Males have place in modeling field

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By Amanda Powell

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“The Price Is Right” recently hired its first male model and Chanel N°5 chose Brad Pitt as the face of its new perfume campaign.

It’s likely both of these decisions were made to boost ratings and improve sales. Furthermore, “The Price Is Right” and Chanel N°5 are both looking to gain a larger female audience.

Chanel N°5 is a women’s perfume. And according to CBSNews.com, “Most daytime TV viewers, after all, are women. (Drew) Carey said, ‘Yeah, well, something for the ladies during the daytime, you know what I mean?’ ”

Rob Wilson, the man named “The Price is Right’s” first male model, clearly has the attention of women since the viewers chose him through a voting process.

And Pitt is clearly a ladies man, but is the notion that women will watch TV programs and buy products simply because of promotions from a good-looking man necessarily true?

To further explore this topic, I looked to a piece in The Los Angeles Times that covered the “Saturday Night Live” spoof of Pitt’s new ad.

Taran Killam did the impersonation and acted like he was behind the scenes during the filming of the ad.

In the first lines of the real commercial, Pitt says, “It’s not a journey. Every journey ends, but we go on. The world turns and we turn with it.” Wait… what?

In the skit, Killam said, “Is there really no script, because I’ve been talking to myself for two hours straight. I’m starting to sound insane.”

But apparently even the spoof on “SNL” will do little to deter buyers.

The LA Times reported: “When branding expert and Global Icons founder Jeff Lotman first saw the Pitt video, he said he ‘thought it was a little lame.’ But the end effect for Chanel will be positive, he said. The parodies give the brand public attention, ‘which is everything you could really want’ as a company, he said.”

It’s difficult for men to be respected in a female-dominated industry, especially modeling. But perhaps we, the women, are the people who’ve made it that way.

Maybe we should start having more respect for male models as professionals and people instead of looking at them like they’re, for lack of a better phrase, a piece of meat.

And when we do this, maybe women won’t be stereotyped as being easily coaxed into watching a TV show because of a shirtless man or buying a product because of an attractive face.