A model who looks like me: Communicating and consuming representations of disability

Jordan Foster,David Pettinicchio

doi:10.1177/14695405211022074

Abstract

Diversity in the fashion industry, it seems, is on the rise, with recent efforts poised to address the exclusion of people with disabilities. Based on a content analysis of editorials, advertising campaigns, and 213 online consumer comments between 2014 and 2019, we examine how diversity is showcased: specifically, whether images of disability serve to challenge or reinforce negative stereotypes. We find that market logics constrain the use of models with disabilities and shape their posturing in advertisements and fashion images. While consumers respond favorably to these images, demanding disability be more regularly and prominently featured, they are often responding to images that are sanitized and naïvely conceived. Nonetheless, we show how consumer feedback interacts with the production process, which in turn can challenge market logics, providing opportunities for increased representation. We shed light on how cultural representations reflect, shape, and challenge broader sociocultural norms and values.

Highlights

At first blush, 2018 was a year of change in the fashion industry
Informed by the dynamic reciprocating producer–consumer relationship posited to influence change within cultural fields (Childress, 2017; Childress and Friedkin, 2012), we examine how consumers receive aesthetic preferences communicated by producers in fashion through print and online media images and text
The aesthetic economy encompasses a broad field of brand leaders, agents, models, creatives, and consumers governed by norms and values that historically rendered entire populations invisible

Summary

Introduction

2018 was a year of change in the fashion industry. A greater number of racial minority women, trans-women, and plus-sized models were postured in print media and walked in ready-to-wear runway shows. Content analyzing ads and editorials provides access to widely shared beliefs and aesthetic preferences surrounding disability as they are communicated to consumers.

Results

Conclusion