We’ve all been there–lying in bed and browsing through the latest trends on fashionable clothing websites such as H&M, wishing for not only the respective model’s clothing, but her body too. Don’t fret, that H&M model is likely wishing for her own pictured body.
It has been recently publicized that H&M, a Swedish retail-clothing company known for its fast-fashion clothing, has been putting real models’ heads on computer-generated bodies. This shocking discovery was first revealed by Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet, and is now circulating through social media networks, public relation corporations, and news rooms around the world. The head-body detachment was first noticed in Norway by Bildbuffen (“Photo Bluff”), a website dedicated to recognizing when photos have been doctored. However, once Bildbuffen identified that a multitude of lingerie product shots from H&M’s Christmas campaign presented fake bodies with real heads, the public began to take notice aw well.
Fortunately, H&M has admitted their faulty behavior–“It’s not a real body, it is completely virtual and made the computer. We take pictures of the clothes on a doll [mannequin] that stands in the shop, and then create the human appearance with a program on your computer.” The popular clothing company elaborated, stating that they solely utilize computer-generated bodies in their e-commerce site. The company defends itself by elucidating that their reasoning for such fraudulent behavior is that real bodies would be too distracting for the online shoppers. The company representative states, “We do this to show off the clothes.” Who knew that real women’s bodies were considered “distracting”?
Nonetheless, Aftonbladet has recently published a new statement by an H&M representative negating H&M’s previous claims and offering a different reasoning for the head-body disconnect. The H&M rep reports that the catalyst for spotlighting fake bodies on their online website is not a way to merely “show off the clothes;” but, instead, is the result of being unsatisfied with the multitudinous models who have come through their doors.
So actual models aren’t even considered “beautiful” enough to model companies’ clothing now; instead, clothing companies have to rely on fake, computer-generated images of women to reach their impossibly high beauty standards? This H&M scandal exemplifies the sky-high aesthetic requirements placed on the female body nowadays. We must ask–how are real women expected to look good in and purchase the clothing these companies sell when said companies cannot even find models to look good in their clothing?