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https://www.texastribune.org/2022/02/28/texas-transgender-child-abuse/
surgery for the purpose of transitioning is being targeted as evil and "child abuse" despite research that establishes that surgery can improve an individual's view of themself and has huge mental health benefits. A trans person in the US is told that a key aspect of their identity is wrong, which is similar to Brazil's view of black features

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Sign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. For LGBTQ mental health support, call the Trevor Project's 24/7 toll-free support line at 866-488-7386. You can also reach a trained crisis counselor through the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by calling 800-273-8255 or texting 741741.
Every couple of months, Adamalis Vigil drives eight hours from the Rio Grande Valley to North Texas so her 13-year-old transgender daughter Adelyn can receive health care. They talk and sing the whole trip.

The care she receives there is unavailable in her hometown but pivotal to her sense of identity - and her mental health.

"It makes me feel who I truly am, and I don't feel singled out for not being like other girls in school anymore," Adelyn said. "It's just very special for me that mom takes me all the way over there."

Adelyn - who stands tall at 5 feet, 5 inches and is outspoken in class - had been having panic attacks in school as she approached puberty. After she started seeing the doctors in North Dallas, the attacks stopped.

But last week, the panic attacks started again when Republican Gov. Greg Abbott - seven days before the GOP primary election in which he's being accused of not being conservative enough - ordered state child welfare officials to launch child abuse investigations into reports of transgender kids receiving gender-affirming care.

Adelyn is terrified she will be forcibly separated from her mother. So great is her anxiety that she doesn't want to sleep in her own bed. The Vigil family agreed to speak with The Texas Tribune but did not feel safe disclosing details about Adelyn's medical care.

Abbott's directive followed a nonbinding legal opinion from Attorney General Ken Paxton - who is also in the fight of his political life in Tuesday's primary election - that said gender-affirming care constitutes child abuse.

Paxton's opinion cited body modification surgeries that medical experts say are rarely, if ever, performed on children. But he also said it would be child abuse to administer gender-affirming care that is widely accepted by leading health care groups, like puberty blockers, which are completely reversible. Under the gender-affirming model of care, experts say, more time is spent allowing kids to socially transition instead of focusing on medical treatment.

Shelly Skeen, a senior attorney with Lambda Legal, said it's highly unlikely that a judge would justify child abuse charges or removal of a child based solely on the use of gender-affirming therapy.

"Texas law has a very clear definition of what child abuse is, and it's not this," Skeen said.

Still, the attorney general's opinion and governor's directive drew fire from families, lawmakers, doctors, advocates and the White House, among others. Advocates say that calling gender-affirming therapy child abuse could lead to it being weaponized in divorce cases, create legal issues for physicians and therapists who treat transgender youth and empower people to attack the young people themselves - as well as the family members and others who support them.

"It's not a far stretch to think that you could be harassed, assaulted, killed," said W. Carsten Andresen, an associate professor of criminal justice at St. Edward's University in Austin.

Child abuse investigations based on gender-affirming care are almost unheard of in Texas. Officials at the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services say that there have been three reports last week "meeting the description in the AG opinion and Governor's directive" but offered no other details. No investigations have been launched, officials said.

But families with transgender kids and their advocates say even an attempt at criminalizing certain care further stigmatizes an already vulnerable group of Texans.The officials' moves also can block access to treatments that can prevent suicide and severe depression caused in part by gender dysphoria - discomfort related to feeling a disconnect between one's personal gender identity and the gender assigned at birth.

A recent study showed that more than 40% of transgender youth attempt suicide. The rate of suicide attempts among transgender youth is three times higher than among their cisgender counterparts, according to recent studies by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And the moves now leave Texas families with transgender children choosing between getting their children health care that medical experts recommend or possibly facing a child protective services investigation.

"​​I know I have to fight. I know I have to speak up. I know I have to show up for her. But how do I alleviate her stress when I'm stressed?" Adamalis said. "The fact that she has to do the fighting, too - it's just terrible. She had to mature so much faster than kids her age."

Riding a wave of anti-trans politics

Abbott and Paxton have spent the past year reflecting and stoking anti-transgender sentiment among voters - many of them stirred by right-wing media. The public pressure was so intense that a Dallas program that specialized in helping transgender young people was formally dissolved.

In his statement this week, Abbott even called on other Texans to act as watchdogs and report any parents for abuse if they believe the parent is supporting their child's gender transition with professional help.

For years, the GOP-dominated Texas Legislature has targeted transgender Texans. In 2017, lawmakers unsuccessfully sought to ban people from using bathrooms that don't match the sex they were assigned at birth. Last year, they succeeded in limiting athletic participation by transgender students. Last year during the regular legislative session, Texas filed more anti-LGBTQ bills than any other state legislature, according to Equality Texas, which tracks such legislation.

Among the proposals was a bill that would explicitly classify some gender-affirming care as child abuse. The Texas Senate passed the bill, but the legislation died in the House.

The opinion and new directive that aim to achieve the same effect without a law passing further stigmatizes an already marginalized group by normalizing speech and actions that target them, Texas House Democrats wrote this week in a letter blasting the comments by Abbott and Paxton.

"Transphobic and false statements like those made by the Governor and the Attorney General have produced an unsafe environment in our state that has forced families to flee to protect their transgender kids, adversely affected the mental health of gender expansive youth, and perpetuated an epidemic of violence against transgender Texans, especially Black trans women," the letter from several Democratic lawmakers read.

On Thursday, district attorneys from five Texas counties - including Dallas, Bexar, Harris and Travis - took to Twitter to bash the directives as "anti-trans" and "life-threatening" and saying they would not treat gender-affirming actions as abuse.

"We want to assure our residents with transgender children that they are safe to continue seeking the care their children need," a joint statement said.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said she would not prosecute "any parent, any facility, or anyone else for providing medically appropriate care to transgender children."

"As a member of the LGBTQ community myself, I am particularly sensitive to the invidious nature of this order - it turns family members against each other at the expense of their children," Ogg said in a statement. "It is a remnant of a hateful past that I had hoped our society had matured beyond."

Second-guessing more care

Since Adelyn's mother sat her down and told her about the governor's order, the teen has been reconsidering whether she wants to go to her next doctor's appointment. She has been scrolling through TikTok videos about the order until her mother comes home from work. On Thursday, she tried to watch a Percy Jackson movie as a distraction, but the fear has been getting to her.

