"Fashion does more damage than good"

For this group task that was set on Monday, my team brain-stormed points that would be great in debating this statement  for the consumer. The main factor that we all picked up on was self image. We decided to split it into sub-catagories;

• Weight


• Photoshopping


• Race


• Sexual Objectification


• Self absorbed

We felt that we could collect research for each of these and confidently present our points. These are issues in the Fashion industry that we all felt that they had a negative impact on the consumer in some shape or form, whether this be physically or mentally.

2-3 people volunteered to research each of the categories that they felt most passionate about, and in each of these teams one person volunteered to debate their findings in-front of the seminar group.

I was researching the sexual objectification of women in the media and myself and Georgie listed examples of this:

• Photographer Terry Richardson's work with Miley Cyrus and American Apparel


• Paco Rabanne 1 Million television advert


• Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines music video


• Marc Jacobs "Oh Lola" perfume campaign


• Kim Kardashian's 'Paper' spread

I created a SurveyMonkey to collect truthful primary research. I was interested to see whether the majority of women felt that this was an issue, or whether women felt liberated to see other women celebrating their bodies. I showed photo's of Miley Cyrus, Kim Kardashian, American Apparel campaign and the Blurred Line's video and asked a series of questions such as "How does this video represent the women in it?". The results were more extreme than I imagined, with comments such as "a sex object", "degraded" and "vulnerable."  96% of people who answered my survey had seen a "photo in the media that shows women as a sexual object". This gave great evidence when debating.

Our team met on Wednesday to discuss what research we had found. Tanith agreed to create the visuals for the debate and I collected everyone's part of the speech and collated it.

The seminar was really interesting to hear everyone's debate as to why they thought they were right, and people's views on our points also. I found this activity exciting to plan and research in such a short space of time and the result was worthwhile.