Size zero high-end ethnic: Cultural production and the reproduction of culture in fashion modeling

Abstract

The fashion modeling industry has long been criticized for using excessively thin and exclusively Anglo-looking models in advertising and runway shows. How do fashion producers make decisions to hire models, and why is the fashion model aesthetic defined so narrowly? Based on participant observation and interviews with modeling agents and clients in New York and London, the current study explains how producers in the modeling industry weigh their decisions on two publicly polemical issues: slenderness and racial exclusion. As workers in cultural production, agents and clients face intense market uncertainty when selecting models. In the absence of objective standards, they rely on conventions, imitation, and stereotypes to guide their decisions. Producers hire fashion models to articulate market-specific versions of femininity. In the commercial market, they emphasize demographics, racial inclusion, sex appeal and attainable beauty; in the high-end editorial market, they seek distinction, sexual unavailability and rarefied beauty. As cultural producers, agents and clients ultimately reproduce culture by fashioning femininity along race and class lines.