"When I'm at work, she keeps calling and calling: 'When are you going to be home and how long? How much longer? Are you almost home?'" Adamalis said. "It affects her in that sense that she wants to feel that kind of security and feel safe around me."

Five years ago, Libby Gonzales, a transgender girl, and her family told Texas lawmakers about how she never wanted to be forced into the boys' bathroom at school, and that the idea scared her. They traveled to the Capitol to speak out against the now-infamous "bathroom bill," which would have limited which public bathrooms transgender Texans can use. That legislation, though, died despite several attempts at getting it through the Legislature.

"I am 7 years old and I am transgender," the nervous girl told the powerful state senators looking down at her from the dais in 2017. "Please keep me safe. Thank you."

Today, Libby, now 11, and her family do not feel safe confirming or denying her experience with gender care anymore.

Her family - outspoken opponents of Texas Republicans' near-constant efforts to curtail the rights of her daughter and other transgender youth - are now afraid that their efforts to support Libby will be called criminal by the most powerful men in the state.

As a result of the directive, Rachel Gonzales, Libby's mother, has developed plans in case Texas Child Protective Services shows up at her Dallas home.

"There are so many hypotheticals that my husband and I talked through." Gonzales said. "We have to have a plan in place. It also just helps me sleep at night."

Skeen, the Lambda Legal attorney, said political rhetoric against transgender children is already driving families out of the state. But the Gonzales family said they are here to stay.

"My daughter is a fifth-generation Texan. We're simply not leaving our home because of some bullies in the Texas [Legislature]," Gonzales said.

Extremely rare

While child abuse investigations of gender-affirming care are rare, there is at least one well-known example: a DFPS investigation into the family of a transgender child over the use of gender-affirming therapy, a bitter custody battle fueled by the blogger father of a 7-year-old girl who was assigned male at birth.

In 2019, Abbott and Paxton demanded that the state's child welfare agency investigate whether the child's mother was committing abuse by letting the child present as a girl. At the time, the move alarmed an already fearful community of parents of transgender children.

In that case, in which no surgical or hormonal procedures were used, child welfare officials ruled out child abuse and closed the investigation. The father, Jeff Younger, lost custody of his two children in the divorce, according to his website.

Younger is now running for the Republican nomination to the Texas House in his Flower Mound district in Tuesday's primary. He could not be reached for comment.

In their statement this week, Texas House Democrats said gender-affirming therapy is still legal for transgender youth and supported by medical professionals and that mandatory reporting laws had not changed.

And in spite of child welfare officials saying earlier this week that they would comply with Abbott's orders, the Democratic lawmakers said no government agency "is obligated to comply with the directive of the Governor or enforce the false assertions made by the Attorney General."

CPS investigations are only launched if "an allegation is reported, and if the allegation meets the legal definition of abuse or neglect," said DFPS spokesperson Patrick Crimmins.

In general, CPS investigators who find evidence of abuse may decide to set up services for the family to remove the threat to the child or stage some other intervention. In extreme cases, they may ask for an order from a judge to either temporarily or permanently remove children from the home.

Their worst fear

Still, transgender kids Libby knows "are freaking out, coming home from school crying. I mean, she also has cried a lot," Rachel Gonzales said. "That would cause irreparable harm to any family and any child to remove a kid from their home in a state where the government is very intentionally trying to hurt them."

Even an investigation itself can be traumatic, life-altering and invasive, Andresen said. A DFPS investigator may interview family members and others familiar with a family or the child in order to decide whether there is reason to believe abuse is taking place or whether to rule it out, among other possible outcomes.

"Parents that have the money and resources are seriously thinking about looking to move outside of Texas," said Andresen, whose wife sometimes works with transgender families in her job as a family attorney. "Even if there is no legal grounds, why would you stay here with somebody threatening to investigate you?" Also, any protection under the law could be wiped away easily if Texas lawmakers - an increasingly conservative bunch - decide to change the code, which could effectively make gender-affirming therapy for minors illegal in Texas.

Adelyn's care has "really been life-changing" for the Rio Grande Valley girl, her mother said.

"How is that considered child abuse to accept them and love them?" Adamalis Vigil asks. "How can they overstep their power and try to come and tell me how I should love my child?"
Disclosure: Equality Texas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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Transgender Texas kids are terrified after governor orders that parents be investigated for child abuse

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Sign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. For LGBTQ mental health support, call the Trevor Project's 24/7 toll-free support line at 866-488-7386. You can also reach a trained crisis counselor through the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by calling 800-273-8255 or texting 741741.

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Materiality
People from developed nations, the article notes Canada, are looking toward countries such as the Dominican Republic for cheap plastic surgery. The pursuit of improving one's body with little regard for personal health at a, 'do at all cost' mentality is putting people's lives in danger with risky, often botched, surgeries.

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WARNING: This story contains a graphic image.

Some go for a tummy tuck, some go for a Brazilian butt lift. Others, like Tonya MacDougall, went for both.

For Canadians looking for surgical enhancements, the lure of cheaper options abroad is obvious. They often come at a small fraction of the Canadian cost - MacDougall spent about C$4,500 for a butt lift that a Toronto clinic's website priced at $10,500 to $16,500 before tax.

But they can also come with a steep health price, as some patients return with life-threatening complications.

Several women, including MacDougall, are raising the alarm after their cosmetic procedures in the Dominican Republic were botched, leaving them with dangerous infections, years of treatment, and lifelong scars.

When MacDougall came back from her surgery four years ago, she ended up spending two months in the hospital followed by a year and a half of home care after the promise of a safe surgery resulted in a severe infection that resulted in necrotizing flesh and a gaping hole in her abdomen.

"When we came back, I knew something was terribly wrong," said MacDougall, describing pussing tissue that had turned black.

"When I removed the bandages, I had a hole in my stomach probably the size of my fist. I could fit my fist through it. It was bad."

MacDougall was diagnosed with a drug-resistant mycobacteria, contracted from non-sterile equipment and contaminated water supplies at the Dominican Republic clinic where she had the surgery. Doctors at a Toronto area hospital had to remove seriously infected tissue from her belly as part of her treatment.

"I went through a depression. I was crying all the time. It was hard," she said.

MacDougall is not alone. There have been a number of similar cases over the years.

Two years ago, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was notified of 52 patients from nine states who had suffered from surgical infections after having cosmetic procedures in the Dominican Republic. At the time, the agency issued a travel warning for one particular clinic where the majority of the cases originated.

