While I was out to eat with some of my favorite people from SXSW, the conversation turned to the documentary “The September Issue” and the surprising differences between the two most powerful women of Vogue: Anna Wintour and Grace Coddington.
Anna Wintour and who?
Precisely.
For all her genius, Grace Coddington is hardly a household name. She is the sole reason I continue to buy Vogue – had I not seen the documentary, I would have ceased to crack its cover after it ran a feature on a “plus-size super model” who wears a size 4. I don’t care about the designer dresses the trust fund twenty-something crowd wears to the token benefit galas they use to justify the $1600 expense, nor am I interested in Vogue’s “compelling” celebrity interviews. What I am interested in is the latest gorgeous photo shoot dreamed up by Coddington, the magazine’s Creative Director. Anna Wintour may be the face of Vogue, but Grace is the visionary who elevates fashion to an other-worldly, awe-inspiring art.
Coddington is a bit of a rogue within the Vogue offices. At 69, she’s refused to have any work done (a decision that stems, in part, from the series of operations she had after a car accident). When she’s not pleased with a decision Wintour has made, she’ll march through the corridors to her office in her standard attire: plain black dress, black shoes, flaming-red hair flying in all directions. Wintour, on the other hand, always looks impeccable: hair perfectly coiffed, she embodies the lifestyle Vogue preaches to the masses.
Our conversation about the documentary made me question the role of appearance in our careers and the opportunities we have for recognition and success. I wondered if Grace’s “appearances be damned” attitude was one of the reasons she hasn’t been popularized by the press, or focused on during the media-frenzy that surrounds fashion week. Little is said about her, though she regularly sits next to Wintour during the shows.
Wintour (left) and Coddington (right)
In spite of her now-stark contrast to Wintour’s manically crafted image, it’s interesting to note that Coddington’s looks launched her career in the fashion industry – she won the Vogue Young Model competition in England, and later landed a job as a stylist with British Vogue.
As it turns out, our propensity to favor more stereotypically attractive people is something ingrained in our brain. In a study conducted with 100 babies, none of whom were more than 3 days old, Dr. Alan Slater found that when the infants were shown pictures of average women and female models, they spent 60-65% of their time looking at the more attractive face.
Furthermore, favoritism toward attractive people begins at birth, reports Dr. Gordon Patzer of Roosevelt University. Patzer explains “in a nursery, before new-born babies are released from a hospital, those babies higher in physical attractiveness – at this level defined as more cute – are touched more, held more and spoken to more.”
In their study “Beauty, Productivity and Discrimination,” researchers Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle found that “Unattractive men earned 15% less than those deemed attractive, while ‘plain’ women earned 11% less than their more attractive counterparts. What’s more, the possibility of a male attorney attaining early partnership directly correlates with how handsome he is.”
If Coddington is a reminder that image doesn’t always trump talent, Wintour is the champion of the idea that “it is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.” In the documentary, she goes so far as to suggest that a cameraman who steps in to play a part in a photo shoot have his belly Photoshopped out. Upon hearing this, Grace calls the art director and demands that he leave the camera man untouched.
She explains, “Not everything can be perfect in the world.”
I’m interested to hear your thoughts – how much of an impact do you think appearance has on one’s career opportunities, and do you have any experiences or stories to relate?
