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Could Brad Pitt Wear Jeans and a T-shirt to the Oscars?
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Why do models always make nasty faces?
Why do all of the people in magazines try to look so nasty and mean to be supposedly attractive? If you are pretty enough to be in a magazine, why should you have to snarl at a camera to look "hot"? Answer back, Answer B!tch!
—Brooke, North Bay, Somewhere
The B!tch Replies: Well, just look at the new Dolce & Gabbana ads. You've got a girl in metal bloomers making the dagger eyes at a guy in strategically stuffed briefs. Another model is draped like overcooked celery across some girl, glaring at us through plastic lab goggles. If those kids were smiling, we'd run the risk of realizing that this might be a tad silly—especially when you learn that D&G briefs go for about 40 bucks.
Hysterical giggling rarely helps to sell underwear, fashionistas explain to this B!tch.
So, no smiling from you, Gisele...or you, Tyra. Even child models must avoid gaiety of any stripe. One of the latest Marc Jacobs ads has a sad-eyed Dakota Fanning facing a corner—not so much I've been a bad widdle girl, as It's been thwee days, and that man who took me from the parking lot said I could go home now and—what's he doing with that twash bag?
"A straight face is more intriguing," says fashion photographer and America's Next Top Model judge Nigel Barker. "And that's what sells." It's like meeting someone for the first time. A massive smile is like a big dog licking your face, but if you meet someone more reserved, and you have to get to know them, that's a lot more intriguing—more sexy.
"It's like a classic French movie versus a Hollywood blockbuster," he says.
Smiles also convey another trait forbidden in fashion advertising: accessibility. Designers tend to see themselves as living legends who make crucial clothes for people with momentous wallets. Their advertising must reflect similar gravitas.
Finally, there is the trifling factor of the human brain. Smiles can lead the eye away from the body and up toward the face—inconvenient when a company is trying to sell us a pair of metal bloomers.
"The focus is meant to be on the clothes," one fashion journalist tells this B!tch. "You don't want the model taking away from that. They are the canvas for the clothing."
That quote comes from a Vegas magazine editorial assistant named—I swear I am not making this up—Colleen Smiley. How perfect is that?
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