Meanwhile, medical journals and other sources have published studies and articles highlighting the issue.

One such study noted how the rare mycobacteria pathogen was becoming more prevalent as a result of an "increase in lipotourism" and advised greater awareness from both the medical community and the public for this type of infection.

Despite the warnings, medical tourism remains a draw for patients looking for affordable options, and at least three deaths related to botched surgeries in the Dominican Republic have been reported in the U.S. in recent months.

Another Canadian patient, "Carmen", said she went to the Caribbean country for a tummy tuck.

Carmen, who did not want to use her real name, returned to Toronto with an infection so severe that she was hospitalized for six months and was on antibiotics for two years. The pain was so severe that she could not stand straight, she said. In addition, doctors gave her an unrequested butt lift during her stomach reduction surgery.

"I got basically worked on in the Dominican with dirty tools ... you just want it so bad so you just go - but you don't think about it afterwards," she said. "But it's not worth it."

"Julie", who also did not wish to be identified, became sick three weeks after she returned to Canada following surgery in the Dominican Republic.

"I was dizzy. My stomach was expanded. I looked about five to six months pregnant and I had ooze coming out of my belly button," she said. She too had a similar drug-resistant infection that required a lengthy hospital stay and aggressive antibiotic treatment.

Medical tourism has grown in popularity over the years, but the public remains unaware of the risks, said Valorie Crooks, a Professor at Simon Fraser University who studies medical tourism.

"It's untracked, untraced, and unregulated," she said. "We have no clue how many people have gone abroad, whether from Canada or any other country."

Health Canada warns of the risks of medical tourism on its website and offers recommendations for travellers considering the option, but it does not have any statistics on infections or complications from travellers returning to Canada after undergoing procedures overseas.

"Be aware of the risks, talk to your physicians at home ... pursue all the information that you can get, especially information that is not directly provided to you by the physician or the clinic," said Crooks.

But not all patients who travel are ignorant of the dangers.

"I was aware of the risk before I went to the Dominican Republic but I was so desperate to achieve the look ... I never thought that it would happen to me, and it did," said Julie.

"I beat myself up about it because I not only put myself through the physical pain, the financial debt, and the pain and the suffering that I had watched my children go through - that they watched their mother suffer."

For these women, their experiences are a warning for others tempted by low cost surgical alternatives abroad.

"I could have died. Yeah, I'm lucky that I am alive today," said MacDougall.

view larger image

Canadian patients and medical experts are sounding the alarm on the life-threatening risks of having plastic surgery abroad, where ultra-cheap procedures can lead to severe consequences.

(WARNING: Graphic photo) Tonya MacDougall says she had a hole in her stomach large enough to fit a fist through after undergoing plastic surgery in the Dominican Republic.

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Canadians sound alarm on dangers of cheap plastic surgery abroad

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WARNING: This story contains a graphic image. Some go for a tummy tuck, some go for a Brazilian butt lift. Others, like Tonya MacDougall, went for both. For Canadians looking for surgical enhancements, the lure of cheaper options abroad is obvious.

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Through this article, the social relation of identity can be explored. Female genital mutilation is an often seen practice in India, and is often perpetuated generationally and by the women of the family. Identity is defined as how you view yourself, as well as how others view you. This article details how society views women as submissive, pure, and someone that must be subdued. By cutting off parts of the genitalia, libido, hysteria, and other normal sexuality related actions can be reduced. This all ties back to how society and women view themselves as subordinate to men.

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Female genital mutilation is being practiced not just in Africa but in the heart of Mumbai. HT speaks to several ‘victims’ who are becoming the face of a brave fight back

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Body Language is an essay series that speaks to the ongoing conversation about beauty standards around the world-an exploration of where we came from and where we're headed.
I'm 12, maybe 14 years old, standing in front of the mirror, for what seems like hours on end. It's a regular Monday morning and I'm still in my underwear, wondering when I'll stop feeling like this.

The sun shines through my window and lands perfectly on my stomach like a spotlight. I never used to care much about what my stretch marks looked like, but now all I can think about is how much they've grown. And then my thoughts start spinning, over and over, like a broken record.
Am I pretty? Am I good enough? Does this make me look fat? Why does everybody hate me so much?
My eyes wander around my body like a metal detector searching for a flaw, a mistake. I begin to suck in my stomach as much as possible. Tracing my fingers around the cellulite on my thighs, I grab the fat rolls on the side of my waist and my thoughts continue to spin. I can feel the tears running down my face. They feel heavy, like a burden. I stay like this, standing in front of the mirror, inspecting myself for a while, before covering the mirror back up with the blanket I'd placed over it the night before.

By this point in my life, I was used to being ashamed of my own reflection-not wanting to admit what the rest of the world kept telling me: that I was fat, and therefore, that there was something wrong with me. When you live in a small country like Iceland, with a population of only 360,000, it's easy to feel as if all eyes are on you, all the time, especially when you don't fit the prescribed mold, which is overwhelmingly thin. Every time I stepped inside a mall, or walked down the streets of downtown Reykjavik I could feel people staring at me, waiting for me to make a fool out of myself, waiting for me to become the punchline of the joke they would later share with their friends.

It didn't help that growing up, I never saw images of people who looked like me. Not in fashion, not anywhere. It was as if fat people didn't deserve to be seen as beautiful-as if people didn't expect us to be happy, successful, or even in love. In all honesty, I don't think I ever truly hated my body; I just hated how the world perceived my body. I hated how the world led me to believe that because of my size, I didn't deserve to be loved.

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How This Body Positive Icelandic Model Made a Big Name For Herself in a Small Country

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Body Language is an essay series that speaks to the ongoing conversation about beauty standards around the world-an exploration of where we came from and where we're headed. I'm 12, maybe 14 years old, standing in front of the mirror, for what seems like hours on end.

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https://www.insider.com/model-reveals-she-wears-fat-suit-for-plus-sized-ads-2021-12

A Norwegian model reveals that she has to wear a "fat suit" to be a plus sized model. The modeling industry uses skinnier models in fat suits over real plus sized models to promote a skinnier neck and face, creating an impossible beauty standard for this group of people in society. This takes place in other places around Europe as well.

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Model Karoline Bjørnelykke shared a viral TikTok video in late November.

She said that she's asked to wear "padding," or fat suit pieces, for plus-sized advertisements.

Bjørnelykke told Insider she made the video to enlighten consumers about the practice.

