Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Vogue is worse than porn


I hate that magazine. It is bad for your health. It makes women think they are not thin enough, rich enough, beautiful enough, accomplished enough. It is revolting.
But Vogue India just took the cake of clueless offensiveness by doing a fashion shoot with actual impoverished Indian citizens modeling expensive brands like Fendi and Alexander McQueen. The brands get mentioned in the credits, the names of the "models" do not.
Of course, there was a brouhaha in India about this; to which the inexcusable cunt who runs the magazine there replied: "lighten up".
Wow.
In countries where the disparities between the haves and the have-nots are abysmal, the haves typically behave towards the unfortunate majority with utter callousness and contempt. They simply refuse to acknowledge reality. For them, the poor don't even amount to individual people. They are servants or beggars or nuisances. They are somebody to try to differentiate yourself from with as much arrogance and ostentation as possible. In fact, the poorer your countrymen, the more obscene your display of wealth. Which is why it doesn't surprise me that someone at Vogue India could come up with such an insulting fashion spread. What is amazing is the sheer imbecility and the unrepentant gall of the response.

From the NYT: "A man modeled a Burberry umbrella in Vogue that costs about $200. Some 456 million Indians live on less than $1.25 a day".

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