[Hula Valley, Israel; December 6. Image via Getty]

Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli poses inside a vintage car during a photo session on December 6, 2009 for a new campaign for the Israeli fashion house Fox at the northern Israeli Hula Natural Reserve, remnant of a once larger lake and wetland and a bird reserve. AFP PHOTO / ANCHO GOSH (Photo credit should read ANCHO GOSH/AFP/Getty Images)

A fascinating-sounding exhibition, "Child Models — from Claude Renoir to Pierre Arditi," has opened at Paris' Orangerie. It's devoted, not to Baby Gap cherubs, but rather the subjects of 100 paintings and sculptures, very often of an artist's own children. Here, we can hear the surviving children's impressions of the experience (via documentary), see photographs of the families juxtaposed against famous images, learn what became of people whom we know only as iconic youngsters, and in general learn about the perspective of this most unique group of muses.

The range of memories and impressions, as related by the Wall Street Journal, is fascinating:

Claire Denis, one of Maurice Denis's grandchildren, explains that "as a model you feel completely loved and chosen for who you are," whereas Olivier Brayer, son of artist Yves, says, "It wasn't fun for a child to stay still for several hours and try to find a pose which was relatively comfortable." His complaint is echoed by others...Other models have happier memories. Pierre-Auguste Renoir often painted his family, and the exhibition features portraits of his youngest son, Claude. Another son, Jean, the film director, also posed for his father. In a book about Renoir he wrote, "When I was very little, three, four or five, he never chose the pose himself but took advantage of my doing something which seemed to keep me quiet," such as when Jean was eating soup or playing with toy soldiers. When his father wanted him to stay still longer, he recited stories, such as Hans Christian Andersen's "The Steadfast Tin Soldier."

Others, like Vuillard, used friends' children, for a wholly different experience. And Picasso's children - depending upon his age and relationship with their mothers - all had different impressions of the artist who immortalized them. (There's also no word of what, say, his young daughter Maya made of his rather abstract interpretations.)

Child Models From Claude Renoir to Pierre Arditi [Art of The Day]
Remembering A Model Childhood [Wall Street Journal]

The reality series originally aired last year summer in the UK (if you want to know who the winner was, click here). As Alessandra Stanley writes for The New York Times, though it supposedly is "designed to raise the profile and confidence of disabled women," it actually "makes a spectacle of their hunger for acceptance."

Though many of the contestants have visible physical disabilities — one is in a wheelchair, one is missing an arm — one young lady, Kellie, is deaf. Apparently that's a boon for a model. Stanley writes:

If anything, the absence of communication may even be an asset in the modeling world. Mr. Phang says to a photographer, "It's kind of nice working with deaf girls because there's not those sort of irritating questions."

But the Times makes it sound like Britian's Missing Top Model doesn't actually break down any barriers in modeling — it's really the same old, same old: Thin is in.

"Rebecca's disability didn't cause me any problems," a photographer says after shooting Rebecca, 27, a stunning brunette who was born with a deformed hip and wears a prosthetic leg. "It was just the fact she's not really in shape. Most models are pretty toned, slimmer, more agile."

Disabled, And Seeking Acceptance in Fashion [NY Times]

Earlier: You Wanna Be On Top
TV Show Searches For Disabled Model
Related: Britian's Missing Top Model [ONTD]

Details of Kim's death are still emerging. This morning, Paris Match wrote that sources inside the police investigation say the model left a suicide note. Fellow gossip title Le Parisien stated that "multiple sources" are saying that Kim's father, a Samsung executive, does not believe his daughter killed herself. Kim's mother flew to Paris on Friday, and her father arrived in the city today. An autopsy is to be performed tomorrow — standard police procedure for violent deaths — and the pathologist's findings may be known as soon as the end of this week.

Friends of the young model are also speaking to the press. Several people told the Telegraph that Kim, in the words of reporter Kim Willshire, "had become fed up with modeling and its demands, considering her life was too frenetic and incompatible with forming the sort of long-term relationship she hankered for." Another anonymous friend said Kim would sometimes dodge her agency's calls in order to carve out some time for herself. One of Kim's former agents said, "She was an excellent model, but she used to say she had hard times off the job."

But the richest source of information on Daul Kim remains her blog. The temptation of recent posts that referenced feeling "mad depressed and overworked," a poem that reads in part, "i just know / the more i gain / the more lonely it is," and, most of all, the fact that her last post was titled "say hi to forever," has apparently been too much for major news sources to resist. These mostly quote selectively, ignoring the fact that Kim said she felt depressed and overworked in Seoul and was happy to be leaving for Paris, that Kim titled virtually all of her posts with "say hi to..." and that the post in question was just a YouTube clip of one of her favorite house DJ's tracks, and that in her poem, the lines about feeling lonely were followed directly by lines about falling in love. "but when people grow together," wrote Kim, "its something that is not easy but is nice / and that is something."

