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‘No models’ mag drops ban after thinner sales

A German women’s magazine which dropped models to use pictures of “real people” in its pages, has reversed the decision and will be returning to the professionals.

'No models' mag drops ban after thinner sales
Back in the pack. Photo: DPA

The September edition of Brigitte will feature models again, after more than two years of the ban, editors Brigitte Huber and Stephan Schäfer said in a statement.

From now on, they would work with models “whenever we believe that it fits better for a topic or cover image,” they said. “For more diversity in Brigitte.”

They said more than 1,000 women aged between 18 and 68 had been used in fashion and beauty features – singers, housewives, policewomen and students – in the attempt to “give beauty its naturalness back and show that attractiveness has many faces.”

As well as the odd wrinkle or rounded belly, the women featured were given full names, ages and occupation in the attempt to change the game when using photographs of women.

But they claimed to have had some feedback saying that the “normal women” in the photo shoots were distracting – and even made readers feel worse about themselves than models, because they seemed so flawless, but were nonetheless not models.

The sales figures seem to have failed to follow those of the models in rounding out even a little since January 2010, the Tagesspiegel newspaper said on Friday.

It said the number of subscriptions had dropped by nearly 22 percent since the change-over, while 35 percent fewer copies were sold in shops. And although a number of factors were likely to be at fault, the “no models” policy would likely be one of them, the paper said.

Although the models will be back on Brigitte’s pages, the editors promised they would not be using very thin, “size zero”, models, and that they would continue to look for and feature non-professionals for photo shoots.

The Local/hc

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