A model has revealed that she's asked to wear padding - or fat suit pieces - for plus-sized advertisement gigs.

Karoline Bjørnelykke shared a TikTok video in November that has since gone viral and cast a shadow over the modeling industry. In the video, which garnered more than 478,000 views, Bjørnelykke said she's a plus-sized model and sometimes works with brands that carry sizes XL to 5XL.

Bjørnelykke continued, "If you have eyes, you can see that I'm not that size. So how do we fix this?"

Bjørnelykke, who's walked the runway for Louis Vuitton and Armani, said in the TikTok video that she's asked to bring padding to work for some plus-size brands and showed viewers how she assembles the pieces.

"If that isn't enough, you just pin everything in the back," she said.

Bjørnelykke said that some brands hire slimmer models for plus-size photoshoots because "they want the neck and the face to look really slim and sharp."

Bjørnelykke added that this practice perpetuates harmful body standards.

"Which doesn't only create unrealistic standards, but impossible ones," she said. "My suggestion is to just use real plus-size women because there are so many gorgeous plus-size women out there."

The model called out the lack of styles in plus-size markets, asking that brands "for once" avoid clothes for plus-sized women that are "horrifically ugly."

Bjørnelykke, who worked as a model for ten years and a plus-size model for five, told Insider that she was inspired to create the TikTok after speaking to a friend in London.

"[I] asked her how modeling was going, and she said 'well I'm still on the plus-size/curve board,'" Bjørnelykke said, noting that her friend is "very thin." The friend told Bjørnelykke that they had been getting work while using padding.

"I want the consumers to know about this since I believe a lot of the power lies with them if we want to change the industry," Bjørnelykke told Insider. "They can make better choices and also don't feel bad when not looking like the models in the ads."

Bjørnelykke said she received positive reactions from TikTok users after shedding light on the matter. She's also received criticism from some people who told her she's reinforcing the practice, but Bjørnelykke told Insider she "completely agrees, and that's why I stopped doing these jobs a long time ago."

The modeling industry has faced controversy in recent years as consumers lean towards body positive brands.

One model named Sabina told Refinery 29 in 2019 that she often brought "fat pads" to photoshoots. She told the outlet that it helped her go from a size 12 to a size 14 or 16.

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Model reveals that she's encouraged to wear a 'fat suit' for plus-sized ads

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Model Karoline Bjørnelykke shared a viral TikTok video in late November. She said that she's asked to wear "padding," or fat suit pieces, for plus-sized advertisements. Bjørnelykke told Insider she made the video to enlighten consumers about the practice. A model has revealed that she's asked to wear padding - or fat suit pieces - for plus-sized advertisement gigs.

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It's impossible to travel around the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao without falling in love with the affectionate-looking, plus-sized Mama (mother) and Chichi (big sister) sculptures found in public squares, outside hotels and in unexpected locations around the island. Their poses - with hands outstretched in a welcoming embrace or clasped together in quiet contemplation - radiate maternalistic warmth. Combined with their lofty 2m scale, Curacaoans and travellers alike can't resist rushing in to photograph a hug with a Mama or Chichi or stopping by for a quick chat.

The prevalence of these voluptuous sculptures across the island is indicative of Curaçao's flourishing emergent culture and art scene. Curaçao was settled by the Arawak people from South America around 6,000 years ago, but in 1515 the entire population was deported to the nearby island of Hispaniola and enslaved in their copper mines by the Spanish. Today, still coming to terms with its past, the ever-growing population of Curaçao is a fusion of African, European and Latin American cultures from more than 50 countries.

In fact, it was relatively recent migrants to Curaçao who, inspired by the beauty and strength of the women they saw around them, first decided to immortalise the island's Mamas and Chichis in sculptures. But few people know the stories behind these vibrant figures or how they became emblems of contemporary Curacao's dushi (sweet) culture.

My first encounter with a Mama was under a canopy of trees on a sun-soaked hillside near the Colourful Steps in Willemstad's Otrobanda district. Created by sculptor Hortence Brouwn, this hilltop Mama is the highest and one of the largest Mamas on the island. At 2m in height and almost the same in width, she perches serenely on a small clifftop above a resplendent tangle of magenta, coral and white bougainvillea bushes. Her scarlet dress is adorned with sunflowers that perfectly match her saffron headwrap. Pressing her hands together, she gazes out across Sint Anna Bay, as if patiently waiting for the return of a loved one.

For many Curaçaoan women, these statues have become emblems of body positivity (Credit: Hortence Brouwn)

Brouwn, 84, has been sculpting since she was 17. Originally from Suriname, she migrated to Curaçao 40 years ago. The sculptor specialises in the human form and aims to express movement and feelings through the body language of her subjects. The inspiration for Brouwn's first Mama came 35 years ago, after observing how Curacaoan mothers across the island would sit in one spot enjoying the day for long periods while their children were at school. Today, Brouwn's sculptures can be found around the world, including Holland and Bonaire, but her beloved Curaçao has more Mamas than any other location.

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"I started by making a small sculpture of a lady sitting on a bench," Brouwn explained. "The former owner of Avila Beach Hotel came to me for a coffee one day and saw it. He said, 'It's such a beautiful sculpture, can you make me a very big one?'. I asked him how big, and he replied, 'Lifesize!'."

And so, Brouwn cast her first large bronze Mama sculpture, which was given pride of place on a bench outside the hotel. Swiftly afterwards came a commission from Kura Hulanda Hotel for another Mama. Brouwn's second bronze Mama, while also extremely lifelike, preserves a snapshot of Curacaoan life from the 1980s. "Women in Curaçao used to walk around in the streets with curl pins in their hair and when they went out for the evening, they'd take them out, but you don't see it anymore," she told me.

Her Mamas of all sizes were soon in high demand, although the largest ones appear to evoke the strongest emotional reactions from observers and buyers. Perhaps in part it's due to the previous lack of representation of the huge diversity of shapes and sizes of members of the Curaçaoan population, which is made up of 75.4% black or mixed race Curaçaoans, 6% Dutch, 3.6% Dominican and 3% Colombian, with the remainder being from various other Caribbean islands, Venezuela and Suriname. To many Curaçaoan women, statues such as Brouwn's have become emblems of body positivity, serving as a reminder that women in this melting pot come in all shapes and colours.

