W Refers To Rape As A ‘Fashion Violation’ In Headline

by Hilary George-Parkin | 4:10 pm, November 19th, 2012

In 2008, fashion designer Anand Jon was convicted on one count of rape, and 15 counts of sexual assault on girls as young as 14. He was sentenced to 59 years in prison on Rikers Island and is still awaiting trial in New York on similar charges.

“Violation” is definitely a word we would attach to his crimes. But we certainly wouldn’t call them “fashion violations.”

And yet, in W‘s November issue, as a part of the magazine’s 40th anniversary collectors’ edition, a blurb looking back on the designer’s criminal history appears below that very headline. We might have glanced over it, however, were it not for Tara Kipnees, one of Jon’s rape victims, who wrote a piece for Salon with the should-be-obvious headline “Rape Is Not A ‘Fashion Violation’”.

Kipnees composedly explains why this kind of flippancy is not only offensive, but indicative of a broader problem the media has when discussing violent crimes perpetrated by celebrities (A-list or otherwise). She astutely observes that “when such media fascination is involved, victims become barnacles attached to a once-magnificent sinking ship. The more barnacles, the more sensational the wrongdoing, the more people gawk.” And sometimes, it seems, that gawking leads to headlines lumping the crimes in with leggings-as-pants and visible panty lines.

We have reached out to W for comment and will update when we hear back.

[Salon]

Anand Jon W magazine

Anonymous

You guys make yourselves look foolish with this sort of stuff. Violations within the Fashion Industry. I understand it even without the context.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Mark-Ward/100000135233619 Mark Ward

Was that Whoopi Goldberg (“it wasn’t Rape-Rape”)?
http://www.facebook.com/sally.li.562 Sally Li

Clearly, they don’t mean fashion violation. The headline means a violation of law in the context of the fashion industry, but the wording is so ambiguous and amphibolous that they shouldn’t repeat this headline again. The really objectionable euphemism is when they say that the accused was involved with raping women as young as 14. That’s a girl….I also never heard of a “campaign” of sexual molestation. Celebrity status crimes are given kid glove treatment by the media, which is a strong indicator of media corruption and the scarcity of truly investigative journalists. The tarring of the reputation of an entire industry is also a strong tendency of today’s kangaroo-court media, and it is interesting that they never tar the entire athletic industry – although professional athletes seem to be arrested for felonies more often than the highest paying members of any other profession.
Anonymous

Nice social article and i love it .Violation” is definitely a word we
would attach to his crimes. But we certainly wouldn’t call them
“fashion violations.

W Refers To Rape As A ‘Fashion Violation’ In Headline

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