Fetishizing the grotesque body: The images of Calvin Klein

Abstract

This paper explores the representation of the body in popular imagery. Specific attention is given to two Calvin Klein print ad campaigns. The images are significant in that they appear to offer a challenge to bourgeois sensibilities regarding properly sexed and coded bodies. They also offer a challenge to the spirit of Mrs. Reagan's “just say no” rhetoric, and they have provided an alternative to the “perfect” bodies so ubiquitous in popular imagery. I argue, however, that despite their potential radicalness, these images are nothing more than conservative artifacts masquerading as radical images.