Is it okay to be cross about Claudia Schiffer's bum?

Or am I supposed to feel empowered?

Claudia Schiffer is the latest woman to decide that pants are so 2024 and it’s time they went in the bin. Correction, Chloe (the fashion label, not the person) has decided all pants must go. This has been going on for a while, and they are not the only label to give pants the shove, but I’m choosing to get rowdy about Chloe because of Claudia. More on that later, meanwhile here some images from Chloe’s recent campaigns.

Now. If you paid attention to the Met Gala blue-with-flowers carpet on Tuesday (Aus time), you probably saw quite a number of lasses who have signed up to the current trend of no-pants. Underwear as outerwear is not a new thing, I remember feeling quite scandalous while getting about in lacy tops and slips bought from Target’s underwear section for $12 because I couldn’t afford the Chloe originals back in ’99. (That was around the time someone called Stella McCartney came to the French label’s helm, and everyone was like, “where do I know that name from?”) But this no-pants movement is a whole other level. As is the Met Gala, right? It’s fancy dress not a H&M catalogue, calm down, lady.

But apparently Pharrel Williams (who dressed Carpenter for Louis Vuitton) said to Sabrina Carpenter that, because she is so short, she was not allowed (my word) to wear pants. When I heard that I had the same reaction to when I learned in year four (!) that Hitler didn’t send blonde/blue eyed people to concentration camps: phew, I’m in the clear. What a relief to know that, as a 5’11” woman, if I ever found myself on a blue, red or any-coloured carpet, the powers that be would allow me to keep my pants on. (I did not just compare Pharrel to Hitler! I compared my reaction. Jokes on me BTW.) I am on record here (if anyone’s paying attention) saying that I’m all for the transparent skirt thing. Love it, not because I love bums, but because of texture and colour and cool non-pervy things like that. It looks great on the runway and in fashion shoots. I’m yet to see anyone rocking a transparent skirt out in the real world, though. (Probably because I don’t go to music festivals and I live in Wollongong. Please don’t @ me.) Likewise, legs are great, I’ve got two and I’m very attached. (Ha) I was all well and good and at peace with the sans-pants phenomenon. It has a very Phizzy-on-a-Saturday-morning vibe. Plus, I have always thought that Chloe makes some of the most beautiful fabric confections that it's possible to construct. As a middle aged person, I was able to see the pics above on the Gram, ignore the pants-less-ness and appreciate the prettiness. But there’s been one thing lingering that’s made me feel uneasy: all this business reminds me a lot of the gymnastics instructor who regularly visited my primary school and asked us all to remove our skirts so that he could better see our bodies while we were doing forward rolls. I think my problem is that I’m not able to separate so-called empowerment from what Laura Mulvey called ‘the male gaze’. I can’t help thinking that all of this is just serving the same sleazy, patriarchal appetite that has reinforced the notion that women’s bodies are objects for consumption for decades, if not centuries.

Which brings us to Claudia in Chloe’s new campaign.

I’m not sure how I feel about this and I’m wondering if I’m the only 40+ woman who needs to talk it out. Claudia is fifty-five, a fact that should be irrelevant, except in this ad she looks 22. If not 18. (Is she? I can’t figure out if this is a revival of an old campaign?) Maybe she really does look like that. Half her luck, I guess? But even me thinking that Claudia is lucky to look like that is the result of lies sold to me about what women should look like from the day I was born. And the message I’m getting—this is an advertisement, it’s reason for existence is to send a message—is that women’s bodies are beautiful and should be celebrated as long as they are youthful, a certain shape and size. Maybe I’m supposed to think, as someone who was around for Claudia’s supermodel days (and she was my faaaavourite) that I could feel like that if I fork out the money for that thing that might be a swimsuit, undies, or the new version of a pantsuit. This isn’t a win for women over 40. This isn’t empowering. And I’m genuinely frightened that young women are being tricked into thinking that it is. Because I’m seeing all of this, and all I can think is that the sleazy perve of a gymnastics instructor has won.

Am I wrong?

I try to hold onto my faith, which tells me that I am made in the image of God (for real) and am therefore perfect the way I am because I am created so. My value does not lie in my earthly body. But sometimes that feels like the hardest thing to ask of a woman these days because we have all been literally brainwashed.

Am I wrong?

Pretty much all violence against women can be traced to one single lie: that women aren’t people. We’re not humans. We’re things, objects, put here for men. In order to commit an act of violence one has to be able to dehumanise the other, stop thinking about them as a human. But as an object.

Is it all linked: the no-pants, the Chloe campaign, advertising, promotion of certain body-types, the staggering misogyny that leads to an ever-increasing female body count?

I don’t know and honestly, I’m really tired of thinking about it.