Letters to the Editor
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Speaking as a former EMT ...
... I'm offended too, but maybe for slightly different reasons than most posters. What offends me is not so much the sexualization of violence (though that's pretty high on the creep factor too) but the simple idea that death looks good.
It doesn't. Modeling is about looking good; death is about the ugliest thing there is.
People whose experience of death's appearance comes from seeing bodies in funeral parlors after the morticians have worked on them simply have no idea what a newly-minted corpse looks like. None of these models look remotely like a murder victim. People who have just been stabbed or shot or strangled:
- Don't strike elegant poses. The body twitches and rolls a lot during (and sometimes just after) violent death. Victims invariably look awkward, no matter how graceful they may have been in life.
- Don't have carefully draped clothing with just a couple of strategically placed holes or tears.
- Are grotesquely discolored; very soon after death, shades of purple and green and blue that just aren't seen on living flesh appear all over the lower parts of the body.
- Almost always are covered in their own bodily waste. That's the way it is, folks: you die, the sphincters let go. I don't see any yellow and brown puddles surrounding these models.
Most likely, if this photo shoot had involved making the models look like real murder victims, everyone involved (models, photographers, and show producers alike) would have bowed out as soon as they realized what was involved. As it is, they're in the same category as the armchair warriors who cheer the TV footage of the war in Iraq -- they love the missiles firing, the planes zooming off carrier decks, the tanks rumbling through the desert, but if they ever saw what goes on at the sharp end, they'd scream and cry and piss their pants.
I would challenge any one of the people involved in "America's Next Top Model" to spend a day volunteering in a trauma center ER to get a better understanding of what the hell they're playing with. But there wouldn't be much point; like the 101st Fighting Keyboarders, they're much happier in fantasy land.