The Ethics of Using a 10-Year Old for Fashion Photography

Jenna Sauers, writing astutely about French fashion sensation Thylane Loubry Blondeau:

Even posing questions like these about the sexualization of children is discomfiting. To ask is this child too sexy is to put a child’s body under a kind of scrutiny that is (and should be) strange and unnatural, and that’s not a thing that should be taken lightly. But it’s one thing for a parent to take a photo of his or her little girl while she’s running around a beach in a pair of swimsuit bottoms. It’s another for a fashion magazine to take a photo of a 10-year-old sitting topless on a bed and publish it for a global audience.

The Power of a Photograph

The above photograph was published on a front page story in The New York Times on August 2nd, 2011. It is shocking, and it stirs the soul in ways that words most likely could not. Salon breaks down why the newspaper decided to run it, and whether it will have any impact on the debate (or lack thereof) over the situation in Somalia:

The graphic quality of Hicks’ photo certainly matches the stark portrait painted by Gettleman’s reporting. And executive editor Bill Keller told Salon that the choice to feature the image so prominently was uncontroversial in the Times newsroom: “We’d already decided to front Jeffrey’s powerful story, and it would have felt like journalistic malfeasance not to include Tyler’s powerful photography,” he said. “I know many readers found the picture disturbing. That’s good. The deaths of thousands of Somali children ought to disturb us, at least.”

Is Being a Playboy Bunny Empowering?

Linda Holmes, with a devastating critique on NBC’s really far-fetched pitch for its new show, The Playboy Club:

[Executive producer] Hodge argued, in the end, that the interaction between a Bunny and a customer at a table was all about “buoying women up and giving them the power,” because the men weren’t allowed to touch the Bunnies. Now, remember — these women are waitresses. They’re not prostitutes. They’re strangers, unknown to the men, who are serving drinks. And he is arguing, in effect, that they have been buoyed up and given the power because they are granted the right, while tottering around in painful costumes and high heels for the gratification of their customers, not to be physically touched. They have all the power because the club tells patrons that they’re not supposed to touch them. They don’t really have the power of doing anything; just the power of withholding. Essentially, the argument is that for these women, the highest power they can possibly hold, and what truly elevates them, is the power to deny men the opportunity to touch them.

The Facebook Birthday Experiment

David Plotz gave himself multiple birthdays on Facebook to see if people would mindlessly send him great birthday wishes each time. The results are depressingly unsurprising:

[T]he Facebook fake birthday experiment did end up confirming my worst fears about the network. All too many birthday wishes are autonomic, sent without thought or personal feeling. It’s one thing to remember your friend’s birthday because you took him out a decade ago for his drunken 21st birthday debauch. It’s much lamer to “remember” your friend’s birthday because Facebook told you to.

Electronic Calendars Are The Tool of the Devil

Still in New Zealand and heading home soon. Lots to share, but I can’t resist posting this blog post by Joshua Topolsky, in which he ruthlessly destroys a moronic NYTimes article about the prevalence of paper calendars:

[H]ow can anyone repeat this luddite drivel with a straight face? It’s not just that much of what is printed in this article is untrue — a lot of it comes off as downright silly, and the author doesn’t seem to take a moment to ask any of these people to qualify their statements. It’s like she wrote the piece to back up arguments made by those profiled. The result is a piece that seems more intent on propagating one skewed view than it does with telling a story that has legitimate meaning.

New Zealand: Day 1

Arrived in Wellington, NZ last night after 24 hours of brutalizing travel. Spent the day yesterday trying to stay awake, but I was able to wander around Wellington and try to capture the local flavor through my lens. The following were taken using my Canon 50D and my Fuji X100:

Big thanks to /Filmcast listener Sam for taking me around, and being incredibly patient with me as I got increasingly loopy.

I’m Going to New Zealand

On Sunday, July 24th, I’ll be getting on a plane and heading to Wellington, New Zealand. Paramount Pictures will be funding part of my journey, during which I’ll get to visit WETA, meet Peter Jackson, and chat about his new film The Adventures of Tintin. However, I’m also paying out of my own pocket to stay in New Zealand for a few extra days. My hope is to see some of the spectacular sights of the South Island and visit some locations from Lord of the Rings while I’m at it. If I have time/am conscious, I’ll try to blog about my experiences, although it’s more likely that I’ll save all my content until I return home.

Obviously, updates will be sparse on here for about two weeks, but I plan to take tons of amazing photos that I hope you’ll be pleased by.

If you have any suggestions for places I should definitely visit, please leave them in the comments (along with specific details about how I might get there). I’m planning on being on the South Island for about 2 days.

If any of you New Zealanders would like to meet me, I’ll probably be hanging out at the lobby bar in the Museum Art Hotel in Wellington on Tuesday night (7/26) at around 8 PM. This could easily change though, so do follow me on Twitter to make sure you stay up to date with what’s going.

Wish me safe travels. I’ll see you on the other side.

The Importance of Endings

Paul Ford has a nice meditation on the power of social networks to convey narrative, and why we still need curators (and journalists) to organize all the information out there for us, rather than computer algorithms:

I keep sensing some serious hurt feelings from the older-media side — “Why would you love that thing instead of me?” They act like my wife would if I brought home a RealDoll. But it’s not like that. I don’t think people love Twitter or Facebook in the same way they might love Parks and Recreation or Twilight. Rather, we like the beer and tolerate the bottle. And even if we have those other browser tabs open, we’re still hungry for endings.