So what is the actual gain of being so afraid of everything that might or might not happen that you restrain your life to the point where every posible danger is avoided... if this also means that you miss out on a whole bunch of nice things, possible encounters, experience and new influences?? In this country, many of the people I daily meet and have around me (people who have the fysical and financial opportunities to choose where to go and where not to go) seem to live (and pass on!!!) a constant fear and concept of an ever ruling danger being present where you expect it to be... that is, not even where you least expect it to be.
To explain this a little better... it is quite commonly known among many of these people that some places in town one just don't go to. For example, few people think it is a very bright idea to go to the center of Caracas, and even if it sure has a high frequence of crime and violence, there are limits to the emphazis one should place on this danger. Especially when I have started to realize that the supposedly justified advices these people give me (of places to stay away from) don't have a very firm knowledge base and that they often don't have a clue about what they are really talking about.
Some of these people live their lives completely apart from the mentioned danger and it is amazing to notice how different lives people can live. In one and the same country, in one and the same city and even within parts of the city, exist parallell universes... created and sustained by whom... not really determined. By the government, by anonymous capitalists, by the very own people who live in them...? Well. I hate it. It is such a nasty form of discrimination. And it is not even an obvious discrimination, since the majority of the people with the good luck of living in the better off universe don't see their part in the sustaining of the whole system. Whatever it is...
So, ok. it is messed up. Out of these differences in standard of living it is scaringly clear from where the hard knocked resistence against Chavez and his ideas of change come from. Why change a system and a society that has given you opportunities to climb higher and gain a real good level of livelyhood? It exists a paradox of human fear when it comes to changing from something known and secure, to something un-known... even though this change actually in the end will create an even better situation for you (and a whole bunch of others!!). But if what one has today is good, then why take the risk of changing it, when it might result in a worse situation??
The concluding question of this is: How make better off people in this country want to "risk" their economic and social standard for the cause of making it better for the majority?
Tricky.
Saturday, February 23
Saturday, February 9
Beauty queens and big breasts
Ok, so Carnaval passed, one of the biggest holidays in all of Latinamerica, you know the carnaval in Rio and all that. Well, me, a classmate and Petra decided to go on a roadtrip to lake Maracaibo to see a unique nature fenómenon called Los Catatumbos. These are flashes of lightning that are present every day during the year. No one can explain why these discharges happen so frequently, and it is only there, in the whole world, that one can witness this. Exciting and an excellent plan for carnval, since everyone else was going to the beach, which would leave this place empty! Just one small problem... it is about 1000 km from Caracas. From an environmentalistic point of view, that sucks. And what sucks even more was that we were going to do the whole thing by car... three persons in one car. My god. That, I can assure you, would never have even been seen as an alternative if I would have been in Sweden. But here, well, there were no buses going to where we wanted to go, and the car just seems to be the obvious means of transport. Ok, so that sucks as an excuse. Scheisse. I am a bad bad bad environmentalist... the story continues.
On the way there we made an overnigt stop in Coro to visit another classmate. Coro is a colonial town with a nice old center and about 15 min out of the town one finds these strange desert like "strips" where you can walk around on pretend to be a beduin in Saudi Arabia. Or one can do acrobatic stuff on the top of one of the sandy mountains, that's what I did.
Later in the evening we went to a small village further away and we ran in to the prepartions for the big happening that evening... the beauty contest!!! Posters of young women in bathing suits were put up all over the place and people were already gathering around the stage. Inspiring reggeaton music made the whole sensation even more intense and my travelling buddies and I started to evaluate the candidates. Who was the best one, that is, most beautiful... right?!
Well, my latin friends went for Ingrid straight away, but I thought Andrina would make it, she was a little bit more exotic (that is what I consider exotic). Later during our road trip it became obvious how popular these kinds of beauty contests are in Venezuela. Every little town has there own and the girls are young, very slim, all with long hair and the majority with big breasts. I guess one could define them as "Tripple A:s", a term used to describe a certain type of woman: 90-60-90 (cm), medium tall/tall, long hair and normally operated breasts. The woman ideal! It is possible that one or two were "Double A:s" (nice body, medium tall and a beautiful face)...
I wanted to stay and see them come out on the stage, but the show wasn't about to start until much later, so we left, without ever getting the chance to know who in the end got to be the beauty queen...
Plastic surgery in Venezuela has become something which today is considered to be normal and almost a requisite if you want to make it to the top, working in areas where you need to sell products, but as well within different service business. But the reasons for getting your breasts operated are more than a carreer thing. Lots of women do it simply for the estetique, something which of course has a very relative base. Different cultures have different ideals of beauty, and the value of being beautiful and attractive, although I most of the time think that it has turned quite global. Now, maybe that is a consequence of globalization as well.
Walking around in any city in Venezuela and one can be certain to see at least a bunch of girls with their breasts done. The female dressing in this country is quite homogeneous, normally with an décolletage (it is only a question of how deep). Having done a surgery to enlarge your breasts is something lots of women are proud of, which normally means going for an even deeper décolletage. Comparing to Sweden where it is almost reverted in terms of openness about an operation, where women try as long as they can to simulate their operated chest as being the real thing...
