The Cinderella Myth We Can’t Quit

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Margaret Qualley has attained mega-celebrity of late, in two incredibly disparate roles: She is the star of “Maid,” a bingeable Netflix series (primarily based on Stephanie Land’s namesake memoir) about a younger single mother’s battle with grinding poverty, homelessness and starvation. And she is a “brand ambassador” for Chanel, symbolizing just one of the world’s most exclusive luxurious labels.

How do we make perception of these two gigs, which come to feel gentle-a long time aside?

In “Maid,” Ms. Qualley’s character, Alex, flees an abusive associate, requires refuge in a women’s shelter and winds up scrubbing bathrooms for a dwelling, hardly ready to feed herself and her young daughter — all although seeking soon after her troubled mother (movingly played by Ms. Qualley’s real mom, Andie MacDowell).

Nevertheless the collection has an uplifting end, the in general information remains bleak: It is a tale about America’s inadequate social security internet, generational cycles of poverty and addiction, and hard-operating persons often just a several dollars absent from extraordinary starvation or eviction. As Alex, Ms. Qualley downplays her placing beauty, with negligible makeup, a haphazard ponytail and a wardrobe of shapeless, employed outfits, which include her drab maid’s uniform.

An completed actress with ballet coaching, Ms. Qualley is remarkably adept at developing persuasive expressions and evoking strong emotion with her voice, deal with and overall body. It normally takes almost nothing absent from these skills to accept that they do not exist independently of her magnificence. Recognizing how to use one’s bodily instrument is a sine qua non of equally modeling and performing. Ms. Qualley has a trend physique — tall and slender — with a cinema experience: cellular with sharply defined attributes large, practically childlike blue eyes and a wide, charismatic smile to match.

In “Maid,” we root for Alex, admiring her grit and dedication. And portion of our attachment to her is undeniably visual: It is pleasurable to enjoy Ms. Qualley, and that pleasure encourages us to adhere to — to eat — her story and for this reason the series.

Hollywood has been pegging narrative to women’s beauty for around a century now. It’s a procedure integral to the star procedure and Ms. Qualley is a star. The way she wears her splendor is woven into the expertise of “Maid” — inextricable from the story. In a perception, Ms. Qualley is also carrying the tale the narrative is draped on her shoulders, like outfits on on a style design. And even as we stick to Alex’s in close proximity to-continuous crises and catastrophes, we are sustained by the expectation of her salvation and uplift in the end, in portion simply because of her attractiveness.

Generations of fairy tales, novels and films have conditioned us to be expecting that the wonderful, downtrodden younger girl will be saved — unveiled as a solution princess, plucked from obscurity, rescued by a prince or, with the additional modern twist in “Maid” (spoiler inform): recognized for her crafting talent and granted a higher education scholarship.

It is continue to the historic Cinderella narrative baked into pretty much all of women’s well-known culture. (In a tragic, thwarted-Cinderella subplot, Alex’s mother, Paula, a gorgeous artist, tries and fails repeatedly to find a good man to help you save her from poverty.)

Planet Chanel feels mild-yrs absent from the globe of “Maid.” As the brand’s ambassador, Ms. Qualley utilizes her deal with and figure to conjure the classic Chanel fantasy landscape of extremely-French luxury and elegance — a location wherever no one particular worries about gas dollars or food items stamps. Right here, Ms. Qualley’s attractiveness is additional overt, her glam quotient dialed up to “stun.” As the literal “face” of Chanel, Ms. Qualley is on offer as a further consumable commodity, positioned from backdrops developed to convey world sophistication, refinement and indulgence.

Final July, for case in point, Chanel showed its slide 2021 collection at the Palais Galliera, the neo-Renaissance mansion and vogue museum in Paris’s ultraposh 16th Arrondissement. There, Ms. Qualley glided out for the finale, resplendent in a showstopper bridal gown: a white silk confection whose silhouette — equipped midsection, flaring voluminous skirt and marginally puffed shoulders — telegraphed “storybook princess.” Beaming beneath a sequined mesh veil, Ms. Qualley built a radiant, if fictional, bride.

