Skinny

Another day from the e-mail. Thanks Hyne there is e-mailing or else. Hope I can get home today well and work a little on Hókisasszony. I have a few "less than nice" purposes in mind, which I must execute. Yep, I shall. (hehehehehehe...) Oh, sometimes I do stuff like that. Besides, it's just not fair that all my meanness goes only for Stormberry! The Hungarian language has the right to get also a taste of the wickedness that nests in my mind. All of you have the right to a piece of my meanness. ^_^ I feel a bit hyper today. Is it due to the pills of yesterday? Who knows? Anyway, today I don't need them, I'm at peace, though my lungs are a bit tight, and it's not due to my bra. Maybe is the changing of the weather, going hotter and more humid. Asthma is kinda sneaking closer to home. Fuck, cigs are so banned now. Damned lungs.

I had a topic prepared today about Costa Rican politics, but then something popped up in today's paper and I really felt compelled to comment it. So, I guess Costa Rican Matters shall wait for yet another entry.

France and the Ultra-Thin. Today I read in the Washington Post about a bill the French National Assembly approved about making illegal any kind of advertizing or action that could inspire people to develop an eating disorder. Pictures and shows depicting or using anorexic or bulimic models, ultra thin models will be prohibited, and the responsibles could be locked down for two years and fined up to $47 000. To my dismay some people from the fashion industry complained saying that ultra thin models have absolutely nothing to do with people becoming bulimic or anorexia, since that depends on genetic predisposition, personal stories and family environment. Yeah right. Sure, dangle images of skin wrapped bones labeled as the epithome of beauty and then say that those who try to reach it are trying to do so because they have the "looney gene" in their DNA. How can they say that?

Sure, a lot of sick people will starve themselves to death or puke up all they eat, wash out their bowels and stuff because they have this looney idea that they have to, BUT I'm sorry to tell you, most people who have that kind of behavior is because they want to look like some models. The fashion pushes people to fast and starve with all kinds of fasting and dieting adds, showing unnaturally thin bodies, and also selling clothes that are made for people too think to be healthty. Sizes are changed to make people think they are "fat" so they go thinner. An example. I'm 1,65 m tall, and my measures go like 85-74-114. I'm what in the 90's was an average size 6. Have not changed much in time but then, somehow, with these same measurements I became a size 8. Today I fit a size 12, and I'm STILL 85-74-114. At the same time the "perfect size" has slid from a 4 to a 2 to a 0. and this is not advertizing, this is what you find in the stores. If you want to dress in a fashionable way, I'm sorry to tell you, but you have to go slimmer and slimmer, risking to die for the fashion.

I don't think "thin" is pretty. I think "healthy" is pretty... and "like me" is pretty. Nice smile, big eyebrows, big nose, big c*^_^*. However not everybody has a strong sense of self that can protect them from the fashion's bombarding messages. I praise the initiative of France to do something, protect those who are not in the position of protecting themselves. Fashion, as it is, is a corrosive environment that goes all the time about criticizing your exterior. You are too fat, too fat, too fat. You are out, you are out, you are out. Fashion somehow has stopped being about style to be about sell a lot every season. Yes, I appreciate clothes and I do like to shop and brownse around stores, and yes, I have my pet brands like Benetton and MNG, but I don't think you have to stop breathing while you wait the decision of a bunch of loaded designers about what you should wear. Fashion is there to SERVE US, PLEASE US, not the other way around. I remember this part in "The Devil Wears Prada" where Merryl Strip's character (I love Merryl Strip) tell the girl why fashion is important and how the color of her sweater is that because she decided upon making it fashionable. A lot of people live like that girl, hungrily depending for one reason or another, from the approval of third parties about their look. Style and fashion are not the same, and people should really learn that runnaway are not about what you should wear, but are a display for you to approve or reject according to what you like. And trust me, it's okay to reject an entire season. Why is it so bad to dress with "last season" stuff? Because that doesn't make more sales. Clothes are clothes, and they are meant to cover us, express us even, but they are not mean to mold our personalities, or our bodies.

Stuff our boobs to fill a shirt or make a cleavage for that dress? Lipo our bellies, thighs and asses to fit these slacks or that skirt? Starve ourselves to fit into that suit? This craze has always been crazy, but after a skeletical Kate Moss was made the image of CK Obsession, it has gone out of proportion. legs so thin the knee looks thicker, arms so thin the elbow deforms them, hipbones sticking through the skin, fully visible rib cages. Please take a minute and check on pictures of the prisioners of the concentration camps, from World War II. You see those bodies? You see horror, you want to cry. You can't imagine the cruelty that drove people to starve people to that point. Look at pictures of the mass graves, the tons of bodies thrown there like piles of bones and skin. A horror image worse than any tale, any movie ever made. Then look at the ultra-thin models, at tell me where's the difference?

Let me give you some names.

September, 2006: Luisel Ramos
November, 2006: Ana Carolina Reston
February, 2007: Eliana Ramos

(A "stone" or st in weight makes 14 pounds or something like 6,5 kg.)

All of them "size zero" models who died at ages between 18 and 22. These are models dying, but who many kids are out there, deprived of fame that would make a mark on the world about dying of an eating disorder? One of these articles says that 1 out of every 100 women in the UK suffers from an eating disorder. How can this be all genetics, family environment and/or personal history? Open your eyes, this is not. A lot of people has died for this. I was about time that someone did something