More than a model - genesis of the superwoman

The popular image of the model has closely followed the development of the media. The public perception of beauty has constantly changed with the technology of the day, through the evolution of cinema, television and digital printing, to the birth of the Internet. The first pin-up girls of the 20th Century were the photogenic goddesses of the silver screen who appeared larger than life on billboards to their countless admirers, the favored advertising medium of the period. Frozen images of the starlets of the twenties, thirties and forties were in great demand, although there could never be quite enough of them to meet feverish demand. Mary Pickford (1892-1979), Mae West (1893-1980), Ginger Rogers (1911-95), Vivien Leigh (1913-67) and Veronica Lake (1919-73) are but a few of the sultry sirens of the cinema who dominated the imaginations and advertising hoardings of their day. The insatiable market demand for their likeness drove the development of the photographic and glossy printing industries, and avid collectors bought their posters and picture books by the million.

Color printing in its earliest form was both crude and expensive, and it was not until pictures could be replicated en masse in high resolution and glorious ‘technicolor’ that the popular appetite for beauty and sexual imagery could begin to be satisfied. The dawn of the modern era of print technology was not to be until the 1950s, when the ‘web-offset press’ was invented, a device that rolled paper through cylinders to produce tens of thousands of copies per hour. Technological revolutions often trigger social ones, and virtual communities soon arose from the publication of special interest magazines that owed their origins to the affordable mass printing of images. Hugh Hefner was one of first to realize the potential of such niche markets as he launched his iconic Playboy magazine in December 1953. One by one the starlets of the fifties disrobed for his virtual gentlemen’s club, and Playboy magazine soon became hugely popular. By the late sixties the first full color magazines had begun to be printed on coated paper using the new ‘four-color’ technology which greatly enhanced the quality of the images and therefore their demand. Digital technology further streamlined the printing process, reducing both costs and manpower, and as many as five hundred magazines a minute could be automatically complied, counted, bundled, labelled and wrapped. The mass medium of the glossy magazine had truly arrived, and sales continued to boom throughout the seventies as more and more content producers turned to the power of this universal medium. The high margins offered by men’s magazines soon made Paul Raymond, Bob Guccione, Larry Flynt and Hugh Hefner fabulously wealthy. Their success was to trigger a new gold rush during the eighties and nineties as other publishers fought for a share of this lucrative market.

However by the 1980s a new problem had arisen, in that there were simply not enough well known actresses or celebrities available to meet the growing demand for female content. A score of new men’s titles had emerged to compete for the most popular female figures to make their product more eye-catching on the magazine rack. The limited supply and fervent demand enabled the leading ladies of the day to command vast sums for the publication of their images. As magazines were selling by the million, generating revenues from both advertising and direct sales, the cash was available to meet their asking price, although this still did not address the issue of supply. The publishers’ antidote was simple. Magazines had to create their own ‘in house’ celebrities and then contract them. This new generation of cover girls did not have to be as well known as their screen counterparts - the magazines would see to their marketing. However, in order to compete with the established personalities of the film and TV industries, the new cover girls had to be more attractive and to go further than ever before to titillate their target audience. A new genre of increasingly explicit magazine titles appeared, as the traditional boundaries of acceptable nudity were stretched in search of market share, and far beyond the public comfort zone of any respectable actress or television personality.

So where then, other than TV and film, did the magazine moguls turn to uncover their new generation of cover models? Some publishers realized that beauty pageant titles allowed them to market previously unknown models as established stars, as there could be no greater sales pitch on the cover of a men’s magazine than to announce the first nude appearance of a Miss America, Miss World or Miss Universe between the sheets. There were other avenues to explore for fresh talent and, as most magazines became increasingly explicit in nature, so their publishers ventured into the growing genre of VHS video which had spawned a thriving eighties subculture of colorful and cheap content. The arrival of video had reinvigorated the adult, fitness and glamour industries, creating a new wave of female stars who appeared in cult productions. Film producers used the magazines to promote the popularity of their video stars, and magazines encouraged video producers to supply them with fresh celebrities to sell their covers. This arrangement proved a powerful symbiosis and turned Linda Lusardi (glamour, 1958- ), Christy Canyon (adult, 1966- ) & Cindy Crawford (fitness, 1966- ) into superstars. Another prolific source of cover girls proved to be the tabloid newspapers which sold to countless millions, and the Sun, the Star and the Sport launched the careers of hundreds of glamour models, more popularly referred to as ‘Page 3’ girls.

