Representation in Modeling

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    About a month ago I was scrolling through Instagram and saw a few people raving about a new Gucci model. While I am personally really into fashion, I had never paid attention to particular models, but what was different about this model that people were obsessing over was that she was a model with Down Syndrome. Her name is Ellie Goldstein, and she was the first model with Down Syndrome to go that viral, and she spoke about how glad it made her to be able to live her dreams and be a figure of representation for others.


    Ellie works for a company called Zebedee, which is a modeling and acting agency for disabled individuals. Their main focus is on increasing the level of representation disabled people receive. They are a European based company and explained that disabled people make up 21% of the population in their country and yet only receive about 0.02% representation within the media. Their company seeks to increase that number so it is proportional to the real life number of people who are disabled. The disabled population is one of the most grossly underrepresented and mistreated groups out there and it is phenomenal that this company is trying to change that.

    In including differently abled individuals within modeling the beauty standards will eventually shift to include these individuals which they were previously excluded from. The response to Goldstein's Gucci ad was overwhelmingly positive, with her photo being Gucci's most liked photo on Instagram today. The fact that the world was ready to embrace her beauty in her modeling work shows that the fashion industry does have the power to change and be more inclusive, which will have a dramatically positive effect on society as a whole.



    More recently, Rihanna used a model with amniotic band syndrome for her lingerie line. The model has a prosthetic leg and three fully developed fingers, and people with similar conditions were quick to describe how overjoyed they were to see someone with a similar condition represented in modeling. In addition to how it makes these individuals feel like they too can be a part of the beauty standard that they were so often left out of, other people can also adjust their perception of what beauty means when they see different people represented in the industry.

    Some people worry that the companies who are using disabled models are tokenizing the models by only using a single disabled model, but I believe that that is an incredibly pessimistic way of looking at it. All change takes time. Perhaps today there is only one disabled model that a company is using, but another day the proportion of disabled models may be closer to the real life proportion of disabled people in the population. Progress is what we need to look towards, and I think Zebedee has taken a major step towards it.


Sources:


https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2020/07/9903327/models-with-disabilities-fashion-zebedee-management

https://themighty.com/2021/07/savage-x-fenty-models-disability/

https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/53518/1/lyric-mariah-is-the-model-with-limb-differences-to-pose-for-rihanna-savage-fenty


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