Created by Hortence Brouwn, this 2m-tall hilltop Mama is one of the largest on the island (Credit: Sarah Harvey)

Many Curaçaoans, as well as visitors, see themselves or family members in the sculptures. "One day I was looking out of my kitchen window, and I couldn't believe it when I saw a man come and sit down and talk to one of my Mamas," said Brouwn. "Since then, I've noticed many people like to come sit beside them, and even talk with the sculptures sometimes."

Where to find Chichis and Mamas

Head to the Art Alley in Punda or Serena's Art Factory workshop on the east side of the island to see local women hand-painting smaller Chichis; you can also buy them here as authentic souvenirs.

You can make an appointment to visit Brouwn's studio to see her work, which also includes other types of figures, and can buy or commission a piece.

Alternatively, look out for both Chichis and Mamas outside major hotels, the historic Rif Fort and in unexpected locations around the island.

Many Curaçaoans have the figurines in their homes, too. Their affection and respect for the women of the island is part of the national character, which values and celebrates all things dushi. The dushi way encompasses not only behaviour; it's also a word frequently used as a term of endearment for anyone from family members to strangers, a way of describing a delicious meal, or indeed anything deemed to be nice, good or enjoyable. Seeing the sweetness in everything may be one way this diverse new nation has attempted to heal from its past.

While Brouwn was the first artist in Curaçao to popularise these curvy depictions of women - with many other artists following suit - it was sculptor Serena Israel who took making plus-sized figures into a community-based enterprise for local women. This time, the inspiration was another important member of Curacaoan families: the Chichi.

Like Brouwn, Israel was drawn to Curaçao and it has now been her home since 2001. As a new migrant, finding herself strapped for cash, unmarried and pregnant, the German native pivoted from working as a cleaner and waitress to teaching sculpting skills at the well-known Landhuis Bloemhof gallery. As she discovered more over the years from Curaçaoan friends about the island's culture and complex history, she was inspired by the backstory of Curaçao's Chichis - the Papiamentu word for the eldest sister in a family.

"Chichis are so much more than just a big sister; they capture the embraces, the pride and the heritage of many Curaçaoan women," Israel explained. "During WWI, the Chichis came to the forefront because the mothers were working while many of the men were away fighting. They had to take control of the family, which often meant they had no time for a school education. So Chichis became pillars of the Curaçaoan families - they held them together."

That was when people first began calling them "Chichi", as a sign of respect. When the first generation of Chichis grew up, the word became used as a more general term to describe local women.

Israel began making small Chichis from papier mache for tourists 14 years ago. Demand snowballed, leading to the creation of an Art Factory, where visitors can watch her in action, along with various shops and outlets. She has been commissioned to create large Chichisto celebrate their importance in Curaçaoan culture, including a colourful figure outside the Renaissance Wind Creek Hotel, wearing a swimsuit painted with tropical flower designs. Guests are frequently seen perched on her lap.

A new "XXXL Chichi" includes illustrations of Curaçao's most beautiful attractions (Credit: Serena Israel)

"My Chichis are very joyful and capture the root of the truth," Israel said. "With regards to body positivity, I think they're big and beautiful. It doesn't mean they're not sporty or not eating healthily. They have their own beauty. To me, they are about national pride, but also about healing. Curaçao is still healing from its past. It has a heavy history. All these thoughts were going through my mind when I came up with an idea that I thought might work; a sculpture that would celebrate voluptuousness, and Curacaoan women and their heritage."

After transforming from struggling migrant to successful artist in her new home country, Israel says she decided to pay it forward by teaching jobless women in her neighbourhood how to craft and paint their own Chichis - a 12-step process involving 10 pairs of hands. Operating as a kind of artists' cooperative, the opportunity gives them the ability to earn their own money, as well as to work from home and choose their own hours to fit around family commitments.

Unsurprisingly, the holiday island did not escape unscathed from the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Israel's cooperative relied upon tourists for 80% of its income. But she has just launched a crowdfunding idea to create a new extra-large "XXXL Chichi" that draws attention to Curaçao's charms through illustrations of its most beautiful attractions - including the popular cliff jumping spot at Playa Forti - as well as native flora and fauna such as dolphins, hummingbirds and cayenne flowers. People can watch Israel and the other artists doing live painting sessions on the sculpture every Wednesday at different locations, or view the livestream.

"We will move the XXXL Chichi around the island for a year because we want to show the world how beautiful our island is," Israel said, explaining that the new Chichi will be donated to the city of Willemstad for three years after its one-year tour. "In the meantime, the crowdfunding helps get our painters back to work and allows us to hire new painters, so we can provide an extra income to the local community that really needs it."

Angelique Martina is one of Israel's Curaçaoan associates who paints Chichis (Credit: Sarah Harvey)

Angelique Martina, a Curaçaoan artist who has been making Chichis with Israel for several years, is also a firm believer in the importance of the figures as a symbol of female strength. "For me, the Chichi sculptures are all the members of the family who are strong women. We are smart, we can work hard, we take care of our children, we take responsibility - we're great!" Martina said.

"Lately, there is a lot of talk about body positivity. The Chichis help with this because they prove the shape of the body has nothing to do with the soul - how you feel, how happy you are, how important you are, and how hard you are working. For me, the sculptures show that women are truly amazing. We come in all shapes and sizes, and with all the colours and happiness in the world."

--
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It's impossible to travel around the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao without falling in love with the affectionate-looking, plus-sized Mama (mother) and Chichi (big sister) sculptures found in public squares, outside hotels and in unexpected locations around the island. Their poses - with hands outstretched in a welcoming embrace or clasped together in quiet contemplation - radiate maternalistic warmth.

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https://medium.com/createher-collective/hairfall-true-white-an-inside-look-at-the-bengali-beauty-scene-2c4573310d11
This article talks about how skin lightening, or rather whitetening is not only ideal in Bengali culture, but it's the standard. The relationship between whiteness and the body connects deeply to identity and power. Shahid writes that "darker skin is associated with poverty and working outdoors, while fair skin implies a richer, more comfortable life indoors."

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I spent this past summer in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the capital of a third-world country in South Asia. It's the fifth most densely populated city in the world and is home to the world's largest river delta.. But what comes to mind when you think of the beauty scene in Bangladesh? Do you picture ancient ayurvedic remedies passed from generation to generation? Well, while every Bengali person and their mother has their own turmeric DIYs, you might be surprised to learn that many beauty enthusiasts in...

