I was driving up Oxford St in Sydney. Above Taylor Square a billboard advertised the October 2008 issue of Marie Claire with a series of words and phrases, along the lines of ‘Style’ ‘Travel’ ‘Human Rights’ ‘Fashion’ … Wait! Human rights?
My human rights reading, which I had previously considered wide-ranging, had not ventured as far as Marie Claire. In my occasional waiting-room flick through magazines of the Marie Claire ilk I had never seen a human rights article, although human rights issues are implicit — such as the working conditions of those who labour to produce (and model) fashion designs, the harm done to the environment by the production and packaging of luxury goods, and the sheer waste of resources, money and talent dedicated to superfluous consumer goods.
Had I been too quick to judge? Too smug in dismissing a glossy cover as incapable of containing a story, of social relevance? I bought Marie Claire to find out.
The cover didn’t look promising: ‘Shoes and bags’, ‘Beauty myths busted’, ‘528 sexy fashion finds’, ‘W h y women prey on one another’, ‘Can you have great sex forever?’ and ‘We put organic food to the test’. Oh, and ‘W in a Jimmy Choo bag’.
(The beauty myths, by the way, are ‘20 fab facts you need (sic) to know’.) A couple of the teasers could, if you were reading generously, have a human rights angle: ‘Green glamour: how to look good, feel great and make a difference’ and maybe this one: ‘Natalie on why it’s cool to care’. I wondered who Natalie is.
Jackie Frank sets the scene in her ‘Editor’s Letter’: ‘Marie Claire readers have always known that it’s cool to care, but recently it appears the rest of the world has started to catch on’. Nothing in the following 300 pages suggests that the magazine trades in irony —- it seems that Ms Frank really is claiming that Marie Claire readers are in the vanguard of a global movement of ‘caring’. Marie Claire is right up there with ‘campaigners like Al Gore and Bono’ and the change is hitting home: Marie Claire is ‘being inundated with beauty products and fashion labels that flaunt their ethical credentials’. Ms Frank announces a caring theme, ‘Fashion with heart’, a logo for which will identify ‘stories highlighting initiatives that aim to make a difference to the world’. I turned the pages in search of the logo.
The next five turns of the page takes me past Sharon Stone (Dior), Catherine Zeta Jones (Elizabeth Arden), Sarah Jessica Parker (an eponymous perfume), Cartier, and Penelope Cruz (L’Oreal), to the first ‘Fashion with heart’ logo, on a story about ‘international designers [who] reveal how they make a difference to the world around them’: Donna Karan’s foundation to encourage holistic medical treatment, Giorgio Armani’s donations to an AIDS campaign, Katharine Hamnett’s organic cotton clothing, Ralph Lauren’s support of breast cancer research, Stella McCartney’s rejection of leather or fur in her designs, a Missoni heiress’s money-raising for African orphans, Oscar de la Renta’s charity work in the Dominican Republic, and ‘27 year old fashion wunderkind’ Zac Posen’s charitable work to support teachers. Fashion (millionaires) with a charitable heart it might be. Human rights it isn’t.
I turn pages past Ingrid Betancourt’s escape from capture in Colombia, a ‘Celebrity Report’, an investigation into organic food, an artist who makes baby dolls, and an account of ‘expert advice (eg Yahoo Answers and a Tarot reader) — and of course past Revlon/Hilfiger/Lacoste etc ads — before I arrive at my next ‘Fashion with heart’ logo. It’s about the admirable ‘Fitted for Work ’, a Melbourne volunteer organisation that helps women to prepare, and present well, for employment interviews. There’s a heart indeed, and fashion of a prosaic sort, in the fitting out of women looking for work. If one were trying to, it could be given a human rights spin — sex discrimination and the right to work, for example — but no-one was trying.
Onwards through the gloss, past ‘Confessions’ to a ‘Special Report’ labelled ‘Fashion with heart’: supermodel Christy Turlington Burns’s diary of her trip to Peru as an ambassador for CARE. The captions to photos of smiling Christy document the risks women in poverty face in childbirth, and the ‘special report’ is effectively an advertisement for CARE. Again, the heart is apparent, and the issues touched on in the story could be put in human rights terms, but they aren’t. Next, I meet the Natalie of the front cover — Natalie Portman, who is concerned that we know she is not the intellectual she is said to be (!) but is in fact ‘really mushy’. It’s not at all apparent why this profile gets the ‘Fashion with heart’ logo.
These articles are not rights-based stories. They are not about people whose human rights are threatened, violated or realised. They are not about people who advocate for, defend, or even offend against, human rights. They about people who do ‘good , things’ for other people — and what they do may or may not address human rights.
Even if, generously, a story on fitting out women looking for work is about sex discrimination and the right to work, what undermines any credible claim to Marie Claire‘s taking human rights seriously, or even understanding them at all, is its boast that ‘it’s cool to care’. What’s cool, or not, is a question of fashion, and what is cool one day may not be the next. Human rights — and a commitment to them — is not a question of fashion. Human rights matter whether or not it is cool to care. The universality of human rights is fundamentally at odds with their being a matter of fashion.
The ‘Fashion with heart’ stories might have incorporated some commentary, or even analysis, informed by human rights, lifting them above being mere feel-good stories about glamorous people. But they didn’t. Instead, the ‘human rights’ claim in the marketing of this issue of Marie Claire issue trivialises human rights, and patronises its readers. I am confident that among the readers of Marie Claire are people who, wealthy enough to consider paying $2000 for a pair of shoes, are smart enough to understand that support for fundamental rights is not a question of fashion.
I am attracted by an argument that any forum that promotes understanding of and respect for human rights is worthy of support, even if (or especially when?) jammed between the glamour ads. But until Marie Claire actually does that, the cover price of $8.50 is better spent on a donation to CARE (thanks Christy).
Published in 2009 in Vol 34(1) of the Alternative Law Journal in the ‘Law and Culture’ column.