Shane Watson
BODY LANGUAGE
First there was Cindy, then there was Kate, now there’s Gisele. Gisele Bundchen, Brazilian model of the moment. Not just Vogue and American Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and W, all of whom featured her on their January covers, but every kind of publication has taken to Gisele like a Carlsberg in the desert. This girl is gorgeous in the true, mouth- watering sense of the word. She makes Kate Moss look like a runt. She makes Sophie Marceau look a bit tired. She’s got pistons for legs and gold leaf for skin. Style sections have heralded the “rise of a sex goddess”. It’s like Donny mania all over again.
But this is so much more than mere glamour worship. This, we are told, is about the return of the real woman, with real breasts and curves and warm blood coursing through her veins. After the best part of a decade during which the epitome of fashionable looks was a flat- chested, ashen-skinned, paper-thin adolescent, Gisele is being fted not just as the face of the new millennium, but as a symbol of a new, wholesome, womanly mood in fashion.
It’s only a matter of time before fashion fundis see fit to comment on this positive development. “For too long our women have been forced to deny their natural forms and aspire to a teenage ideal,” might be a good way to kick off. “We have Gisele and our own British standard bearers, Catherine Zeta Jones and Elizabeth Hurley to thank for leading us back to the female form as God intended it.” Free at last, oh, thank you fashion industry.
Hello! Wakey wakey. Some of us have seen Gisele on the catwalk and, guess what? She may have a 36-inch chest but those hips aren’t an inch over 34, that waist is a clear 23, and of the 5ft 10in Amazonian frame, two thirds is beach volleyball-honed, nutcracker leg. Gisele is as fit as a butcher’s dog and a lot leaner. The 36 inches of her anatomy that has generated all this fanfare about the vogue for bigger statistics are totally self-supporting and four inches higher than you would normally expect to find them.
And, concentrate – here comes the science bit. Gisele is 19 years old. In our rush to line the streets, scattering roses in the path of the liberator who has come to rid us of little Kate Moss with her bow legs and bee-sting breasts, gawky Erin with her hawk nose and big eyebrows, Karen Elson with her red hair, hump back and Quasimodo walk, we seem to have missed something.
The thing is, you can aspire to looking like Kate Moss (shorter than the average model and pushing 30, well, 26).
You can see a picture of Karen Elson and imagine yourself wearing the clothes she’s modelling -she has that “go on, if I can do it anyone can” appeal. But for those of us who are borderline fashion victims and have no trouble blurring the lines between real life and a Mario Testino shoot, looking at Gisele in the sea-green Versace number, and then imagining yourself in the sea-green Versace number, is really testing the powers of fantasy to the limit.
Poring over her pictures in the glossies has a similar effect to going shopping with the-girl-who-looks-great-in-everything,
spending a poolside holiday with same, or learning that your boyfriend is about to make a film with Catherine Zeta Jones. It doesn’t put you where you want to be. And it doesn’t help at all with the suspension of reality that is essential to enjoying fashion. There’s always a choice – that looks like an air hostess’s uniform/that looks like something Catherine Deneuve would have worn.
What us girls really need when we get into that changing room and draw the curtain behind us is an image we can just about aspire to. Not Racquel Welch in the fur bikini in One Million Years BC, not Brigitte Bardot in And God Created Woman, not Gisele in micro Dolce & Gabanna but something vaguely attainable. Just so we can get going.
I’ve often been Kate, particularly in the Burberry ads (well why else would you try on a trench?); I’ve been Carolyn Murphy and, when the chips are down, I’ve even been Jade Jagger. This, you understand, is just for those few moments between getting a glancing impression in the mirror of someone quite like your mother, realising it doesn’t quite fit, and deciding to buy it. It helps to slightly narrow your eyes and go to that other place where the beautiful people live.
But Gisele is a babe too far. Let her into the changing rooms at Prada and Gucci and they’re not going to shift a single pussy bow blouse or snakeskin- print dress .
Bring back the bone bags. At least they look like the same species.