ARE MODELS AND FOOTBALLERS LAB RATS?

In the following essay I will analyze the raw and cruel description of two very similar professions. They are at the top of the world, both models and footballers share inmensed income and fame.But how is the real and dark side of this profession? Are models and footballers lab rats?

In order to make this statement it is important to understand what the concept really stands for through a simple example.Just like in the famous conductivist experiment, both models and footballers are trained in a similar way.In the famous experiments that Ivan Pavlov conducted with his dogs, Pavlov found that objects or events could trigger a conditioned response. The experiments began with Pavlov demonstrating how the presence of a bowl of dog food (stimulus) would trigger an unconditioned response (salivation).In this case stimulus equals money. the conditioned stimulus its thriving success and this success feeds the professional’s ego through past positive experiences.

I happen to note also that the intuition behind the account, though prima facie compelling, seems to suffer in certain places in the social hierarchy. This is the case of the bourgeois with a routine and a completely different lifestyle from those of the upper classes, these routines usually include working and studying to get a college degree in order to achieve success through effort. There is no nepotism in the effort, it is real life. In contrast to modeling where, although there is effort, success is not achieved by it.

On the other hand, football shows the utopia of achieving social promotion, there is constant social mobility. With this in mind, I am not saying that these professionals do not work hard to get to where they are, they do, but in a different way, with a non traditional method. In fact, they are valued in a market window, it’s like a healthy slavery system.On the opposite pole, middle-classes are seldom carte blanche, in other words, the middle class cannot have complete freedom to act as they wish, instead, they act through alienation like these professionals but in a very different way, they behave completely differently, with a 9 to job that barely keeps them on their ground. This is not pure sophistry, this is the unfornute world we live in, where a doctor, a nurse, a lawyer, or anyone who worked extremely hard to get where they earn so little and are often diminished, not to mention something less than glorified.

Speaking of which, these major salaries involve some ethical quandries. A footballer trains every day, wears a GPS on it’s kits so he/she performs at it’s best. These archetypes work to measure their natural performance, to optimise a player's physical performance and to minimise the risk of injury by controlling the level of strain they are placed under.They're used for the training or test matches. These bras record the movements on the pitch and the physical data. Like this it's easier to analyze: how fast is the player, where is he moving to, what is his heart rate like etc. By the end of the day, these people are extremely wealthy and rich slaves. They are obviously not victims but it's indeed a very sad and twisted but realistic thought, they fall back in a vicious circle one which they can't get out of. These are one of the few professions in which us spectators see someone performing while doing their jobs. Once again, just like lab rats.

Footballers are unconsciously bred and kept for scientific research in the social as well as tactical purposes like this one . While less commonly used for research than mice, rats have served as an important animal model for research in psychology and biomedical science and so are people. That’s the cruel truth.

THE EXCEPTION OF THE RULES

Footballers aren't often seen on the runway but Paulo Dybala and Héctor Bellerín prove a different point. Arsenal’s Spanish fullback has been the reveal of the football-fashion season, without a doubt. Even if supporters aren't pleased with his off the pitch hobbies, Bellerín has proven himself worthy of the “fashion victim” label with his appearance at the Fashion Week. Criticized by many, praised by others. Paulo Dybala had his modelling debut at the Dolce & Gabbana show in 2018 and was bruttally insulted by football fanatics. Something similar happen with models like Izabel Goulart, Adriana Lima and Alessandra Ambrossio at the 2014 World Cup, sexist comments were thrown at the supermodels during their stay.

Who belongs to these elite groups? A point in common is the designer clothing. But in social terms, the white supremacy is a must. Unfortuneltly rascism is still a very strong form of complex discrimination in every aspect of life. Black models are paid significantly less and athletes are extremely discriminated by their physical qualities, leagues like Scudetto (Italy), Ligue 1 (France) and Premier League face these challenges on a daily basis. The same thing happens with homophobia, calling someone “gay” ends up being a constant insult. Seems like we live in a different century, filled with racism, homophobia and no representation nor diversity whatsoever. Something that needs to be addressed and changed right away.

Why have footballers’ wages increased so much?

Players are being paid increasingly high wages because the clubs are making more money than ever. As a result of globalisation and technological advances such as the pay TV market, football has become more popular and so more profitable. Just like the rule of supply and demand,If people lost interest in football, clubs would not be able to make such high profits. The demand for players would drop and so would their wages.

In the following paragraph I’ll tackle the issue of unequal pay between women and men in the world of football.The history of women’s football is not an uninterrupted stream of successes, by a long shot. For nearly 50 years, practicing the sport was made difficult for women around the world. Football was indeed considered “incompatible with femininity” and female players were generally denied access to the fields (by law in Brazil, and by the threat of sanctions for clubs in other countries).

