Vogue UK asked an interesting question yesterday: when it comes to modelling, do looks matter anymore?
I mean, obviously, yes, to an extent they do. (Like, duh.) But the magazine brought up a very interesting point: with the onset of Instagram and the changing definition of beauty (see: personality actually matters now — yay!), modelling may no longer be reserved for the stereotypical, well, model.
“Kendall Jenner’s appointment as the face of Estee Lauder was accompanied by a statement about the company’s hope that it could ‘leverage her image, voice, energy, and extraordinary social media power to introduce Estee Lauder to millions of young women around the world,'” wrote Lauren Milligan and Lucy Hutchings. “Supermodel Christy Turlington agrees that something major has changed.”
Indeed she does. Opening up about model Karlie Kloss, Turlington revealed that Kloss told her that in addition to actually modelling, there’s a social media component that’s becoming increasingly important.
“We didn’t have that,” said Turlington. “There are good things about that and negative things about it. Then, you just went and did a job, which then made it easy to do a lot of things that I was interested in. There was something nice and finite about it.”
Today, not so much.
“Looks are obviously still first and foremost, but if you have two girls who are both perfect for something, without a shadow of a doubt the one with the bigger social media following would win the job,” confirmed model agent Sarah Doukas. “If Cara does a big campaign, you quote for her to model and then you quote separately for the fact that she has 13 million followers.”
So is that a good thing? If Instagram and Twitter’s influence keeps climbing, would it be bad to outrank looks? I don’t think so. Our approach to beauty is changing, which is a long time coming. To see those who’ve cultivated an online presence reap the benefits formerly reserved for women who look a certain way sends a message that fame requires more than just a particular face or body type. Especially since fashion’s supposed to be for everybody.
But that’s just me. What do you guys think?
