The Slippery Slope

Having come across the excellent web site Ballardian (see my last entry), I’ve been reading some of the entries on it. I came across this one, which attempts to discuss the Vogue Italia photo shoot by Steven Meisel that "posits supermodels as new-age terrorists". I freely confess that I find the photo shoot highly disturbing. Even more disturbing to me are the comments posted by LiveJournal users who find the photos "awesome" or "sexy". Mind you, Meisel is hardly the first to do something like this. I recall that one of the early issues of Rails – a free magazine given away by the Dutch railway company (it may even have been the first issue) – contained a fashion photo shoot that had crime scenes as its theme. Seeing "murder victims" modelling fashion struck me as being intrinsically wrong. Meisel’s effort arouses the same feelings of disgust in me.