So why do women feel this need to live up to the ideal in such a high degree that they are prepared to operate themselves, pay a lot of money and take the physical risk it means? It is not even a once in your life thing, since the plastic things only last for about three years, and then you will have to do it all over again. Well... I asked a friend who is about to go through with an operation within a few weeks. She said that her reason was simply that "I want to... for me! It is not for anyone else, for boys or anything like that, it is just that I want to. I will feel better, I want to dress in other types of clothes..." I guess that is a reason as good as anyone. But I can't help to take a sceptical standpoint towards this way of reasoning. Because... from where does the contentness of looking in a certain way come from? There is some kind of twisted and sad paradox working with the minds of the women who think like that. They feel happy and content with their new looks, which is a happyness as valid as any other, but not taking in to account that the foundations of this happyness consist of an ideal created and sustained by the society, and which says that she was not good enough as she was.
So how much should one sociologize about this? There are still many women living in this society who never will operate their breasts, and live happily anyways.
It has gotten to the point where a breast operations has become a "common" (of course we are talking about people with an economic state more or less well established) 15-years birthday present (a very celebrated happening in Venezuela). Considering the immaturity of a 15-year old body it just seems rediculous to let such a person go through with something like that. Not even mentioning the twisted perception of ideals the parents are maintaining and passing on to their children, fucking up another generation.
Well... to be continued, for sure!
On the way there we made an overnigt stop in Coro to visit another classmate. Coro is a colonial town with a nice old center and about 15 min out of the town one finds these strange desert like "strips" where you can walk around on pretend to be a beduin in Saudi Arabia. Or one can do acrobatic stuff on the top of one of the sandy mountains, that's what I did.
Later in the evening we went to a small village further away and we ran in to the prepartions for the big happening that evening... the beauty contest!!! Posters of young women in bathing suits were put up all over the place and people were already gathering around the stage. Inspiring reggeaton music made the whole sensation even more intense and my travelling buddies and I started to evaluate the candidates. Who was the best one, that is, most beautiful... right?!
Well, my latin friends went for Ingrid straight away, but I thought Andrina would make it, she was a little bit more exotic (that is what I consider exotic). Later during our road trip it became obvious how popular these kinds of beauty contests are in Venezuela. Every little town has there own and the girls are young, very slim, all with long hair and the majority with big breasts. I guess one could define them as "Tripple A:s", a term used to describe a certain type of woman: 90-60-90 (cm), medium tall/tall, long hair and normally operated breasts. The woman ideal! It is possible that one or two were "Double A:s" (nice body, medium tall and a beautiful face)...
I wanted to stay and see them come out on the stage, but the show wasn't about to start until much later, so we left, without ever getting the chance to know who in the end got to be the beauty queen...
Plastic surgery in Venezuela has become something which today is considered to be normal and almost a requisite if you want to make it to the top, working in areas where you need to sell products, but as well within different service business. But the reasons for getting your breasts operated are more than a carreer thing. Lots of women do it simply for the estetique, something which of course has a very relative base. Different cultures have different ideals of beauty, and the value of being beautiful and attractive, although I most of the time think that it has turned quite global. Now, maybe that is a consequence of globalization as well.
Walking around in any city in Venezuela and one can be certain to see at least a bunch of girls with their breasts done. The female dressing in this country is quite homogeneous, normally with an décolletage (it is only a question of how deep). Having done a surgery to enlarge your breasts is something lots of women are proud of, which normally means going for an even deeper décolletage. Comparing to Sweden where it is almost reverted in terms of openness about an operation, where women try as long as they can to simulate their operated chest as being the real thing...
So why do women feel this need to live up to the ideal in such a high degree that they are prepared to operate themselves, pay a lot of money and take the physical risk it means? It is not even a once in your life thing, since the plastic things only last for about three years, and then you will have to do it all over again. Well... I asked a friend who is about to go through with an operation within a few weeks. She said that her reason was simply that "I want to... for me! It is not for anyone else, for boys or anything like that, it is just that I want to. I will feel better, I want to dress in other types of clothes..." I guess that is a reason as good as anyone. But I can't help to take a sceptical standpoint towards this way of reasoning. Because... from where does the contentness of looking in a certain way come from? There is some kind of twisted and sad paradox working with the minds of the women who think like that. They feel happy and content with their new looks, which is a happyness as valid as any other, but not taking in to account that the foundations of this happyness consist of an ideal created and sustained by the society, and which says that she was not good enough as she was.
So how much should one sociologize about this? There are still many women living in this society who never will operate their breasts, and live happily anyways.
It has gotten to the point where a breast operations has become a "common" (of course we are talking about people with an economic state more or less well established) 15-years birthday present (a very celebrated happening in Venezuela). Considering the immaturity of a 15-year old body it just seems rediculous to let such a person go through with something like that. Not even mentioning the twisted perception of ideals the parents are maintaining and passing on to their children, fucking up another generation.
Well... to be continued, for sure!
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