THE BEAST AND THE BEAUTY

By Leonardo Padura and - - Reprint | | Print |

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HAVANA, Aug 31 2006 (IPS) - The decision of the organisers of Madrid fashion week to bar \’\’excessively\’\’ thin models from the city\’s runways immediately reminded me of a grim joke in very poor taste about Ethiopian children who, seeing the photo of a very, very skinny top model, decided to organise a collection of food to send the destitute woman, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, Cuban writer and novelist, winner of the Dashiell Hammett Prize for Best Literary Crime Novel. In this article, the author writes that the fashion world\’s habit of setting extreme thinness as the measure of female beauty (and personal success) appears to have reached worrying extremes: according to scientific authorities, the attainment of these emaciated physiques is related to psychic and eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia, which are becoming more and more widespread. If we do not respect that which was granted us by the miracle of evolution, an inhabitable planet and a body with intelligence, the future of the species and its common home could be condemned to premature death generated and engineered precisely by that great human virtue: intelligence. Or by its major defect: foolishness.

The decision of the organisers of Madrid fashion week to bar ”excessively” thin models from the city’s runways immediately reminded me of a grim joke in very poor taste about Ethiopian children who, seeing the photo of a very, very skinny top model, decided to organise a collection of food to send the destitute woman.

The fashion world’s habit of setting extreme thinness as the measure of female beauty (and with it personal success) appears to have reached worrying extremes: according to scientific authorities, the attainment of these emaciated physiques is related to psychic and eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia, which are becoming more and more widespread in the overfed first world and in the privileged strata of the others.

The world’s sports authorities are moving in the opposite direction, though along a parallel path, in their fight against another widespread phenomenon: doping. The search for more muscular bulk and greater velocity, strength, and endurance, has found in the arena of scientific advances a seemingly inexhaustible reserve of substances (in particular, anabolic steroids) which can create super-athletes with amazing physiques capable of setting simply superhuman records. In addition to the intrinsic corrosion of the sporting spirit, doping causes a series of adverse reactions and irreversible damage to the bodies of the athletes.

While excessive thinness makes the models physically ill, the abnormal musculature of the athletes shows just how far they will go to win fame, glory, and of course, money. The site of the competition, however, is not the artist’s studio or the runway, the gym or the sports pitch, but rather somewhere far more sacred and unique — the human body.

The spirit of competition is one of the most profound and deeply-rooted human feelings. Since the beginning of the species, man has had to live in competition –with the environment and with each other; indeed the very the existence of homo sapiens is the result of a great genetic victory which made us intelligent beings that became the rulers of the planet.

From the moment that man began to be aware of himself, this competition entered into a more intimate and essential space, and the standards of beauty, ability, and force came to be imposed on all cultures, as the circuit of comparison necessary to competition was established. The fight for beauty and physical power then entered the human psyche, conditioning many of its attitudes towards and ideas of success.

Although aesthetic standards can vary according to culture, beauty has always been considered a gift of nature, which, like strength, can be cultivated with care and sacrifice that can reach superhuman levels and endanger the psychic and physical stability of the individual.

However, the struggle for success that rages today in this world of heightened competitiveness has destroyed the primitive levels at which it remained until the second half of the last century. Science and contemporary society undertook, at any price, the search for supposed physical beauty, which can take the form of the malnourished and psychically affected model, the indefatigable cyclist, or the weightlifter that flouts the laws of gravity.

Without a doubt, beneath the proliferation of anorexic models and gigantic factory-made musclemen is the increasing commercialisation of almost all human activities that characterises this age. The spirit of competition, which is so human, has been eclipsed by the appetite for money (also very human), though by breaking laws that are ethically inviolable. Apparently not content with the devastation of our natural surroundings (which we have already begun to pay the price for), competitive society now seems disposed to devastate us as well, superior and intelligent human beings. Bodies converted into merchandise are subjected to drastic changes as our belief in the achievements of skill and force and the admiration of beauty plummets. What is most lamentable is that despite this fall, the procession of skinny beauties and bulky powermen is being joined by young people simply looking for their place in the world, using means that are against nature to build beautiful bodies or powerful muscles like those of their false idols of the runways and stadiums.

Thus it is encouraging that models with a body mass index of less than 18 have been banned from the Madrid runways — the normal level begins at 18.5– and that sports authorities, including those on this lost island that were once the Major Leagues of American baseball, decided to take seriously the plague of ”cheaters”. Because if we do not respect that which was granted us by the miracle of evolution, an inhabitable planet and a body with intelligence, the future of the species and its common home could be condemned to premature death generated and engineered precisely by that great human virtue: intelligence. Or by its major defect: foolishness. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)