Fierce!
I guess this is officially a model-word now. After Tyra Banks appropriated it for America’s Next Top Anorexic, it seemed like every photoshoot featured at least one “fierce” photo of a girl narrowing her eyes. Bad enough, yes.
But now, on Sunset Blvd, is an Ambercrombie & Fitch billboard featuring a naked, headless male torso placed before a rather tame but uninhabited landscape that looks vaguely like summer in Alaska. Next to the torso is the word “Fierce.”
What it is that’s fierce on that billboard, I’m not sure. We can’t see the guy’s eyes so we don’t know if he’s got them narrowed threateningly or not. The landscape certainly isn’t fierce; the mountain is the lowest, most gentle-sloped shape you can offer and still call it a mountain. And unless you have some sort of phobic reaction to pine trees, it’s simply not that alarming.
This perfectly serviceable word is on its way to an ignominious end, and it’s a pity because it’s a very specific and descriptive word. It’s more dangerous than simply wild, more refined than savage… but if it keeps getting applied to people who live on diet pills and have no discernable function in the world but displaying clothing and demonstrating the most elegant way to exit a limo, the word in is trouble.
It’s already difficult to use the word without irony, and soon even those who despoiled it will shy away from it as it becomes a cliché. It’s headed for the same scrapeheap as nice. Maybe they’ll team up and a new saying will emerge: “Oh I love those boots! They’re nice and fierce!” (Which will mean spike-heels and any construction featuring leather or feather.) Word death isn’t pretty, is it?