It's probably a good thing Kim died in Paris, not in New York, or else we'd have to contend with Geraldo Rivera's opinions of her verse, and television cameras filming the removal of her body, as we were treated to last year, when 20-year-old Kazakh model Ruslana Korshunova jumped to her death in the financial district.

It's understandable that reporters would look to a blog for insight into its author's mind when the author is no longer available for questioning, but it should be done in such a way that the excerpts accurately reflect the whole. Kim often wrote about being busy, yes, and sometimes seemed lonely — but she also wrote about loving Milan Kundera, Klaus Kinski, and Boy George, joked about how she would make a good wife one day, and posted pictures of her paintings. (She had a solo show in Seoul in 2007.) In one of her earliest posts to I Like To Fork Myself, she wrote mock-seriously about ending her life, and then immediately followed up: "KIDDING. I'm fine. Just tired." The overwhelming impression given in her blog wasn't that of a depressive lost soul crying out for help in post after tragically ignored post: it was of a smart young woman with an interesting life, managing bewildering array of responsibilities with a wickedly dark sense of humor. And some issues with insomnia. Not everything in her life should now be re-evaluated in light of her death. To try and turn it all into a series of "signs" diminishes the person that she was.

While it's natural that her next of kin would want to put a stop to quoting out of context, Kim's words have already been featured in articles published from here to Australia. The "I know I'm like a ghost" quote, the "mad depressed and overworked" quote, they're out there. They will be repeated from article to article, from broadsheet to broadsheet to tabloid to tabloid, until all context is erased. Ending access to Kim's blog, while it may tamp down interest in the short term, in essence only serves to deny interested parties a chance to glimpse the wider context of Kim's life. Or at least to see her life as she wished it to be understood. While of course, in the case of a 20-year-old's death, there are no parties more "interested" than her actual family, blogging was evidently important to Kim — she found time to write sometimes several times daily, even as she traveled to three or four countries in a week — and in my opinion, it would be a shame if the record of her life Kim chose to publish were to go permanently dark after her death.

I Like To Fork Myself [Official Site]
Daul Kim: Model 'Had Become Fed Up With Work' [Telegraph]
Daul Kim, La Jolie Fleur S'est Fanée [Paris Match]
Daul Kim S'est-Elle Vraiment Suicidée? [20Minutes.fr]
Enquête Relancée Après Le Suicide Du Mannequin Daul Kim [Le Parisien]
I Know I'm Like A Ghost: A Cry For Help Before Dying [Sydney Morning Herald]

Earlier: 5 Fashion Model Blogs That Are Actually Interesting

[Karachi, November 4. Image via Getty]

KARACHI, PAKISTAN - NOVEMBER 04: Pakistani models prepare backstage during the 1st day of Fashion Pakistan Week on November 4, 2009 in Karachi, Pakistan. Fashion Pakistan Week commenced today amidst security threats. The organisers already postponed the event twice due to security fears and the threat of ongoing militant violence. The four day long event will feature over 30 Pakistani designers and will showcase the best of fashion in Pakistan. (Photo by Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)

[New Delhi, October 28. Image via Getty]

Indian actress Urmila Matondkar (C) presents a creation by Indian designer Jaya Rathore during the Wills India Fashion Week (WIFW) Spring Summer 2010 in New Delhi on October 28, 2009. The Wills India Fashion Week Spring Summer 2010 runs from October 24 to 28. AFP PHOTO/ Manpreet ROMANA (Photo credit should read MANPREET ROMANA/AFP/Getty Images)

[New Delhi, October 27. Image via Getty]

Models are made up backstage during the Wills India Fashion Week (WIFW) Spring Summer 2010 in New Delhi on October 27, 2009.The Wills India Fashion Week Spring Summer 2010 runs from October 24 to 28. AFP PHOTO/ MANAN VATSYAYANA (Photo credit should read MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images)

Coddington, a former model, spoke to New York Magazine last night, saying,

It is a big problem. I remember when I was young, they told me that if I didn't lose weight I'd be out of the show, so I spent a week living off of coffee. But I'm a very levelheaded person. These problems nowadays are with kids much, much younger than that, and that's most of the problem - when they're very young and vulnerable.

While making the point that models "have to be a little thinner than you and I because you always photograph a little fatter," she conceded that "you don't have to go to the extremes they go to. And because they're kids, they take it too far, and they can't regulate their lives, and next thing you know they're anorexic, and it is tragic." But...was she talking about the same Vogue we are? The same Anna? Quoth she,

I don't know what the answer is, except to keep on it, which we're all trying to do. Anna's trying to do it. Personally we're not allowed, at Vogue, to work with girls who are very thin, but you never know, because you could book them and think they're a certain size, and they turn up on the shoot and suddenly they've spun into this anorexic situation. And you're on the spot and you have to get the job done and you have one day to do it, and what do you do? But you try to be responsible, as Anna is.