Thus the eighties witnessed the birth of a new breed of glamour model. Aside from being controlled by the publishers and able to bare far more than their mainstream contemporaries, they also tended to be considerably younger and less seasoned than those who had worked their way to stardom within the film and TV industries. Although the stars of the fifties and sixties such as Marilyn Monroe (1926-62), Jayne Mansfield (1933-67), and Raquel Welsh (1940- ) had been socially and contractually prohibited from overt nudity by the strictures of a post-puritanical society and sensitive film studios, the glamour models of the eighties courted controversy and did not fear censure. After all, publicity made models famous and helped to sell magazine covers, even if it was scandal.

The nineties spawned a new generation of colorful ‘lads’ mags’, including Maxim, Front and Loaded to name but a few. Although less explicit than many of their predecessors, the essential commodity of these new titles was nonetheless the same, even if the target audience had shifted to mainstream youth. Row upon row of glossy mens’ titles, catering to all ethnicities and tastes, now lit up the magazine racks with an explosion of color and partial nudity. However, the commercial pendulum had since swung from a shortage of models to a surfeit, and there were now too many attractive cover girls competing for the publisher’s purse and the public eye. Intense competition drove magazine titles to slash their cover prices in the hope that an increased volume of sales would offset falling margins. The problem that magazine publishers now faced was how to stand out from the crowd and catch the eye of the consumer when literally hundreds of magazine titles offered attractive models in various states of undress. Magazines sell through their covers, and publishers needed covers that carried beautiful women whose very name was synonymous with style, sexuality and substance. Magazines needed supermodels.

Until the advent of the supermodel, the magazines had been the ruling brand names of the industry, and the title ‘Penthouse Pet’ or ‘Playboy Centerfold’ defined a model’s standing and desirability regardless of whether anyone had actually heard of her. The nineties though saw the explosive growth of Maxim, FHM, Nuts, Club and a host of other competitive titles which quickly challenged that assertion. Supermodels were more than just cover girls - they appeared as elegant and comfortable on the catwalk as they did on the silver screen or in front of a camera. Each supermodel was an actress, a beauty queen, a model, a dancer and a celebrity in her own right. For all of society’s diversity and history, it has always sought icons, whether to serve as role models to aspire to or as conduits to a higher spiritual (or commercial) plane of existence. The supermodels of the early nineties inspired Hollywood to create its own cult of superwomen played by the sculpted forms of Halle Berry, Angelina Jolie & Jennifer Lopez. Although scripted straight from the surreal realms of male fantasy, men’s magazines soon adopted their superhuman symmetry as the blueprint for their own covers, further stressing the psyches of an aspiring generation of models.

In a world dominated by sexual fantasy and physical idealism, a generation of supermodels, singers, athletes and Hollywood divas recaptured the front covers from the glamour models. Publishers quickly realized that the public craved the celebrity of attainment and that no girl-next-door, no matter how attractive or naked she was, could sell as many copies. The supermodel rather than the publication became the brand name of substance, and supermodels such as Pamela Anderson (1967- ), Jennifer Lopez (1969- ), and Naomi Campbell (1970- ) appeared in all forms of the mass media from Hollywood blockbusters, to TV, advertising, and the covers of Playboy & Vogue. The supermodels joined the ranks of the super rich and famously demanded tens of thousands of dollars just to make an appearance. As advertising spends boomed, so did the magazines that featured them, making supermodels the most expensive ‘eye candy’ in history.

The new Millennium further strengthened this social trend, as an explosion of new media portals such as the Internet, mobile phone, PDA, Xbox and DVD afforded acolytes of the female form ever greater diversity and access to content. The leading magazines, film studios and adult companies soon realized that the only way to rise above the white noise of the mass media and to remain profitable was to secure the services of iconic figures whose names rose above the vast volumes of images available within the public domain. After all, most digital searches are made using key words rather than through visual memory. Although many within the fashion industry had suggested that the era of the supermodel ended with the nineties, the careers of Jenna Jameson (adult, 1974- ), Jordan (glamour, 1978- ) and Gisele Bundchen (fashion, 1980- ) have demonstrated otherwise. Today’s supermodels are expected to be multi-talented, appearing on dance shows, competing in charity sports events, and exhibiting a charisma that transcends the magazine cover. Beauty is no longer the only prerequisite for a modern supermodel, as television has developed an insatiable appetite for photogenic princesses. The mass audiences that such eugenic contests as America’s Next Top Model, the Olympics, and ‘Dancing with the Stars’ attract has given us a new wave of supermodels such as Denise Lewis, Amanda Beard and Nicole Scherzinger. Society’s need for the very best in breed to be on public display has given us the all singing, all dancing, celebrity supermodel. No doubt the world leaders of the 1930s would have approved...