I laughed and groaned when I saw the
Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) collection in the May 2015 issue of Burda.
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| PCH without traffic? License plate is not CA. |
I know that I sound like a broken record, but I am disgusted by people perpetuating the myth of a California filled with blondes. That is very disrespectful to the people who actually do live here.
A Stanford group made an
informative visualization of the 2010 CA Census statistics.
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| Females on right, males on left. |
California is relatively young overall--but mainly due to the hispanic population. The population of young females is predominately not blonde. So what explains the prevalence of blondes in imagery about California?
Oh, then there's the inaccurate portrayal of beach weather.
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| Satellite imagery shows that the real PCH is typically fogged in for most of the summer. |
My PCH posts showing real California beach communities and their residents.
Also Californians are so over floral sweatpants.
ReplyDeleteYes, they should be wearing Lululemon black yoga pants.
ReplyDeleteGiven that Burda is German magazin, I think you can hardly expect it to be demographically correct depicting CA or any other place. As a foreigner I can tell you that the image of life in US from outside is often very different from the actual people's lives. That is because the visuals are mostly formed by movies, and you need to average for the last forty years or so. And in many of these movies CA is often inhabited by young and beautiful (and blond and rich) gals and guys having fun in the beach, and there is always sunny. Trust me, stereotypical "Russian" imagery is rather different from real Russia too! :)
ReplyDeleteHaha! I think the magazine might be surprised to hear your viewpoint! I wouldn't have even noticed the model's hair colour as being somehow relevant to the story anyway. I imagine most western countries have a range of people living there, and models are not be picked necessarily on whether they fit in or not. I assume there are some blondes living in California? in which case a blonde, or any other hair colour IS representative of the area then. Not trying to be disrespectful or to argue with you, but just saying that a blonde might find your statement that a blonde woman is somehow out of place in California to be a little exclusive.
ReplyDeleteI do agree strongly with your sentiment that more varied types of women could be used in modelling though, most definitely . And your comment about black luluemon yoga pants gave me a laugh! :)