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Women 's Exploitation Of Women

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The exploitation of women in production, and the exclusion of women from consumption is not the only ways in which the female body is harmed as a result of the globalization of the fashion industry. Perhaps the most obvious occurrence of female body harm in the fashion industry is a result of fashion modeling. An up-close look into the modeling industry as a microcosm of the fashion industry reveals the severe objectification and commodification of fashion models for the sake of consumption.
The modeling industry has created a culture of exclusion across genders and races. Author Ashley Mears (2010) critically analyses the fashion industry, and how it influences production of culture and beauty ideals around the world. The modeling world is extremely female dominated, and the women who participate are continually commodified as they are used as a means to “promote and disseminate ideas of how women should look,” (p. 23). Because consumption is valued so in today’s society, the model is employed based on her perceived ability to sell a product. The clothes she is hired to wear and the beauty ideal that she is helping sell are more important than her humanity, and she becomes dehumanized. “Clothes take on such utmost importance that models are and should be mere clothes hangers, with perfectly discrete bodies that will display the clothes but not detract from them,” (Mears, 2010, p. 35). Models are blatantly objectified as they are forced be invisible for the sake of

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