Well, look, the woman works at Vogue, and in a seriously senior capacity. She's been there, partially-presiding, through the lean times - in every sense. Don't expect miracles here, even if her words feel a tad less lip-servicey than most. In The September Issue, Coddington came across as relatively down-to-earth, an eater of seemingly normal meals, and stupendously talented - not to mention refreshingly eccentric in her Elizabethan presentation. But the fun-house mirrors of that world go both ways, and at the end of the day, Fashion, as Robin Givhan pointed out, is a different world, and one that's not changing. Coddington does put her finger on one of the crucial points: the increasing youth of the models. We'd have thought, as creative director of Vogue, she might have a little influence on these things but, as she says in what may in fact be a back-handed way, "Usually Anna has all the ideas. I just interpret them and change them."

Grace Coddington Is Worried About How Young And Thin Models Are [New York]

Rubaum-Keller begins by recapping the recent Ralph Lauren PhotoShop scandal and noting Karl Lagerfeld's "No one wants to see curvy women," comment before posing an image of an extremely thin model, whom she deems "neither healthy nor attractive," and asserting, based on nothing at all, that the only people who would find said image to be attractive would have to be gay men.

I don't doubt that Rubaum-Keller's intentions were good, and that she was attempting to call out the fashion industry for continuing to push super-thin images on the runways and in magazines, but that one line really bothers me, as claiming that "only gay men" are drawn to such an aesthetic is both ridiculous and insulting. Her argument is baseless and overlooks the fact there are millions of men and women, both gay and straight, who work in the fashion industry and promote and celebrate these images, as well as millions of people outside of the industry who admire and attempt to emulate said images in an attempt to fit into a somewhat impossible mold. To assume that only gay men would find super skinny models to be attractive (or that all gay men would find super-skinny models to be attractive at all) is absurd and unfair and based on nothing but sweeping generalizations.

The notion that super-thin automatically equals beautiful is an issue that the fashion industry may propagate, but it's also an issue that has long since been absorbed by the general public, and to undo this type of thinking is going to take more than changes on the runway and in the magazines, though continuing to push for those things may prove to be quite helpful in the end. To blame gay men for all that is wrong with the fashion industry and the public's struggle with weight and beauty, however, certainly isn't helping anyone.

Would You Buy An Overweight Barbie [Huffington Post]

[Cali, Colombia; October 15. Image via Getty]

A model works on her laptop backstage before hitting the catwalk to present a collection by Dominican designer Oscar de la Renta during the Cali Exposhow fashion show on October 15, 2009, in Cali, Valle del Cauca department, Colombia. TOPSHOTS AFP PHOTO/Eitan Abramovich (Photo credit should read EITAN ABRAMOVICH/AFP/Getty Images)

David DiSalvo of True/Slant offers this explanation:

Presumably this is because underweight women compare themselves equally to thin models and favorably to overweight models, but overweight women compare themselves unfavorably to thin models and find their similarity to overweight models depressing.

But this sounds a little simplistic to me. Must it be that "overweight" woman look at plus size models and think, "Gross! I look like that? How depressing!" Or might it be that, as Kate wrote,

[P]lus models are still models. They're still tall, well-proportioned, clear-skinned, shiny-haired, able-bodied and usually white, on top of only being "fat" relative to size 0s. The standard is basically the same as it always was, just notched up to a somewhat more common range of dress sizes - which is to say, the standard is still impossible for most of us to meet.

When the whole beauty-industrial complex is basically designed to exscript them, and the few models who are supposed to represent them just look like that complex's ideal "notched up" a little bit, it's no surprise that plus-size women might feel just as bad looking at Crystal Renn as they do at Kate Moss. This isn't to say that including more models like Renn and Lizzi Miller on magazine pages isn't a good thing — it is. But it doesn't magically make these magazines friendly to all shapes and sizes, or make fat women forget that lots of other cultural forces are still conspiring to devalue them.

The study's finding about underweight women is interesting too. The idea that underweight women actually feel better after looking at models contradicts an earlier study that showed all women felt worse about themselves after viewing skinny ladies in ads. It's a little hard for me to believe that underweight women compare themselves "equally" to models any more than overweight women do — like Kate said, they're still models. They're still closer to the beauty ideal than most women, regardless of weight, and they still get help from the powerful forces of hair, makeup, and airbrushing. It would be interesting to learn what percentage of the underweight women in the study were eating-disordered, and how that affected their response to the images. I'd also like to know what was going on in the underweight subjects' minds during the study — whether they actually thought, "yes! This model looks just like me," or whether they got a more modest boost from seeing a woman of similar size presented as an ideal, even if that woman was different in other ways. Perhaps this boost is easier to get if you are of privileged (ie. thin) size — although the study did find that overweight and underweight women had similar self-esteem at the outset of the experiment.

