"Dead-Woman Chic": Images of Sexualized Violence
Reanne O'Sullivan

The modern world of advertising uses images as a tool in which to sell merchandise. Yet this seemingly innocent method is often filled with complex images relating sex and gender to commodities. In his article "Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture" Sut Jhally explains that "...consumer society orients the culture (and its attitudes, values, and rituals) more and more toward the world of commodities. The marketplace (and its major ideological tool, advertising) is the major structuring institution of contemporary consumer society" (1995[1990]: 250). Advertisements then play a key role in how the consumer society orients the attitudes and values of this culture. This being the case, then the content, themes and trends in advertising should be ways in which to understand widely held cultural values. If this is the case, then a disturbing trend of magazine advertisements proves a chilling indicator about the connection between gender and sexuality. By looking at the "Makley Image Archive" I observed a trend in ads, which I shall call "Dead Woman Chic". These images depict women in sexualized poses that strongly suggest that these women are dead for the purposes of fashion.

While each ad is unique, there are disturbing similarities in their composition. They all contain a woman laying in an awkward pose with yet the muscles of the body relaxed, suggesting that these women are dead. Often the women are upside down with legs spread open and their arms spread out. The first image I would like to discuss come from a fashion spread in "Details Magazine" from 1999. This image is of a woman lying one the ground, with legs spread and a pool of blood coming from her head, wearing a red dress and one shoe on her right foot. The composition draws the viewer's eye down from the top left hand (green) corner of her bare foot to the trailing pool of dark red blood. The next two images are of the same basic composition with the dead woman laying head first down stair steps. One from Versace has the woman in a tight low cut purple dress. The v-cut of the dress acts as an arrow pointing the viewers eye both towards the breast and back up the rest of composition. The other similar image comes from the magazine Esquire (1999) and is a fashion spread for Cesare Piaciotti, a fashion designer for boots. In this image, unlike the others, at the very top of the stairs we see a pair of shoes (presumably a man's shoes). The final image is compositionally different from the rest but very similar in content. Unlike the other three earlier discussed, the woman is leaning against a wall with only her legs spread open and her hair covering her face. Her dress is opened down the chest exposing her yet still covering her breast and the shoe of her left foot is removed yet lying right next to the foot. This ad appeared in Soma Magazine (Aug. 2002) but the designers are unknown. The composition of the piece is that of a crime scene with the female victim being the background the main object, the circled hat with an arrow pointing to it.

         Now these images cannot be taken out of context of the magazine in which they were published. "Details Magazine" proclaims itself as a men's magazine that "introduces the styles, sets the trends and breaks the stories that keep you ahead of the crowd."[i] Esquire is also a self-labeled men's magazine that is about, as, Editor in Chief, David Granger says, "the interests, the curiosity, the passions, of men."[ii] While Soma is not targeted as being a "men's magazine", all three of these magazines position themselves as containing or creating current fashion trends. The audience of these ads can be perceived as almost solely male (with exception to Soma) and therefore add to the pornographic nature of these images. The women are either fancily dressed or barely clothed, objectifying the body of the women being photographed. The relaxed bodies draping over stairs or laying on the floor suggest that these women are dead. Though dead, they still retain their beauty and sexual appeal, and are made "exotic" furthermore by the necrophilic gaze of the (male) viewer.

         Despite the incredibly sexual nature of these images, they nonetheless are advertisements and therefore their primary concern is to sell. Yet the objects that they are supposed to sell are seemingly hidden and at the same time completely in the forefront of the composition of the ad. Consider the fashion spread from Soma, the violent nature of the image is enhanced by the pool of blood and the matching deep red dress which the add is trying to sell. In the case of the Versace and the Esquire ad, the position of the women's bodies only draws the viewer's eyes in more closely to the items that they were. With the crime scene ad from Soma, it is even more apparent that the woman is merely part of the background of the circled hat, which the arrow suggests is the ad actual focus. Though the viewer is drawn to the bodies of the women in the ads, they are simply background material for the items trying to be sold. Sut Jhally states that in the "image-system as a whole, happiness lies at the end of a purchase." (1995: 251) The "happiness" then must be in the purchasing the items, which they are featured with. Still, if advertising is the major structuring tool for contemporary consumer society, then the linking of sex and violence suggest a wider cultural orientation toward accepting such images as these. It is all right to show dead women in ads so long as they are erotic.

[i] http://www.condenet.com/mags/details/

[ii] [ii]http://www.esquire.com/about/