GUCCI X Armine Harutyunyan

"In Western contexts and histories especially, ugliness has long functioned as a social category that demarcates one's rights and access to social, cultural, and political space."

(Rodriguez & Pryzbylo, 2018)

EDITOR

Laura Lamberti

This, dear readers, is one of the sentences with which Ela Przybylo and Sara Rodrigues, open the introduction to Politics of Ugliness, collection of essays born from the authors' refusal "to accept that ugliness is solely the product of a body, space or thing " With this quote Przybylo and Rodrigues were referring to several laws, known as" ugly laws," that at the end of the nineteenth century were passed in the US, UK, and Europe in order to preclude certain people from accessing the public sphere "on the basis that their bodies would pollute the public spaces because they were disgusting, disabled, ‘deformed,’ sickly, or unsightly ”

One of the many facets of the politics of ugliness ,the one I believe we should be focusing on right now consists in "ugliness" being used not as a discriminatory element itself, like in the case of the above-mentioned "ugly laws", but rather being attributed to groups being discriminated against ,as a marker, a tool for marginalization. The comparison of Jews to rats in Nazi Germany and the graffiti in Srebrenica, which reads "No teeth? Has a mustache? Smell like shit? Bosnian girl," are just some of the historical instances in which this phenomenon can be observed.

It doesn't come as a surprise that the world of fashion has been historically permeated with racism, extremely limiting beauty standards, and most importantly for the purpose of this piece, the tendency to cover up the former with the latter, often following the ideological trends of the time. However ,in recent years great steps have been taken in the direction of a more representative, more inclusive and all around more open environment in the fashion world. Unfortunately, the general public hasn't always made proof of being able to keep up with the change.

In early September, Armine Harutyunyan's name was all over Italian media, following the aggressive reaction of the Italian public to fake news regarding the Yerevan-based artist and Gucci model's inclusion in a fictitious list of the 100 sexiest women in the world, allegedly redacted by Gucci's creative director Alessandro Michele.

While the initial criticism focused on Harutyunyan's "bushy eyebrows," "hooked nose" and her "unconventional facial structure," the conversation soon steered towards political correctness and freedom of speech. Numerous Italian Instagram and Facebook users stormed the internet with conspiracy theories of mind control and manipulation, claiming that Harutyunyan's inclusion in this alleged list of the 100 sexiest women in the world was in fact a not-so-vigil attempt to pressure the general public into silencing any views they might have that do not fit the political correctness " regime" of our time, as some have referred to it.

While having had my fair share of conversations on the dangers of using political correctness as a tool of silencing debate rather than as a tool for inclusion and equal representation, as an Italian college student in New York City, I could not be more worried about the social media discourse surrounding Harutyunyan in my country, mainly for his failure to see, or refusal to acknowledge that the general wave of criticism of the model, which in fact began in 2019, is rooted in an insidious and, to stay in topic, "ugly, "attitude that is anti-Armenian sentiment To be fair to Italian media, very few outlets from the international scene have delved into the topic in depth, however some ,like OC Media (Open Caucasus Media), news outlet focused on shedding light on news and analysis from the North and South Caucasus, did indeed address this dimension of the issue

In an article dating back to October 7th 2019, Alla Parunova , gender researcher and activist, points to antiArmenian animus, which she describes as an issue deeply rooted in Georgian society, as one of the causes for the concern and outrage voiced by numerous Georgian internet users following Harutyunyan's walk down the runway at a Gucci show in the previous September.

In her article Parunova writes that "The furore arose after a number of Georgian news articles were published that claimed that Harutyunyan had become the face of Gucci she had not, she simply walked down the runway in a single Gucci show. The articles did not seem to intend to foment attacks on her, however, by reporting only fragmented information and not reporting the broader context, the emphasis was thereby put on her physical characteristics and her ethnicity. The article by Fortuna is an archetypical example: the headline reads: 'A 23-year-old Armenian girl became a model for Gucci'. The rest of the article is focused on the admiration that Harutyunyan has received from Armenians." Georgia and Italy have however not been the only countries where Harutyuynyan sparked furore and annoyance. The model mentioned in various interviews that a Turkish TV program had even begun to do a parody of her. In her article, Parunova also mentions that some comments made by Georgian internet users, similarly to some I have read on Italian social media, engages in dehumanizing discourse that questions Harutyunyan's womanhood and humanity.

Considering the fact that we live in a transitional period, that could either lead forward, towards an increasingly inclusive society, or backward, towards exclusionary politics, polarization of ideas and thinking based on dichotomous paradigms, and that the power to steer the course of history in one direction or the other is held by ordinary people making daily decisions, I urge you to ask yourselves and others the following:

What does "ugliness” mean? How do I understand it? Where does this understanding come from? Who decides what is ugly, and why? And last, but not least, what are the dangers of the politicization of "ugliness"?

Where do I see these dangers in my daily life?