Maggie G: agent provocateur

I've just had a glimpse of Maggie Gyllenhaal in the new Agent Provocateur ad campaign which she shot 6 months post birth and of which I alerted you to a few posts ago. Maggie looks like you've never seen her before (even though she did become famous by appearing in a movie about S & M). Serena Rees, co-founder of Agent Provocateur, believes Gyllenhaal “is not an obvious sex symbol. She wasn’t worried about her body at all. Maggie is proof that life doesn’t stop once you have a child.”

Um, why would it?

Anyway..whilst I think it's fantastic that an unconventionally beautiful actress like Maggie is enjoying the limelight in lingerie, I am slightly unsettled by the appearance of Maggie in handcuffs in one of the photos. It's one thing to be sexy and playful, but it's another thing to even playfully suggest that handcuffing women is 'sexy'.

Im not trying to suggest that consensual S & M can't be fulfilling or feminist or empowering for some women, but the nature of these images makes it difficult to decipher whether Maggie 'wants' it or if she's just the object of a heterosexual male gaze? Why isn't Maggie handcuffing a man?

Sources: http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2007/09/lingerie-maker-.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=479630&in_page_id=1773

Maggie Gyllenhaal: the new face of Agent Provocateur

Maggie Gyllenhaal, one of my favourite celebrities, has just signed to become the new face of saucy British lingerie company, Agent Provocateur. Replacing Kate Moss, Gyllenhaal will appear in the next ad campaign starting in September of this year. Maggie is, of course, gorgeous but with a more subtle sexiness in comparison to most mainstream actresses.

However, I am particularly intrigued that in every piece of copy I've read talking about her signing, everyone seems to find it necessary to mention that Maggie will be the face of AP just nine months after giving birth to her daughter Ramona. However, Kate Moss is also a mother but no one ever bothered to mention that when she was the face of AP! In fact, when the video of Kate Moss in AP lingerie was released last year, the website was so overrun it actually crashed. At 31, post-pregnancy, Kate looked not much different than she did at 14, when her unsettlingly thin body defined the term 'waif'.

One one hand, it's fantastic that a successful company such as AP thinks that mother's bodies are beautiful. After all, they do have a nice, but limited maternity range (and on the pricey side). They also previously did a campaign in which some of their real customers were featured. On the other hand, would they have chosen Maggie to be the new face if she was still holding on to a bit of her pregnancy weight? I'm highly doubtful.

Sources: http://www.agentprovocateur.com/

http://living.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1150292007

Maggie Gyllenhaall: weight loss and the wonder of motherhood

I love Maggie Gyllenhaall and I think she has proven that it is entirely possibly to be famous and pregnant and not be photographed obsessively. Anyway, if remember from a few weeks back she was snapped in a Manhattan park feeding her daughter and because her breast was exposed she was criticised all over the internet. She spoke to the Guardian about her new life as a mother and slams suggestions that she dropped her baby weight immediately after the birth:

On motherhood:
'It has changed my life in the most incredible way'.

On her baby weight:
'Totally ridiculous. I was really shocked that they would write that. At that point I was 25 or 30lb heavier than I had been before I got pregnant. I had literally just given birth! It's so unhelpful to everybody, to print stupid stuff like that'.

On pressure to be slim and fabulous:
'It would be dishonest and unhelpful to say I haven't felt that pressure. I do feel it - just not enough to change what I'm doing very much. I mean, I still go out to dinner all the time'.

Full article: http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,,2120688,00.html