Bentrowski, T. (1998, March). Images: Speaking of Pictures. (Commenting on Andrew MacPherson’s photograph of Sharon Stone, "Here’s Looking at You"). Life, pp. 27-28.

This short piece in Life is about our culture’s dangerous obsession. Evidence clearly indicates that this obsession with glitzy and sexy images negtively affects young people. The exportation and effect of that export on remote parts of the world have also been documented. This article is a good example of "exegeting" the media—that is, interpreting the images that surround us.

• At first glance, the picture (of Sharon Stone on her back in skimpy attire, with legs kicked up, and a "let’s have fun" expression) is a "combination of beauty and celebrity we call glamour."
• "It stands in the tradition of the Hollywood publicity portraits of the 1930s and 1940s, when a post-Depression America was hungry for gauzy dreams to soften the painfully sharp edges of real life."
• Such photos and posters became the pinups for GI’s fighting WWII—and teenage boys then and after.
• Bentrowski describes these photos and posters as "lovely and escapist" and "at the same time…manipulative and cruel."

BENTROWSKI’S COMMENTS ON GLAMOUR

• Glamour is a manufactured product, a valuable commodity.
• Glamour exists not in the person but in her (or his) photographed image.
• It is not the same as beauty or elegance or grace—qualities residing in the essence of a person—whether observed or not.
• Glamour assumes one’s worth is measured by the envied attention of others and (did not exist in the same way) before the invention of photography.
• Because our culture observes a rigid and obsessive set of style conventions, glamour is more than manipulative—it is dictatorial. It commands us to appreciate the artifice (and reject authentic variations).

Bentrowski continues his analysis:

Sharon Stone is not really looking at you, she is only pretending. Her sly smile and her comfort with being half-dressed in your presence seem to say she knows and approves of you. There’s a feeling of intimacy. The two of you are, somehow, alone. But as her eyes gaze into yours, remember the purpose of this picture is to make the same promises, simultaneously, to an infinite number of eyes…(offering) an unfufillable promise.

BENTROWSKI’S CONCLUSIONS

• (If we take the time to reflect) we become confused in the presence of glamour. We sense its power over us, even as we recollect its illusion; its triviality embarrasses us, our surrender to it disturbs us.
• The pinup photo is cruel to its subject as well. The very essence of the model’s person—her privacy, her femininity, her spirit—is being offered up for the pleasure of strangers who possess the power to think about her what they choose.
• Glamour reflects, both in subject and viewer, the insatiable desire to be desired. (If you do not set your desires on the best things (family, friends, nature) and the genuinely "beautiful," you may become addicted to the easy desire of glamour.)
• The cruelest message of this kind of picture is that the women viewing it are inferior, the men looking at it inadequate: " ‘Look at me, you can’t be like me. Look at me, you can’t have me.’ "

The ancient Greeks regarded beauty as a gift of the gods. Their word for beautiful—kalos for men, kali for women—is translated today as good.

Beauty has always endeavored to touch the soul; glamour’s aim is elsewhere.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. Is it important to interpret and analyze the images that are forced on us at every turn today?
2. Do you agree with this writer’s concern about glamour and what it is doing to people in today’s society?
3. Do you think this writer’s distinction between beauty and glamour is right and helpful?
4. Why are discussions about this subject important, and what might happen if enough people practiced a new approach to attraction, desire, and what is really good?

IMPLICATIONS

1. The plague of eating disorders and low self-image is coincident with the power of images and the lives of children, young people and adults.
2. The fault may not lie in the power of images, but in the kind of images and the intent of their use.
3. In a secular society, the public can determine the direction of pop art and advertising by their economic responses to the media and products.
4. Young people have the power to discriminate if they are helped to see how the media and advertising are manipulating them.