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Hairfall & 'True White': An Inside Look at the Bengali Beauty Scene

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I spent this past summer in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the capital of a third-world country in South Asia. It's the fifth most densely populated city in the world and is home to the world's largest river delta.. But what comes to mind when you think of the beauty scene in Bangladesh?

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"The demand for this look has roots in the birth of Chinese consumerism back in the 1990s... As China has developed, local brands now want a local image, but not too local. So they've turned to models who have half-Asian, half-European looks for their brand identity." Plus, says Liu, Uighur models are Chinese and they speak Mandarin, making it a cinch for agencies to work with them. That's why he's seen a 10 percent increase in Uighur models year to year in China."

I thought this article really resonated with the idea of "mixture" that we saw in Pretty Modern. In China, beauty brands are seeking to cultivate a national image that is not white but also not too Asian.

- Alan

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Speaking to a foreign journalist is usually a stressful endeavor for a Uighur in China. Uighurs belong to a Muslim ethnic minority and speak a language closer to Turkish than Chinese. These differences from China's dominant ethnicity, the Han, have been at the root of a tense and sometimes violent relationship between Uighurs and China's government.

But there's another difference many Uighurs possess that the rest of China is attracted to: their appearance.

Speaking to a foreign journalist about that is easy for Xahriyar Abdukerimabliz, a 19-year-old model from Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region in China's far northwest.

"Not to brag, but we are very good-looking," he says. "Our facial features are naturally attractive. We've got great eyebrows, big, beautiful eyes and double eyelids that weren't created by a surgeon."

Abdukerimabliz blinks, revealing his naturally creased eyelids. More and more Chinese are undergoing surgery to create a crease in their upper eyelids that about half of all East Asians are born without. Abdukerimabliz's "double eyelids" are topped with striking eyebrows, a long nose and expressive eyes that look either Asian or European, depending on his mood - or pose.

The demand for this look has roots in the birth of Chinese consumerism back in the 1990s.

"There were fewer local brands in China back then," says Max Liu, CEO of the Beijing-based modeling agency Fun Models. "All the famous brands were international, and they all used Caucasian models. As China has developed, local brands now want a local image, but not too local. So they've turned to models who have half-Asian, half-European looks for their brand identity."

Plus, says Liu, Uighur models are Chinese and they speak Mandarin, making it a cinch for agencies to work with them. That's why he's seen a 10 percent increase in Uighur models year to year in China.

"With their looks, they can easily flow through cultures," says Liu. "They can play multiple roles. If you need to cast a foreigner in a movie, they can do that while speaking flawless Chinese. They're incredibly versatile."

At a teahouse in Urumqi, Uighur model Parwena Dulkun shows off a video on her smartphone of her dancing to a local song on Walk of Fame, a talent show on CCTV, China's largest broadcaster. Later, she scrolls to another video of her in a nationwide beauty pageant.

She's busy. Her shape-shifting appearance is in such high demand that she says she has taken to turning down offers of work from some advertisers. "I was in the States recently," she says, "and after that, I went to Europe - I was in Italy, France and Switzerland - and then I had a job in Hong Kong."

And wherever she goes, she says, she gets the same response. "In France, people spoke to me in French, thinking I was French," she says. "In Italy, they spoke Italian to me. The immigration officer in Europe wouldn't stamp my Chinese passport at first because he didn't believe I was from China."

The only country where she isn't mistaken for a local is her own.

"In many Chinese cities, people think I'm a foreigner," Dulkun says, giggling.

She uses these moments to educate her countrymen.

"They try to speak English to me, and I answer in Mandarin," she says. "Cab drivers always turn around and ask me what country I'm from."

She says she smiles proudly and concludes her lesson by announcing: "I'm Chinese."
Yuhan Xu contributed research to this story.

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For Some Chinese Uighurs, Modeling Is A Path To Success

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Speaking to a foreign journalist is usually a stressful endeavor for a Uighur in China. Uighurs belong to a Muslim ethnic minority and speak a language closer to Turkish than Chinese. These differences from China's dominant ethnicity, the Han, have been at the root of a tense and sometimes violent relationship between Uighurs and China's government.

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Unlike the beauty standards of Argentina, the standards of the United States set girls up for failure. Beauty companies might advocate positive self-image and natural beauty, but they also promote an unnatural beauty ideal that seem to only further distort the perceptions women have toward themselves.

I was born into a lower-class family of Slavik descent in Buenos Aires, Argentina. At the age of three, I began to split my time between the U.S. and Argentina, returning home as often as possible.

It was in Argentina where I formed my perceptions of the world and the beauty within its confines. Yet, most of my experiences confronting the harsh realities of this world and its ideals occurred in Los Angeles.

I was eight years old when I first stood in front of a full-body mirror and stared at my thick legs, wishing they were thinner, and I was twelve years old when I was weight shamed by popular middle-school girls.

In Argentina, beauty standards are generally tailored to embrace a woman's natural shape and complexion. It's uncommon to see women walk the streets of Buenos Aires with a full-face of makeup, and it's even more uncommon to see them contouring their faces like Kylie Jenner. Plastic surgery is shunned and considered a vain effort to fool society and distort one's self.

In Argentina, beauty finds its source in reality. Girls are raised to embrace who they are, how they look, where they come from and how they think.

Every time I go back to Argentina, a switch goes off and suddenly tinted-moisturizer and mascara are enough to make me feel unjustifiably self-confident. However in California, I can hardly leave the house without feeling the need to perfect my complexion and rid myself of my insecurities with makeup, and still, it doesn't guarantee that I'll feel comfortable in my own skin.

On social media, I see girls with flawless skin and I catch myself dreaming about the day I'll have flawless skin as well, forgetting that those images have most likely gone through a screening process of editing and filters before being posted.

It's a vicious beauty cycle, in which women will want what they don't have, and pretend to have it, provoking other women to want it too. For example, some girls with light skin want tans while some women in India bleach their skin for a lighter complexion.

Even though positive self-image and natural beauty seem to be promoted virally in the U.S., natural beauty is still manipulated by those who want to flaunt their best angle or invest in lip fillers and microblading.

Lisa Eldridge, Lancôme's global creative director and renowned celebrity makeup artist, has often promoted the "no-makeup" cosmetic look. While the concept of this style has helped shift the beauty paradigm, and enhances one's natural features, it fails to resolve the self-deprecating tendencies that dominate the media.

Using makeup to mask natural features is wrong, solely because no one would feel the need to cover or distort natural features if they felt that they were accepted within society.

