Photo: nymag.com
No fashion image is complete without a good waist shrinking and a nice boob enhancement, but apparently tattoos are right next in line to cellulite to get axed in the butcher shop known as Photoshop.
The good people at Armani believe that while Americans may worship hotties like Victoria Beckham and Megan Fox in all their inked glory off the billboards, their tatted bodies – that helped make them the outlandish sex symbols they are today, mind you – have no place in the Emporio Armani lingerie ads.
For last few seasons scantly clad images of the waifish pixie cropped Beckham have been splashed across the insides of glossy magazines and billboards along 10th Avenue for men to drool over and to make women jealous. Although there are pictures of Posh Spice’s tats all over the web, Aramni erased any trace of them.
Granted, Beckham’s tattoos are relatively small and located in generally hidden places (text along the inside of her wrist and back).The more glaring example of this assault on the inked body is in the airbrushing of busty vixen Megan Fox. Fox is known for her large and somewhat outlandish tattoos (Marilyn Monroe’s face – check. Large passages of text – check). But there is no hint of these in the billboards and magazines this season. Instead, we are given a unblemished, unmarked, shining, smooth body – so clearly not Fox’s actually figure.
Funny that Armani has chosen two nearly opposite women (at least in body type. Which lets face it, is all that’s important) to highlight their brand and removed the one thing they had in common.
Are the old, balding, white men behind the glossy exterior of these advertisements just not willing to put up a tattooed babe? Or is the problem the consumer who loves a good sex symbol but hates a good tattoo.
Either way, the issue seems to pertain strictly to women. Armani had no hesitation in putting David Beckham’s heavily tattooed arms in their advertisements. Maybe it was just too hard to airbrush them out and still maintain those rippling muscles.
Sexistentialiste 