, these women don’t even go on the runway without wearing booty paint, they literally starve themselves in insane ways to lose weight for those shows then go back to regular life as soon as the show is over, and there’s never a shortage of scumbags to make you feel bad about yourself for not looking the way they want you to look…which also happens to be… like these models.
In short, you’ve got to learn (and teach your children) how to give these images the middle finger pretty early. Not even the models themselves can connect to the reality that is… “that ain’t you on the page, boo!”