The 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup in France seems to have been a turning point in the history of women’s football, resonating beyond the sphere of sport competition itself, with many people seeking to appropriate the event for other purposes, mainly political and societal. But the issue that sparked the biggest controversy, and captured the attention of economists, was no doubt the pay gap between men and women players, with football being nothing more than a mirror of society.Social inequalities have been a key consideration in economics since the origins of the discipline.

Coupled with the same idea translated to modelling, why is there a pay gap between male versus female models in the fashion industry? Male models are paid 50% less than females because of their “non existing chameleon qualities”, in other words, women can sell anything because of the variety of clothes they wear. A silly argument considering the fact that we would have to believe that clothes are distinguished by sex/genre. Clothes are NOT divided by genre! They are wonderful pieces of fabric that should never discriminate, mainly because of the fact that fashion is the most powerful art there is. So why are male models paid less? Why do female athletes earn 80% less than any men in the industry? It's outrageous and unacceptable.

The alienation associated with the absence of the difference principle in a restricted utility society stems from a perceived deficit of concern. Rawls claims in Theory Of Justice that the difference principle is “an interpretation of the principle of fraternity”. Rawls holds that justice as fairness is the most egalitarian, and also the most plausible, interpretation of these fundamental concepts of liberalism. He also argues that justice as fairness provides a superior understanding of justice to that of the dominant tradition in modern political thought: utilitarianism.The three principles that our justice system seeks to reflect are: equality, fairness and access.Therefore i couldn't help but wonder is it fair that models and footballers are paid these horrificals amounts of money for their labor? These industries wont survive a day without marketing and publicity, so they tend to feed other peoples salaries, that’s a very positive point on it’s favor, yet I find it disencouraging as a college student. Equality should be fought in every sense of the word.This dystopian future is at fundamental odds with the natural, normal, healthy context for human life. Unfortunately, things won't change overnight, unless we adress it.

All of the results fit my theory, except for one anomaly, which appears to disagree.The role of the audience and consumers of both fashion and sports. Imagine you are at the front row of a major household name, watching the show, how do people react to such an event? Does the same thing happen at football matches?To give an illustration of what I mean, let’s have a look at the final effect. Imagine you are at a football match, people are shooting and whistling to the players on the pitch, your club is down by one goal, the striker scores a hat trick under 15 minutes near the end, a goal equals happiness, a missed goal equals insults. You are watching a model walking down the runway with a non so upbeat energy, so you judge, record something on your phone maybe, and analyze, leading to wonder: how can they make so much money and I don't?

Another key point to remember are the similarities between the two professions. Both footballers and models have zero privacy, they are forbidden to comment on any topic regarding anything that does not concern them nor their profession. They are constantly under the spotlight which leads to major criticism. These are short term careers, they retire quite young and they start from a very young age, in other words, they are exploited as kids till they reach success, mostly by the frustration of their parent’s failed dreams. That explains the high expectations and peer pressure generally faced by it. Not to mention sacrifices like intensive workouts, strict diets, being controlled by a gps or the media, or even worse, a political party. In terms of football, it's not just a sport, politics are involved in very frivolous and corrupt businesses, especially in Latin America.

Notwithstanding the incredible thriving success they faced on a regular basis, they are under a constant watch but many of them do not really know what it's happening, they live in what us, the regular mortals, would assume as a fantasy, a utopia. Foucault used the panopticon as a way to illustrate the proclivity of disciplinary societies subjugate its citizens. He describes the prisoner of a panopticon as being at the receiving end of asymmetrical surveillance: “He is seen, but he does not see; he is an object of information, never a subject in communication.” This exceptional concept appeals to a simple idea, the prisoners are the high paid models and footballers who don't understand real life, they can't empathize with “mortals' ', not just because of their money but in terms of life achievements and effort. They are the object of information, feeding thousands of industries beside theirs, yet they are never a subject in communication.

Evidently, these non traditional professional workers are immersed in a vicious circle of exploitation, but they earn so much money that they do not realize they are being exploited.Yet regular workers face everyday challenges like waking up at 5am every day to work under poor conditions as well as building an academic future to make the world more habitable. In words of Kant, he formulated the positive conception of freedom as the free capacity for choice. It asserts the unconditional value of the freedom to set one's own ends. Autonomy of the will is the supreme principle of morality and a necessary condition of moral agency.Freedom is independence of the compulsory will of another, and in so far as it tends to exist with the freedom of all according to a universal law, it is the one sole original inborn right belonging to every man in virtue of his humanity. Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world. In other words, those who are not physically gifted in any way contribute to society under a different spectrum.