Concluding a runway show with a bride is an aged-fashioned tradition, which Chanel has practiced all over the several years. Presenting a wedding ceremony gown as the finale confirms its status as the most impressive and transformational factor of a woman’s wardrobe, the signal of her social elevation to wifedom. And the innovative director Virginie Viard’s amazing princess-design and style robe only amplified this, punctuating her assortment with a fortunately-ever-just after grace be aware. Below all over again, Ms. Qualley was anointed a contemporary-day Cinderella.

From time to time, the fantasy electricity of manner doesn’t even call for apparel. Two months in the past, Ms. Qualley posted a photograph of herself on Instagram, increasing from the ocean, nude but for five strategically placed Chanel handbags. Had Botticelli’s Venus stopped by Rodeo Push? Was this a holiday break selfie taken by a woman of leisure? (Who else would hazard these bags in saltwater? Costs start at about $4,000 and go up to $10,000.)

The photo was taken by Cass Hen for Hommegirls journal, and as with most luxurious manner photographs, the stage was not to make feeling but to affiliate the desirability of the celebrity with the desirability — and buyability — of the commodity. The objects are positioned upcoming to, or immediately on, the wonderful female overall body, to indicate that consuming them — buying the luggage — will in some way transfer the satisfaction of that scene to viewers, inducting them into that carefree vista of sea, sexual intercourse, magnificence and prosperity.

No brand name understands this method much better than the Maison Chanel, a company whose founder, Coco Chanel, utilized style to elevate herself from poverty to world-billionaire standing. And below is where by we start to see that Ms. Qualley’s two — seemingly discordant — specialist roles are actually intimately relevant: Like Alex the maid, Coco Chanel expended her youth struggling to survive utter destitution and miserable lower-wage jobs.

But she developed her way out of it. She produced an overall luxurious signaling program: the CC brand, the tweeds, the pearls, the fragrance, meant to lend an aura of charmed belonging to herself, which she then marketed to her millions of shoppers. And somewhat than reject her operating-class previous, Chanel mined it for design and style inspiration, basing numerous of her most successful fashions on workers’ clothes. Most famously, her tiny black costume recalls the regular uniform worn by French housemaids at the time.

As an avatar of the Maison Chanel, Ms. Qualley turns out to be the fantastic casting selection for the star of “Maid,” for just beneath the luxurious of the Chanel manufacturer lies a tale not unlike that of “Maid,” a tale of extraordinary deprivation and ambition — which spurred the creation of the full business. In other text, there’s an Alex-the-maid hovering just out of sight in just about every Chanel ad.

The reverse can be accurate, also. Sometimes, that is, Ms. Qualley helps us see the Chanel-esque luxury factor hiding in just Alex the maid. In one episode for example, Alex “borrows” an high priced cashmere sweater from Regina (played by Anika Noni Rose), a wealthy housecleaning consumer, and wears it to entertain a day in Regina’s property, which she pretends is her personal.

Wrapped in beige cashmere, fully created up, seated on expensive home furnishings with wineglass in hand, Ms. Qualley appears like she belongs there. She looks, that is, as if she may well be the variety of lady who can manage many Chanel luggage.

“Maid” takes advantage of this sort of times to prepare us for Alex’s eventual escape from poverty. “See?” it looks to reassure us, “Alex belongs to this other, finer planet. That world you’ve viewed her (or this actress) symbolizing in journal advertisements.” In the series’ final episode, a school-bound Alex tries to return the cashmere sweater, but Regina insists she keep it, noting it expense $1,400. Alex offers in and accepts the gift, and with it, her own unavoidable upward mobility. She is accepting princess standing from a queen — the aptly named Regina.

From reverse sides of the pop-lifestyle continuum, “Maid” and the Maison Chanel contemplate different strata of women’s life, social class, aspiration, the motivation for escape and indulgence, and the way modern society commodifies pictures of femininity and inserts them perpetually into rather slim, even predictable narratives. In her exceptional posture symbolizing simultaneously the intense “rags” and “riches” poles of the traditional princess tale line, Ms. Qualley reminds us of just how shut these two sides stay.

Rhonda Garelick is the dean of the University of Artwork and Design Background and Theory at Parsons/The New College and the creator of “Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History.”