Ever since Lizzie Miller was in Glamour, the inclusion of plus size models has been trumpeted as a way to make magazines more friendly to all women. But it's clear that this might not be enough. Internalized fat prejudice goes deep, and just showing women a few bigger models isn't going to erase it. The fact is, images whose purpose is to sell women shit — whether those images look more or less like them — are probably never going to be on the forefront of social change. Including plus-size women in ads and fashion spreads is an important step not just for social good, but for aesthetic value — magazines would be more interesting if they contained a greater diversity of models. But they wouldn't magically make overweight women feel perfect about themselves, or erase all the other influences making them feel bad.

Women's Self-esteem Affected By Magazines [UPI.com]
Warning: If You're Overweight, Don't Read Women's Magazines [True/Slant]

Earlier: Memo To Women's Magazine Editors: White Women Hate Themselves After Reading Your Magazines

[New Delhi, October 5. Image via Getty]

Models wait for their turn during auditions for the spring-summer Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week (WIFW) 2010 in New Delhi on October 5, 2009. The WIFW 2010 spring-summer fashion week will be held from October 24-26 in Delhi. AFP PHOTO/ Manpreet ROMANA (Photo credit should read MANPREET ROMANA/AFP/Getty Images)

The agency claims that it "aims to raise the standard of models to a new height: beauty achieved from the perfect balance and unity of spirit, mind, and physical body," and that promoting Christian values through the models on its roster is a way to promote a spiritual beauty of sorts, as well as a way to help models find their own inner beauty in an industry that is notoriously ugly to women. I suppose it's not entirely strange to consider that some models would be more comfortable working for an agency that fell in with their religious views, but I'm not quite sure how any agency is going to promote a religious viewpoint when their models are actually working, as the only statements models are typically allowed to make on the runway are those presented by the clothes they're given to wear.

Christian-based talent agencies, film distributors, and record labels are nothing new, but most people involved in such endeavors are putting out Christian material that is clearly aimed at a specific audience. Christian rock bands carry religious themes in their songs and often play to largely Christian crowds, and the same can be said of Christian films and Christian novels. Surely there are already many Christian models (and models of all religions) working today, but how the Christian model will promote religion while doing her job is yet to be seen, and it will be interesting to see how the agency secures high profile jobs and campaigns for their clients without compromising the values they seek to endorse.

Christian Modelling Agency Preaches Spiritual Fulfillment To The Fashion World [Guardian]

The story, shot by Dusan Reljin, opens — ahem — with a crotch shot. Now, a crotch shoot in and of itself is not necessarily low brow, but those jean shorts? In a hotel room? With the words "naughty by nature"? It just doesn't look very high end.

The very next image is not much better; Amber's famous asset is the focal point, instead of her absolutely glorious face. She's been signed by Ford, and she is capable of having a fresh, clean look. this ain't it.

While there's nothing wrong with Amber Rose showing off her famous derriere, there is a problem with it being in Elle. Because, in the context of a fashion magazine, it doesn't seem right, it doesn't seem "fashion." All we ever see of Amber Rose is her posterior. We've seen Kanye grab it, Madonna touch it, and Complex put it in a cage. As LaToya wrote about black models pictured nude while white models are photographed clothed, "It's about the roles of black women in fashion being limited to animals, sex objects, and advertising, but banned from higher fashion and catwalks." Elle had the chance to photograph Amber Rose like we've never seen her before — in couture, maybe, or just a head-and-shoulders beauty shoot. Instead, they chose to sexualize an already sexualized model. What's new, fresh, inventive, interesting about that?

This shot of Amber lying submissive on a bed — with the camera looming over her from the position of power — is almost as disheartening as the ass shot. What's additionally upsetting is that there are other celebrity models inside, and they are not photographed this way.

Posh, of course, gets the Posh treatment. Amber Rose would probably look amazing in a $3,000 cashmere dress, but they just didn't give her the chance.

Or, if they wanted to go sexy with Amber, why not sensual and cinematic, like (former model) Diane Kruger's shoot?

Better yet, they could have turned Amber's overtly feminine physique on its head and put her in menswear, as they did for (former model) Jamie King.

It's not that they didn't pull some good stuff for Amber's shoot: Her sunglasses are Fendi; the butt-baring bodysuit is $3,775 from Giorgio Armani; the dress on the bed is Blumarine, ringing up at $4,255. But the concept, vision and execution of the shoot is a shame, and a waste. But maybe you saw on the first page: It was styled by Kanye West.