Resumen de Auto/Ethnography of Fashion Modelling: Who is the Object?!
This communication is a methodological exploration conducted while undertaking empirical research on fashion modelling, a job formerly performed by the author. The communication considers the recent “turn to the self” in social sciences in relation to the fashion modelling as an ethnographical field. Starting from a sketch of an autoacademic auto/biography, the paper takes up silence as a fruitful metaphor “goodtothinkwith” to examine fashion models’ performances and the notion of beauty, as well as the silences produced by sociology’s coded language and analytical shortcomings. Drawing from Foucault’s and Bourdieu’s ideas on silence, reflexivity and the therapeutical aspects of socioanalysis and care of the self, the paper examines the methodological dangers and rewards of the αὐτο genres, such as autoethnography, visual autoethnography, autobiography, or autofiction. The author argues that both auto/biography and auto/ethnography are useful methodologies to explore the subtleties of the abovementioned silences, which can thus contribute to a better understanding of modelling as an empirical field while disrupting some epistemological categories such as subject/object.
