She's a Lady: Material Realities of Femininity

She's a Lady: Material Realities of Femininity

H & M's New Autumn Collection 2016

"She's a Lady" Video Ad

H&M, one of the world's leading fashion retailers, recently released a video advertisement for their new autumn collection. Published on September 11, 2016 on their YouTube channel, the advertisement is pushing 3 million views and has received quite the positive review.

The advertisement, set against a new version of "She's a Lady" by the duo Lion Babe, the advertisement features big names such as Lauren Hutton, Adwoa Aboah, Hari Nef, Pum Lefebure, and Jillian Hervey. H&M's caption for the video boasts "entertaining, opinionated, off-beat and fearless. Bad-ass, independent and free-willed." All adjectives intended to be invoked by the tone and scenes depicted within the advertisement.

The montage of scenes depict a wide variety of women in their own unique spaces, utilizing style their way - how they want it, when they want it. From the board room to the bar, to a dinner date with friends to dancing in front of a mirror, H & M apparel has something for everyone's style needs - as conveyed by the advertisement. This broad range of models and scenes seems be a marketing strategy to reach a more diverse audience, or at least their attempt to showcase models who actually represent the diversity of their customers.

The new video ad has sparked multiple articles online that herald the advertisement as a new step for feminist advertising, such as Kristina Monllos article on Adweek that claims the title "H&M's Stunning New Ad Suberts What You Think A Lady Should Look or Act Like: Set to Tom Jones' 'She's a Lady." 

Nikki Gilliland's article at Econsultancy highlights positive feedback on social media platforms such as twitter, highlighting a positive response from women who believe this advertisement sets the tone for what they want to see in fashion advertisements. She says, "It places fashion in the context of every day, depicting women wearing clothes exactly how they would be worn in real life situations - not on a runway or in front of a green screen." It seems to be a turn for the fashion industry who struggled to sell clothing except draped over models. Many are pretty stoked that they can see themselves and their friends represented in an ad for clothes they may even already consume.

However, not all feedback has been positive and kind. Shockingly, One Million Mom's had something unkind to say about the new ad. Director Monica Cole writes:

 
"1MM is not sure of H&M clothing company’s thought process behind their new television ad, but if they are attempting to offend customers and families, they have succeeded. H&M’s newest “She’s A Lady” commercial includes what appears to be a man dressed as a woman in one segment, another woman wearing skimpy lingerie, and ends with two teenage girls kissing while underwater. Parents find this type of advertising inappropriate and unnecessary especially since H&M’s target market is teens.
H&M Marketing Team may have thought this type of advertising was politically correct, but not only is it disgusting and confusing for children, it is pushing the LBGT agenda. Let H&M know their new ad is irresponsible. TAKE ACTION: Please use the information we have provided to contact H&M concerning their new commercial and ask that they pull this offensive ad immediately."

While One Million Mom's is actually accurate that there does appear a woman in lingerie and two teenager girls kissing in a pool while the ad montage, they also made one rather large, rather glaring mistake.

As identified by blogger JoeMyGod, the woman that One Million Moms tries to identify as a "man dressed as a woman" is actually world famous champion and Muay Thai boxer Fatima Pinto.

Fatima Pinto, in her outfit for H&M's advertisement for it's new autumn collection.
Photo from Refinery29

Fatima Pinto, who has been identified by the Huffington Post as a cisgender woman, has posted two instagram photos depicting her support of the new #ladylike campaign by H&M (which you should totally check out here and here) proudly owning her muscles and encouraging other young women to take up boxing.

What is quite ironic here is that in their attempt to shame Fatima Pinto for falling outside of their acceptable range of femininity and body type presentation, One Million Moms missed Hari Nef, a transgender actress and model, who also plays a role in H&M's advertisement.

Hari Nef in H&M's new autumn collection video advertisement.
Photo from GayStarNews

While One Million Moms has since taken the campaign down from their website, their reaction prompts some interesting questions around femininity and presentation in clothing advertisements.

Riki Wilchins, in her work in GenderQueer, calls for deconstructing such restrictive binaries such as masculinity and femininity. The power of binaries rests in the definition of opposites - they become understood in relation to the other. Femininity thus becomes what masculinity is not. The problems with such binary thinking restrict the expansive notion of femininity as it is claimed by various types of women, or also rejected by various types of women. 

However, while the work of deconstructing language and understanding the power that rests within binaries is incredibly important to understanding the context of our modern society, that does little to change people's material world as we still experience life in binaries. We socially craft, create, and maintain categories that then translate into socially marked, coded bodies. This process is talked about more fully by Sandra Lee Bartky.

She discusses how the policing and regulation of bodies the way we currently understand it has become a modern construction. She draws from the work of Foucault to explain the material consequences of moving through the world as a female coded feminine body. She says, "There are significant gender differences in gesture, posture, movement, and general bodily comportment: women are far more restricted than men in their manner of movement and in their spatiality," (81). The ad produced by H&M allows a little flexibility with these ideas, depicting women in their spaces taking up space in them, allowing generally more motion and movement.

The questions that One Million Moms serves to raise center around ornamentation of the body and physical characteristics associated with feminine bodies. She believes there is much discipline involved is producing a feminine ornamented body, "especially in the application of makeup and the selection of clothes, [where] art and discipline converge" (83). Routines, acquiring specialized knowledge, and a certain mode of dress become the foundation for expressing properly a socialized construction of femininity. Yet that does not mean that others may not interject and attempt to control and discipline the portrayal of such femininity.

The policing of bodies by others is what is important with the reckless comments of One Million Moms. Their statement serves as an overt sign of regulations and restrictions that society attempts to places on female bodies. Fatima Pinto and Hari Nef expressed their femininity in different ways, through their ornamented bodies, within the fashion advertisement. But it becomes the presentation of a body that displays traditional masculine characteristics, even though she is sheathed in a gorgeous black dress, that draws critique from One Million Moms. What else could their end goal be except to denounce her as a proper fashion model for women's clothing?

The juxtaposition of the song She's A Lady with a richer texture of women than is typically found in fashion advertisements feels like H&M is trying to make a statement on femininity. Perhaps they are pushing us to extend our boundaries from traditional ways of thinking to embracing the nuances of real femininity and real women's bodies - which obviously come in many forms. Femininity is restrictive, and until it becomes released from it's binary definition oppositional to masculinity, it will continue to be regulated and policed by members of society at large. But perhaps this advertisement is one small step in using a public platform to push conceptions of what a feminine ornamented body looks like and feels like and moves like.

But this still begs the question, how much work can one ad do? Is it on a path to open more conversation around the fashion advertising market and productions of femininity? Or does it simply serve to commodify a larger range of femininity and women's bodies in order to continuing selling product to an increasingly diverse audience?