Strength (and Beauty?) in Numbers

Throwing a group of models together and seeing what sticks

By Jonathan Bender
Published: Apr 20, 2008

I bet you never thought we would have the Costco-ization of beauty, wherein a six-pack of airbrushed, lip-glossed women could outshine Jessica Alba. But then again, would you have believed a game show with 26 briefcases and models wearing matching outfits and similarly blank expressions could be a runaway hit?

Rather than focus on creating individual stars, marketers are overwhelming our senses with packs of scantily clad women, who move too fast for us to get a good look. They want us to have a “Fantasm,” as four women in brightly colored hot pants turn an average soda drinker into a slightly less coherent Kevin Federline. "Don’t you wanna? Wanna Fanta?" And as Americans get larger, it only stands to reason that our ideal of beauty would shift. We can't make our models bigger so let's just add more of them. Right, Pussycat Dolls?

Palmer releases the fem-bots

Robert Palmer knew what this country wanted before the advertising world. In “Simply Irresistible,” he taught men that slicked back hair and a slinky black dress made every woman desirable. The fem-bots became as interchangeable and coveted as their guitars. An unfortunate decade of poor Halloween costume choices and Sharon Stone hairdos ensued.

The late 1990’s suggested a subtle shift was in the works. The Spice Girls emerged as the female answer to the boy bands that sadly held us in their clutches for far too long. With names like Baby and Sporty, they were singing versions of Barbie dolls and they championed the concept of “girl power.” The formula even seemed to be improved with the remake of Charlie’s Angels. Drew Barrymore was the alternative girl, Cameron Diaz was awkwardly hot, and Lucy Liu was a karate-chopping dynamo. All the women weren’t the same; instead they had morphed into hyper-focused caricatures. Each was good at one thing as evidenced by their wardrobe choice and hairstyle. Halloween costumes improved slightly, although ponytails were disturbingly rampant.

Hotness in numbers

By stripping away the individuality of the women in bands or commercials, (can you name a single Deal or No Deal model?), it's the branding equivalent of five "2s" are better than a "10." Today the personalities in a group don't matter, as long as the hotness is exponentially raised. Sadly the end result is not that different from a trip to an all-you-can-eat Vegas buffet. The sheer volume of choice overwhelms your senses, and that plate of shrimp and chocolate mousse never works out quite like you envisioned. The whole process is a little sickening.

So, what are we headed towards? I expect to see products sold by a giant woman that is formed from a collection of identically hot women- the gender equivalent of a photo mosaic, where tiny pictures are used as the basis for a portrait. Either that or the new convenient 24-pack of models.

Jonathan Bender is a freelance journalist living in Kansas City, Missouri, with three ladies of three different species. http://web.mac.com/jonathanbender

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