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Fashion magazines are not far behind the recording world. Now that nudity, sexual fondling and lesbianism are frequently shown in illustrating fashions, photographers have turned to themes of sexual violence. Says German-born Chris von Wangenheim, 34, a New York City fashion photographer: "The violence is in the culture, so why shouldn't it be in our pictures?"
The big breakthrough in fashion misogyny displays was Photographer Helmut Newton's spread in the May 1975 Vogue ("The Story of Ohhh ..."), which included shots of a woman wincing in pain as a man bit her left ear, and another of a man ramming a hand into a woman's breast. Newton, who is regarded as one of the fashion world's most elegant photographers—and also one of its kings of kink—has since turned out a series of pictures showing women as killers and victims. Perhaps the most shocking showed a woman's head being forced into a toilet bowl.
Newton's forays into S and M have been matched by some of Photographer Guy Bourdin's recent editorial layouts in French Vogue. His pictures have shown a woman being assaulted in a bathtub, a young girl shooting a man, and a man in a dinner jacket caressing the hand of a nude woman who has just been strangled with a telephone cord. Somewhat more subtle is Chris von Wangenheim's cover photo for Italian Vogue: an elegant shot of a woman wearing a stylized S and M harness.
A year ago American Vogue published a mysterious twelve-page spread of photographs by Richard Avedon showing a man alternately caressing and menacing a female model. At the dramatic peak of the sequence, the man smashes the woman across the face. What's more, she seems to enjoy it: on the next page she is shown nudging him affectionately. Rochelle Udell, art director of Vogue, justifies this kind of brutal eroticism on the ground that "years ago, mannequins were clothes hangers. Now women wearing those clothes are touched by life. So we use some situational photography—the mysterious and the dangerous, things that are totally reflective of the culture."
Even fashion pictures of strong women seem designed to play on the fears of misogynist men. A Von Wangenheim photo in the current Vogue has a vagina dentata theme: a vicious dog faces the camera, with bared teeth directly in front of a woman's crotch. Doesn't the picture seem to say that women are sexual killers? "Well," rationalizes Von Wangenheim, "it works better that way."
Battered Woman. Store windows also reflect the kinky trend. In Cambridge, the Camel's Hump boutique displayed a dead woman, blood running from her mouth, tumbling out of a garbage can. Men's shoes ("We'd Kill For These") were placed on her head and neck. Last fall, a Bon wit Teller window in Boston featured a woman dragging a female body wrapped in a rug.
However degrading, these images apparently sell merchandise. Cheeks sales for the final quarter were up 500% over the previous year, and the Camel's Hump display increased sales by 25%. The John Anthony jumpsuit worn by the battered woman in Avedon's Vogue pictures sold "beautifully," according to a company spokeswoman. "There was a lot of good reaction," she said, "so business-wise it was very successful."