Opinion Superwomen? No, simply women

Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington and Tatiana Patitz refused to be clones of male fantasy and became a brand with a recall so strong that even the fickle world of fashion craved permanence through them.

Evangelista, the supermodel made famous in the 1990s, says she has become “brutally disfigured” and “unrecognizable” after a cosmetic body-sculpting procedure that had turned her into a recluse. (Julie Glassberg/The New York Times)

Rinku Ghosh

September 10, 2023 08:57 AM IST First published on: Sep 10, 2023 at 07:48 AM IST

When singer-songwriter George Michael wrote Freedom! ‘90, not as a woke statement but an anguished cry to end the war with himself to declare his sexuality, he didn’t want to do a music video. But MTV insisted. So he chose women to deconstruct the idea of himself as well as the pop culture that had legitimised the video over his music, physical beauty over the soul of the lyrics. He approached the five supermodels who had just appeared on the Vogue cover and had by then contoured the idea of aspiration and elitism by walking the ramp for every top fashion house in the world. He made them lip-sync to his vocals in biker streetwear. It was then that Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington and Tatiana Patitz found a liberating grammar for themselves.

Evangelista wore a regular workman’s sweater, Campbell donned leather and biker boots, Turlington wrapped a linen sheet, while Crawford lay immersed in a bathtub, her head above water. It was then that they became self-accepting. Subsequently, they gave up crafted vanity and owned the ramp with their unique “working girl” persona, built a sisterhood where they had each other’s back, fought for pay parity, dismantled ageism and seared us with a strong feminine spirit.

Unlike assembly line models today, they refused to be clones of male fantasy and became a brand with a recall so strong that even the fickle world of fashion craved permanence through them.

Today, when they have moulted and warped around the edges a bit, these mid-’50s women are still breaking boundaries. Which is why Vogue is reuniting them after 33 years this month, and Apple TV is airing a documentary which they have all co-produced and which is set to premiere globally on September 20. They haven’t let go of the agency they had wrested in 1990 with Campbell insisting that they tell their story their way. At a time when #MeToo wasn’t even possible, Crawford had the panache to pull off a nude pictorial at various points in her Playboy shoots but kept away from parties and needless socialising. Campbell fought racism, demanding a place beyond the ramp in ad campaigns, fighting an industry that had set exclusionary standards of beauty and becoming the first Black model on the French Vogue cover in 1988.

Unknown to many, Evangelista relentlessly demanded higher rates for models. All four have owned their frailties with aplomb and candour, be it Campbell with her drug rehab, Crawford with her admission to taking botox and vitamin injections and Evangelista by revealing how a botched up fat-freezing treatment had left her body deformed. At a time when celebrities went into hiding, they faced the flashbulbs and questions, no jacket required. Nor did they choose to absolve themselves through staged confessionals on reality TV.

Many would like to see them as battle-hardened superwomen but they never had that mission. All they did was put their point of view from a vantage point they have never let go of. Call them OG, ageless, timeless but they never cared much for labels. So when 30-year-old Rafael Pavarotti shot them in classic black, they decided to have fun with it, never minding the warts and wrinkles. Just another day at work, 18 or 58.

National Editor Shalini Langer curates the fortnightly ‘She Said’ column