Last year we were lucky enough to have a video of Lady Gaga's acceptance speech at the CFDA Awards hit the net. Aside from the fact that Gaga told that hilarious story about Anna Wintour, the video was significant for another reason as it marked the first time that we were given access to the goings on in the annual event but now, the exclusivity is a thing of the past.
Today WWD confirmed that the ceremony will follow in the footsteps of the Met Gala and will be available for all to see. While this year's event will not be live like the Gala, it will be broadcast on Style.com on June 5, the day after it takes place and will show inside the awards as well as on the red carpet. Tim Blanks has been brought on board to host the broadcast and will be interviewing guests on the red carpet too.
Mark Zuckerberg has been pretty busy recently. The Facebook founder recently bought Instagram for a reported $1 billion and last week he was plastered all over the headlines as he took Facebook public and mind you, all of this took place before he celebrated his 28th birthday.
Despite all of the achievements, the fashion press have been less interested with the company and more concerned about poking fun at his 'uniform'. Anyone that has followed him over the years will know that he rarely, if ever, departs from his signature baggy jeans, t-shirt and hoodie combo and with an estimated $100 billion coming his way from all the new deals, people can't help but talk about whether the Harvard drop-out will finally decide to upgrade.
You'll be pleased to know that he did just that on Saturday when he tied the knot with his long-time girlfriend, Priscilla Chan. According to US Weekly, guests at the wedding believed that they were coming to celebrate Chan's graduation from medical school only to be told on arrival that the wedding was taking place.
A week ago this image of Alexa Chung, which she posted on Instagram, helped keep the current debate about banning 'thinspo' on social networking channels alive. Tumblr was the first to ban the images on their platform and after receiving a lot of images on their platform as a result, Pinterest quickly followed suit leading the same thing to happen to Instagram. Not willing to appear like they are not taking a zero-tolerance approach too, Instagram release a statement in their community guidelines prohibiting the images:
Don't promote or glorify self-harm: While Instagram is a place where people can share their lives with others through photographs, any account found encouraging or urging users to embrace anorexia, bulimia, or other eating disorders; or to cut, harm themselves, or commit suicide will result in a disabled account without warning. We believe that communication regarding these behaviors in order to create awareness, come together for support and to facilitate recovery is important, but that Instagram is not the place for active promotion or glorification of self-harm.
Now hashtags like 'thingspo' and 'thinspiration' no longer yield search results.
Do you think Instagram's decision to follow the others will make any difference?
Alexa Chung is on the thin side. I don't think anyone can deny that but this week the presenter's body image was the subject of controversy after she posted an image of herself on Instagram. On the surface the image simply shows Chung posing with her mother but the controversy has stemmed from the size of her legs, which are on display under her denim dress.
The past few months have seen the issue of thinspiration images back in the media, especially with Tumblr and Pinterest cracking down on thinspo images being made available on their sites. Chung's images has fuelled the debate as many have said that her photographs are perpetuating the problem and are being used as inspiration images for weight loss and eating disorders. While some fans saw her size as aspirational, the majority of the comments were bad with some labelling her body as 'unhealthy' and others going as far as to say she looks 'disgustingly skinny'.
The fight against thinspiration images is the story that keeps on giving. When the content was first banned on Tumblr, all the banned images were moved to Pinterest and now the latter has followed Tumblr in cracking down on the images, naturally they have all moved to Instagram.
Instagram's guidelines do not explicitly allow the content but they definitely aren't tacking a firm approach like the other social media platforms have:
“Remember that our community is a diverse one, and that your photos are visible to people as young as 13 years old. While we respect the artistic integrity of photos, we have to keep our product and the photos within it in line with our App Store’s rating for nudity and mature content.”
The range of new social media platforms proves that the problem is hard to control. Firm bans on the content on one site simply drives the images to another one and so long as users continue to search for tags like 'thighgap' and 'hipbones', the content will always be there.
