John Lewis taking piss now

[TwistedWonder]

As if their stance on refusing to safeguard their female staff wasn’t bad enough - they seriously have to be taking the piss now with this.

No actual female models available?

Yes, Twitter now seems to be saying that it is Lena Hardt, which I think is correct looking at the photographs.

JL photo, and Lena Hardt Instagram shot

But it’s getting lots of attention - don’t shop there is the best lesson for them.

Seems like a match. Still might be someone else.

The playing around with angles (body and camera) gives the impression that this model has a small head and emphasises the brow line. I don’t believe they are good photos and for many reasons it doesn’t sell those particular clothes in the JL mailer.

I reckon JL really are taking the piss by using an androgynous female model and angling the photo and the pose so it looks like a fella, so when they get the inevitable backlash they can go 'ner ner ner ner ner it IS a female actually '

They are one step ahead of us! Using a female to look like a male trying to look like a woman!

What the image conveys to me is that this is emphatically not a dress for me or any of the women of my acquaintance.

The set dressing is the opposite of cheerful and none of us are stick thin and immensely tall.

It is a provocative ad, intended to rile up a certain segment of the population. Those who buy dresses and are gender critical. Job done!

Quite possibly.

It will undoubtedly ensure that the above will not be buying their dresses from JL.

Whether it will induce any other section of society to shop there as a counterbalance is another question entirely.

Absolutely looks like that to me. And nobody likes a smartarse.

I commented earlier on the poor pin head model but I didn't say it was a man because i wasn't convinced.

This shows the lie that "you can always tell"

I'm as GC as they come but YET AGAIN we have a thread where people are castigating a woman who doesn't match what they think a woman looks like and YET AGAIN they are wrong

We've been here before with models, sports people etc

No fucking wonder people think MN is a hotbed of bigotry tbh. You should all take a good hard look at yourselves.

You can always tell in real life. Photoshopped images are trickier, for obvious reasons.

To say the image looks like an androgynous man in a dress taking a piss up a tree is not bigotry, just a viewpoint. Unless you are if the view that looking like an androgynous man is a bad thing?

By the time most models have been through all the process of make up, lighting then any digital manipulation that has gone on, you’d be struggling to recognise them if they stopped you in the street and asked the time- even if they were stood under one of their own ads.

I've just worked out part of my discomfort with this. It is a grown man dressed up as, and pretending to be, a teen girl.
Makes me feel the same as when Eddie Izzard or Grayson Perry claim to be girls. It's so creepy and inappropriate for a 60 year old man to be doing that.
I don't think men can identify as women as they can't know what it is like to be a woman, and they sure as hell don't know what it's like to be a girl!
Also this ad should be in the mens section - we should petition John Lewis to have it moved over - see what the men think of it? 😏

The whole thing is just a very weird stylistic choice.

The model seems to have been photographed from an angle that they look like an absolute giant to the extent they are taller than the tree - which plays a big part of the assumption they were male given the average woman in the UK is about 5'4-5'5.

And thus the confusion because fashion photography should usually give some indication of what the dress would look like on PROSPECTIVE BUYERS. Choosing a model who looks nearly a foot taller than the average woman and who is FACING AWAY so you can't see the dress and styling it in a way most women wouldn't style a party dress (with primary school style socks and loafers whereas the actual JL and FC websites style it traditionally with black shoes and bare legs) all seems a bit bizarre and counterintuitive if your aim is to, you know, actually SELL the dress to its intended customer base.

Yet if the model is iris strubegger she's actually only 1 inch taller (shes apparently 5'11) than the model on the FC website, who looks tall but not out of the ordinary so - which suggests it was a deliberate choice, who knows why!

It's a female model. A 30 year old mother. 5,10, 23-in waist, size 9 shoe. It's just shot/directed badly. There's another photo of her awkwardly hunched as if with backache and a stiff left foot. Every picture on her Instagram she's an ethereal catwalk model - standard insane model proportions, elfin features. Needless to say the JL shots don't make the cut on her Instagram feed.

How a fairly mainstream retailer with a decent budget can have the ingredients of a sought after model, sparkly dress, hair and make up professionals, pro photographer, artistic director, set etc and come up with such a flat result is crazy. The gold dress hangs badly, what can be seen of it and the baggy white tucked in blouse long black skirt combo looks like she's borrowed something too old fashioned and big for her. No Christmas magic whatsoever.

Regardless, it's a bloody ugly picture.

I guess that explains the "hitman" look and the fingers pointing like a gun, she has a lot of people to be angry at, right in the room with her.

It looks very uncanny valley to me. Also insipid, greige, odd (I mean angles of photo, of parcels, weird ledge/shelf on wall, odd shaped cabinet) and recently I've been looking at dresses for a yet another wedding I'm going to early next year and not one has had a picture with the model standing like this. You normally get a front, back, and side pic, then close ups on details, but this pose is strange and strangely useless at showing off the dress. Which I assumed was the point?

With the thousand of dresses JL has, could they not have found one that actually fitted him?

It’s worth noting that the fashion industry has been pulling this shit for years, though marginally less extreme. High end magazines and Sunday supplements are stuffed with photos of ugly, unwearable clothes on models who look in the last stages of emaciation, are of very unusual body type and who look sullen, angry and/or deeply unhappy. Yet the clothes, jewellery, perfume and lifestyle they are used to promote are seen as highly desirable.
I stopped buying or reading such publications decades ago (despite loving clothes and fashion) and am still puzzled as to why they do it, and why we accept it.
(Before I retired from teaching I once or twice used such examples to help girls who were discontented with their body image. I asked them to bring in such a magazine and we looked at the photographs objectively. Once they could do this, it helped them understand that their ideals had been distorted by the industry, and they were less unhappy.)

Another failed transvestigation. Well done everyone.

Wondering where the apologies are from the posters who dropped the insults, abuse and insinuation directed at this model - the one who is in fact an adult human female, with a name, and career, and feelings.

Also wondering when / if mnhq will step in to do anything about trans hunting.

Even if the picture had featured a trans woman, or a man, there’s no justification for nasty insinuations about peeing, guns, uncanny valley, or sinister motives of companies featuring trans people or those who might appear trans.

I'd like to know where they have all disappeared to as well?

Not quite so mouthy when they realise they are calling a 30 year old woman (and fellow mum) ugly, critiquing her body and saying she is definitely a man are they?

Shame on those of you who have been so vile. I hope your daughters never have to put up with the kind of public bullying you have subjected Lena to. You can say you don't like a pic, or a dress or a brand - but publicly accusing a women who is just doing the job she was paid to do of being trans and then tearing her physical attributes apart is just nasty

Criticisms were not aimed at the model, but at JLP's provocative marketing strategy. I make no apologies forvany of my posts on this thread.

And whilst you criticise other posters for their remarks, of course, the originators of the advert are rubbing their hands, because this is exactly the reaction they hoped for. Hoping for a cheap vault onto the high moral ground. Best not ape them, in my view.