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Frequent readers of the New York Times are familiar with the publication T, a magazine found in the paper 15 times a year, featuring the most expensive must-haves in the fashion and style worlds. The Holiday 2007 issue of T, however, has caused a great deal of controversy, as even a recent editorial in the New York Times itself questioned the validity and integrity of a recent photo spread.
The pictures featured a young model, Ali Michael, who at 17 is still a minor and looks even younger, posing semi-nude with a nearly $4000 coat. The images came as a shock to many, especially those who consider the Times to be more respectable than most newspapers today. Defended by the editor of the New York Times magazine, the photographer, the model, and even her mother as “art,” the photos seem to indicate that fashion and advertising have crossed a new line. Except now they’re not just targeting our kids; they’re exploiting them.
Although the newspaper claims that the T is meant to be somewhat provocative and edgy, something just isn’t right here. And while controversy would likely still have raged had the model been over 18, what real justification is there for using a minor? Yet the responsibility does not lie solely with the paper (although if maintaining its image as an often skeptical and always stimulating newspaper was its goal, it may have gone too far). As the mother of a teenage daughter myself, I have to wonder what that mother was thinking. Kids are easily blinded by the attention, praise, or money that comes with the spotlight, but it’s when parents are as well that we end up with a Britney Spears or a Lindsay Lohan and the tragedy that follows.
The newspaper considers T a success, as it brings in millions of dollars in advertising that can be used to finance the real journalism found in the rest of the paper, and it likely won’t be hurt too badly by the controversy surrounding the holiday edition. But what some call art, any mother can clearly see as something else entirely, and we can only hope that it doesn’t become a new trend that turns our kids into fashion victims in the truest sense of the words.