Beautiful dead women.
For my master's thesis I concentrated on how 19th century male-authored European paintings specifically "Le Jeune Martyre" by Paul Delaroche (1855) and "Ophelia" by John Everett Millais (1852) suggested that only in death could a female be forever remembered as a young, beautiful, silent, pious and subordinate (using Barbara Welter's term) "True Woman."
How "turn-of-the-century" female-authored American texts "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin (1899) and "The House of Mirth" by Edith Wharton (1905) refuted this image. By "killing" their heroines (or having their heroines kill themselves), they created a necessary martyr; reinvented a revolutionary symbol whose death illuminated the social and aesthetic hypocrisies assigned to women by men; a symbol that exposed one implicit cultural regulation: women must follow the rules or die.
During and after my time at SUNY Fredonia, I witnessed more beautiful dead women in contemporary aesthetics. Two examples:
In 2007 America's Next Top Model had models pose as crime scene victims who had been poisoned, drowned, stabbed or strangled.
Lady Gaga's 2009 music video Paparazzi included 14 frames of beautiful dead models who were bleeding from mouth lying in tub of pearls; shot in the forehead; suffocated by saran wrap tied around face; blue, lying in the garden on a bed of plants.
The "latest wave" is a 24-page fashion spread in the September issue of Italian Vogue magazine.
Famed photographer Steven Meisel shot the controversial Gulf disaster-inspired images of model Kristen McMenamy caught in nets, spitting up oil, and flopping like a dying seal on rocks. For the shoot McMenamy is wearing oil-soaked black-feathered outfits, withering away on a beach.
Many believe the images are powerful and striking. They argue that the photos are beautifully constructed, overwhelmingly dark, and bring about a sense of urgency that makes people want to educate themselves, donate money, and help in cleanup efforts.
Their evidence is the fashion: eco-designers Kathleen Nowak Tucci of My Sister's Art, made the seaweed-style necklace on the cover from recycled inner tubes sourced from Gulf Coast towns (Pensacola, Florida and Atmore, Alabama).
Tucci argued that Vogue did not glamorize the oil spill in any way.
"I thought it was disturbing and thought-provoking and utterly fascinating in its interpretation of the struggle for survival," she was quoted in many publications. "It is controversial and interpretative, which is indicative of great artistic expression."
But many others question the intentions of Vogue and whether or not they wanted to make a poignant statement or merely hoped to get attention by being provocative.
I get it. Meisel placed a beautiful model in the same oily, dark situation so many beautiful animals are in right now. The images are emotional, and convey the realities of what this oil spill has done: threatened the lives and the future of our beautiful planet.
But the photos glamorize the ecological and social disaster for the sake of fashion, which reduces the event to nothing more than attention-grabbing fodder.
True, the necklace on the model is "eco-friendly." However, Meisel would not answer just how many eco-friendly products were included. So the irony is that this shoot used clothing worth thousands of dollars that was very probably flown halfway around the world.
In many reviews critics have call Vogue's spread "edgy." And they're absolutely right.
But what happened in the Gulf isn't supposed to be edgy - or beautiful, or chic, or aesthetically satisfying in any way. Cropping it to look so is inappropriate, ironic, and in extremely poor taste.
And still plaguing my mind is: why is the image of a beautiful dead woman still the emotional stamina for artists?
Sarah T. Schwab is a Sunday OBSERVER contributor. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com or view her Web site at www.SarahTSchwab.com