Weight shaming, colorism, acne and cellulite-related worries underline the harsh reality of the beauty industry that wreaks havoc on the self-esteem of men and women around the world. The reality is that beauty is standardized by unrealistic expectations and false accounts of perfection.

Bodies and faces cannot be subject to one standardized idea or image. People must not fall for these masochistic tendencies, in which many alter their behaviors and jeopardize their mental health, all in the name of striving for an unattainable ideal image.

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Column: United States impairs my Argentinian beauty standards

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Unlike the beauty standards of Argentina, the standards of the United States set girls up for failure. Beauty companies might advocate positive self-image and natural beauty, but they also promote an unnatural beauty ideal that seem to only further distort the perceptions women have toward themselves.

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Women have been discriminated against in the workplace for a long time when choosing to become mothers. They must balance their identity as a mother and as a working woman and fight against society and the people with power who discriminate against them or say they don't belong in the workplace.

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Pregnancy and maternity discrimination are nothing new. The explicit bias in the workplace against women and people with wombs who are pregnant is a longstanding fact and something we've largely been expected to put up with. In recent years there have been increasing calls to tackle this issue head on, led in large part by Joeli Brearley, who founded Pregnant Then Screwed in 2015.

When these kinds of stories fall from the headlines and new stories become the focus, it's easy to assume that something must have improved since the original story. Surely getting pregnant in 2022 won't affect your career as much as it would have done five or 10 years ago, right?

Unfortunately that is not the case. The pandemic has exposed the many holes that women fall through, work-wise, when pregnant, and the ways in which the UK government has neglected to fix them.

To get a better understanding of how pregnancy affects your career in 2022, we spoke to Joeli ahead of the paperback publication of her book, The Motherhood Penalty.

From the moment a woman gets pregnant, bias kicks in, with colleagues and with employers pigeonholing you as distracted and uncommitted to your job because you're having a baby. With the majority of women it's very subtle, like your personal development reviews suddenly going from excellent to substandard, or comments being made about whether you're going to bother returning to work, or being left out of a project or training opportunities. However, it can also be really overt discrimination, like it was for me. I told my employer that I was pregnant and the next day they sacked me by voicemail.

There's also the threat of redundancy. Lots of pregnant women find that they're up for redundancy but you don't have an ounce of protection when you're pregnant, only when you're on maternity leave. And there's really severe bullying and harassment that is often done behind closed doors - it's not documented so that you can't prove anything in court but there's a direct drip-feed effect of really nasty comments that make you feel completely worthless. We've had really hideous stories of bullying being so ruthless and so horrendous that women have gone into labour prematurely and ended up with very sick babies as a result.

Class seems to make a big difference: if you work in careers or jobs that are casual work like zero-hour contracts, they likely won't give you any more hours because you might not be able to lift heavy boxes, you've got to have risk assessments and so on. So we hear from women who are on zero-hour contracts that suddenly don't get any more hours and they feel completely unable to do anything about it. This is the same if you're self-employed - contracts can be terminated and you have fewer rights. Age makes a difference as well. If you've been in the career for a long time, or are at a senior level, you're less likely to face discrimination. Then there are other factors, like race. If you're Black or Asian, you're more likely to face discrimination than if you're white. If you're disabled you're more likely to face discrimination, if you're a single parent you're more likely to face discrimination.

There isn't enough documented data to show this but it certainly was a factor for me and lots of women that I speak to: the stress of experiencing that sort of discrimination has a real impact on your pregnancy and your physical health. After it happened to me I discovered I was having a high-risk pregnancy because my cervix had almost vanished and I could go into labour at any point. And there is research and data that shows that extreme stress of that nature means you have less favourable outcomes when you're pregnant. The link between discrimination and severe health issues for pregnant women is one that really should be improved.

Plus, the majority of women that I speak to that experience discrimination when they're pregnant, or just after they've had a baby, say that it stays with them for a really long time. The anger is still there, years later, and they're pretty traumatised by it. There isn't any research to back this up but anecdotally I would say that if you experience discrimination when you're pregnant, you're much more likely to have postnatal depression when you have the baby or when you're on maternity leave.

I hate saying you are very vulnerable because some women wouldn't say that they are vulnerable but that the circumstances make them vulnerable. However, you're completely exhausted and going through this very dramatic change in your life where everything around you is changing. The only stable thing women often have is their jobs. That's something that is how it was before you had a baby. So for that to become rocky and that to be unstable can really throw you and make you feel that you've got no stability at all, because everything's in flux.

And of course this has a long-term impact on your confidence at work. So whether you return to the same employer or a different employer, your confidence can be completely on the floor because of your experience of discrimination. Honestly, being with a baby for nine months and not being in the workplace can make you feel a bit crackers when you go back! If you've got this horrible experience of discrimination on top of that then it just really knocks you out and can take a really long time for you to feel yourself again.

Nothing has changed in terms of policy. There was a report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission in 2016, commissioned by BIS [Department for Business, Innovation and Skills], and that made 10 recommendations for policy change that needs to happen. Not a single one of those has been implemented by the government, which is really, really depressing. The only time we've seen government ministers talk about issues around maternity leave was when Suella Braverman, the attorney general, was taking maternity leave and they quickly rushed through policy so that she could have paid maternity leave for six months and patted themselves on the back for it as if that solved all the problems - completely ignoring the hundreds of thousands of women that have been pushed out of their job because they've got pregnant and no policy change was allowed to happen on that front.

Culturally, things have changed quite a lot. When this happened to me I didn't even know pregnancy and maternity discrimination was a thing. But I think now people are much more aware that it's a real sacrifice. Women are much more aware of the sacrifices they make when they're having a child and they also have the knowledge around how expensive childcare is. I think some employers are much more aware that they have to make their workplace work for women and they're making efforts to do that.

The things we're campaigning for - access to quality childcare, ringfenced paternity or parental leave, flexible working, better access to justice - are not difficult. They're easy to implement. It's just about priorities. Other countries have done this and they've demonstrated that it really works and it really just has a positive impact on equality. So it's not that we don't have the proof that these things work. It's not that they haven't been trialled in other places. It's just that our government doesn't prioritise it.

