Wait, Weight?

Political cartoons have a way of over exaggerating current events. They usually act as a comic relief to issues that affect the general public. In Mike Keefe’s political cartoon outlining the weight issues and eating disorders accompanied through the fashion industry, he takes the stereotype a bit too far.

Source

The fashion industry is known for creating a standard of beauty for men and women to live up to. However, what is often disregarded are the rules and regulations of being a professional modeling industry. Today, modeling agencies around the world must maintain and adhere to codes of weight and body sizes to ensure that no model works unless they are perfectly healthy.

Keefe’s cartoon illustrates a visual rhetoric of the deathly effects of being a fashion model. The basis of the cartoon is set backstage at a fashion show, where three bathrooms are. The men and women bathrooms depict average people, whereas the models’ bathroom represents an emaciated woman. The tags that were presented under the cartoon on the website were of “bulimia, and anorexia” to further reinforce this depiction.

Although the cartoon pokes fun at the eating habits, or lack of, for fashion models, it in essence stamps a bad representation on what is supposed to be a beautiful career. The cartoon is meant to portray all models as thin people with eating disorders, a subject that is very sensitive to talk about in the first place.

Furthermore, Keefe distinguishes models as a different race, different from men and women. The segregated bathroom thus acts as a place where models can binge and throw up food to make them skinny.

Keefe also uses juxtaposition in this cartoon by positioning the overweight janitor in front of the models’ bathroom comparing the average American to the model. This cartoon seems to effectively show the stigma of the model, but perhaps would offend many who are in the industry.