What A Major Ladymag Looks Like Without Professional Models

If these images from the Germany’s most popular women’s magazine, Brigitte, which recently stopped using professional models, are any indication, things look pretty damn good.

Last year, Brigitte announced that starting in 2010 it would feature a mix of famous and unknown women.

Editor Andreas Lebert told The Guardian that he was tired of having to use Photoshop to “fatten the girls up.” Instead the magazine is “looking for women who have their own identity, whether it be the 18-year-old A-level student, the company chairwoman, the musician, or the footballer.”

Reader Angelica Calcagnile got her hands on the latest issue of the magazine and graciously agreed to send us some scans. She writes,

This page mentions the “no models” initiative, and the approach the magazine took with this issue. A call was issued for female police officers, and more than 2,800 officers from throughout Germany replied. Also on this page are brief blurbs about the other non-models photographed for the other features in the magazine.

Here, the magazine introduces the officers who were chosen to model in this issue and shows photos of them on the job.

As many commenters pointed out on our original post, the editor’s claim that models don’t “have their own identity” is insulting, much like the suggestion that women who are a size 0 aren’t “real women.” The fashion editorials in Brigitte note each woman’s name and age, a practice we’d love to see in magazines that do use professional models.

Vogue readers know that horses make great models, but Brigitte has an even better reason for featuring animals in this story — these women are all mounted officers.

At the end of the article we get even more biographical information about the women featured on these pages. The rationale for not listing information about professional models is that the focus is supposed to be on the clothing, not the woman. Yet curiously, knowing that these are humans, not inanimate clothes hangers, does not prevent us from checking out their duds.

One criticism: Of course, we can’t judge from one issue, but these pages don’t show a lot of ethnic or size diversity.

A few winkles are on display, but it seems the mag hasn’t sworn off airbrushing.

These aren’t prop kids, they’re this woman’s actual children!

This beauty story features a student and a bartender. Our tipster explains that this article is about,

how to make do with whatever products you find when you wake up in the handsome stranger from last night’s bedroom and need to head straight to work. It’s pretty amusing.

Google thinks this story is titled, “Only the pleasure… landed in his bath.”

A photograph from an extended feature on loneliness (although not necessarily singledom). The woman photographed is a 33-year-old fashion designer.

Brigitte, Germany’s Most Popular Women’s Mag, Bans Professional Models [The Guardian]