Stealing Beauty: Pivot Point International v ... - UW Law School

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1068 WISCONSIN LAW REVIEW as “classic beauties,” 5 others blame these representations for everything from low-carb diets 6 to eating disorders. 7 Regardless of how people align themselves in this debate, one thing is certain: everyone seems to recognize that the media has created a standard of beauty that we, as a society, simultaneously covet and abhor. This dominant standard of beauty can be seen in the relatively uniform designs of commercial mannequins. Since their widespread introduction into the commercial sphere, mannequins have largely been designed pursuant to the media’s representations of what is beautiful. 8 Some consumers have responded negatively to designers’ attempts to emulate these media representations of beauty in their designs. 9 Ostensibly in response to such criticism, several designers have reality, and with it a new aesthetic that has spilled over to the way we see female beauty.”). 5. Perhaps in attempts to justify our culture’s obsession with beauty by suggesting that our standards of beauty have existed indefinitely, magazines as diverse as Vogue and Essence have used the term “classic beauty” to describe their subjects in the past year. See, e.g., Sally Singer, Model & Supermodel, VOGUE, Sept. 2004, at 746; Mikki Taylor, Absolutely Fabulous!, ESSENCE, Apr. 2004, at 80, 80. Newspapers have also gotten in on the fun. See, e.g., Nicole Piscopo, Is Julia Roberts Really a Pretty Woman?, PALM BEACH POST, June 21, 1997, at 1D. While the term “classic beauty” is somewhat of an abstraction, it is often credited to the ancient Greek appreciation of symmetry, established proportion, and regular features. See, e.g., Editorial, No Need to Break the Mirror, HARTFORD COURANT (Conn.), Apr. 16, 1994, at B10 (citing Helen of Troy as a classic beauty); Diana Loercher, Feminine Beauty: Defining an Enigma, CHRISTIAN SCI. MONITOR, Jan. 13, 1981, at 15. 6. See, e.g., Jennifer Davies, Low-Carb Feast; Consumers Beef Up Sales of Diet-Friendly Products as They Turn Away from Bread, Pasta, and Juice, SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE, May 2, 2004, at H1 (claiming that media representations of celebrities succeeding on the Atkins diet are a primary reason why the diet is so successful). 7. See, e.g., Eating Disorders; Officials See More Eating Disorders in Men, WOMEN’S HEALTH L. WKLY., Oct. 24, 2004, at 28 (“Nationally, health officials estimate 1 million men have eating disorders, a 30% increase since 1972. . . . [T]he increase of eating disorders among men is caused by unrealistic images of the male body in the media.”). 8. See, e.g., Rita La Perla, Front Row, N.Y. TIMES, Dec. 9, 2003, at B9 (stating that mannequins of a given decade are representative of the reigning notions of beauty of that decade). 9. See, e.g., Lisa Guenther, We Allow Brainwashing Regarding Body Image, ARGUS LEADER (Sioux Falls, S.D.), Jan. 17, 2005, at 2D. I went to the mall a couple weeks ago, and to my dismay, I noticed an array of department store mannequins that had one similar trait—they were all extremely and unrealistically thin. Even at Lane Bryant, a store that caters to plus-size women, the mannequins were thin. I am tired of being compared to impossible standards of beauty and thinness. Id.; Patricia Corrigan, Women Beginning to Take a Larger View of Beauty, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, Nov. 1, 1997, at 38 (“If shop mannequins were real women, they’d be too thin to menstruate.”).
2006:1067 Stealing Beauty 1069 consciously rebelled against the media’s prototypes of beauty. 10 For example, designer Ralph Pucci recently created a mannequin named “Goddess” that boasts 35 ½ inch hips, while one of Pucci’s competitors recently introduced a line of mannequins “with a rounder and lower derriere than its usual size 4 models.” 11 While such lines of mannequins seem to subvert the dominant standard of beauty in our society, the designers responsible for their creation claim that their mannequins are intended to represent what they perceive to be a change in society’s definition of beauty. 12 Thus, even these “deviating” mannequins are essentially the product of society’s changing ideals of what is beautiful. Because mannequin designers rely so much upon pre-existing notions of beauty, one may wonder the extent to which designers should be allowed to copyright these “creations.” Federal copyright law provides copyright protection for “original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression.” 13 For a work to be classified as original, however, the work only needs to be the result of an independent creation paired with a minimal amount of creativity. 14 Generally, it seems like mannequins could easily fit within this definition; as long as the artist did not copy the idea from another artist and did put forth a modicum of creativity, 15 the artist would be in the clear. However, because these designs are based on pre-existing societal standards of beauty, rather than the artist’s independent creative impulse, this question becomes significantly more complicated. Case law suggests that the public has an interest in denying businesses any 10. See generally Corrigan, supra note 9 (describing The Body Shop’s decision to create Ruby, a full-figured fashion figurine designed to be the icon for the company’s recent campaign on self-acceptance). 11. Mireya Navarro, Store Mannequins Can Now Breathe Out, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 14, 2004, § 9, at 1. 12. For example, Pucci believes that “this type of body [is] becoming more relevant” to society’s perception of what is beautiful. Id. Pucci equates a fuller figure with sexiness, and asserts that one “can’t flip through a magazine without seeing [this] sexiness.” Id. 13. 17 U.S.C. § 102(a) (2000) (emphasis added). 14. Feist Publ’s, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co., 499 U.S. 340, 345 (1991). The sine qua non of copyright is originality. To qualify for copyright protection, a work must be original to the author. Original, as the term is used in copyright, means only that the work was independently created by the author (as opposed to copied from other works), and that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity. Id. 15. Based on the holdings in cases like Feist, it seems inevitable that, unless a sculpture was copied, it would meet the “modicum of creativity” standard necessary for copyright protection.
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