The pandemic has shone a microscope on the fact that pregnant women and mothers are ignored in policymaking. We know that if pregnant women contracted COVID they were more likely to die and the baby was more likely to be stillborn yet the government did nothing about that. It took nine months to publish any safety guidance for pregnant women in the workplace. So there were lots of pregnant women going to work without risk assessments or working in really dangerous environments who were absolutely terrified. Many were forced to choose between the health of their baby and their livelihood. Of course you had pregnant women giving birth alone and going to scans on their own. And on top of that, when the lockdown happened and the schools and childcare facilities were closed, PwC said it added 31 hours of unpaid work onto women's working week. Although the government said that you could claim furlough for childcare reasons, it wasn't mandatory and so 71% of mothers who asked to be furloughed for childcare reasons had that request rejected.

At Pregnant Then Screwed we definitely are seeing the impact of that now. We're getting so many phone calls from women who are just in a complete mess. They've managed to just survive the pandemic and it's all collapsing around them now that things have calmed down. Mental health is totally on the floor and there's loads of research to back that up as well - women who had a baby during the pandemic have really poor mental health and that is going to have an impact on their ability to do their job and progress in a career. If your mental health is not in a good place then you're not going to be able to do your job properly. That's a real worry for us.

The first thing I always say to people is that if you feel that you're experiencing any form of discrimination, document everything. Try and get everything on record where you can, get people to email you things where you can, make notes of dates and what was said and call us and we will talk you through it and help you with the next stage of the process. We also recommend that before it gets to that point, people in larger companies set up women's support groups. Get women together to talk about their experiences in the workplace and then you can lobby your employer as a group: that's so much more powerful than an individual. If you've got 10-20 women all saying the same thing together, they can't ignore you and they can't then target you like you're the problem.

Try and get allies within the organisation as well. If you're in a smaller organisation, hopefully there are women there who have also had a baby while they're in the company. Talk to them, get them on your side, get them to explain to you some of the challenges that they've experienced so that you can figure out ways to overcome those challenges as they're happening. And you know, if you get unfairly shafted, just try and get another job. There are good employers out there.

The paperback of Pregnant Then Screwed (now retitled The Motherhood Penalty) is published 3rd March 2022. You can pre-order here.

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Does Pregnancy Still Affect Your Career?

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Pregnancy and maternity discrimination are nothing new. The explicit bias in the workplace against women and people with wombs who are pregnant is a longstanding fact and something we've largely been expected to put up with. In recent years there have been increasing calls to tackle this issue head on, led in large part by Joeli Brearley, who founded Pregnant Then Screwed in 2015.

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Tā moko: Traditional Māori tattoo | 100% Pure New Zealand

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Tā moko is a unique expression of cultural heritage and identity through tattoo. Find out what the meanings are behind this art form.

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https://historyofyesterday.com/the-culture-where-men-break-into-girls-rooms-leaving-them-vulnerable-to-sexual-abuse-95eaa3b98ae3
This article talks about the tradition of breaking into womenś bedroom at night to perform sexual intercourse with or without consent. This tradition shows the objectification of women's bodies with the name of "night hunting", comparing being with a woman to hunting.

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Photo of a Bhutanese lady ( Photo source: Wikipedia)

N ight hunting, also known as "Night Crawling" or "prowling for girls", is the tradition that involves single men sneaking into the houses of single girls in order to have sexual intercourse. In some cases, it's done in groups - where a group of young men would meet up at night and sneak into different girls' rooms.

This was a cultural method of courtship some time ago - after which marriage was to be initiated. The custom was said to have been practiced in ancient times by people in some rural areas of Japan and Bhutan - the country in Eastern Himalaya that's separated by China and India.

For many years, the Bhutanese have been known to be strongly opposed to the adoption of modern technology as they hold their customs and traditions in high esteem - regardless of how bizarre these customs are to the modern man. The Night Hunting custom is one of these.

In the Bhutanese culture, the Bomena custom - as they'd call it - was practiced by both young and old men. The intention of this custom was to give the girl the right to choose her partner. So, if a man was interested in her, at night, when she was in her room, he'd climb up her window or break in through the door, or sometimes the roof, to try to persuade her to have sexual intercourse. If she gave her consent, it could lead to marriage. But if she refused, he got chased out of the house by her family.

A group of Bhutanese women at a ceremony ( Photo source: asianews.network)

Most Bhutanese houses were all similarly designed and their families all slept in the same room. So, when the man broke into the house, he had to locate the girl's bed. If he failed to do so and mistakingly climbed the wrong bed, the family of the girl would raise an alarm and throw him out of their house. But in cases where the family approved of the courtship, they'd simply excuse him or pretend to be deeply asleep so he could continue with his mission.

When he finished with the task, he was expected to immediately sneak back out of the house, and if he got caught in the house by morning, he'd have no other choice than to marry the young girl. So, most times the men were very careful with the night hunting. With the help of the girl, they escaped before dawn.

A Bhutanese girl (Photo source: Geocities.ws)

The problem with this custom was the rising case of malpractice from some of the men. As it was no longer about courtship. Rather, young men were now breaking into numerous houses and forcing themselves on girls who never gave them consent. Soon, the girls in these cultures began to feel unsafe and fearful even in their own homes.

Also, the culture contributed greatly to the high rate of teenage pregnancies, widespread sexually transmitted diseases, and single motherhood - as most times, more than one man could break into a girl's room and force himself on her. I can't even imagine what life must have been like for these girls.

Though this custom might still be practiced in some rural places, thanks to the introduction of modernization/modern education, this bizarre tradition that left girls vulnerable to sexual abuse is quickly becoming a thing of the past as the young people of such places have now adopted modern means of dating and courtship.

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The Culture Where Men Break into Girls' Rooms - Leaving them Vulnerable to Sexual Abuse

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N ight hunting, also known as "Night Crawling" or "prowling for girls", is the tradition that involves single men sneaking into the houses of single girls in order to have sexual intercourse.

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"While some might argue that current Chinese beauty standards are rooted in centuries of Chinese aesthetics, they actually reflect recent trends. Pale skin, large eyes with double folds, tall and slim nose with small nostrils, pointed chin, soft, rounded cheekbones, pouty lips — all the normative markers of so-called beauty are heavily advertised by plastic surgeons or achievable through popular photo editing apps."

A recent photo scandal sparked debate over what it means to "look Chinese." This points to China's desire to form a national identity on the basis of beauty, much like Brazil. The article also talks about how Western standards have been combined with traditional Chinese ideas of beauty.

- Alan

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RADII | Stories from the center of China's youth culture

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Last week, French luxury brand Dior became the latest in a string of foreign brands to draw heavy criticism from Chinese netizens and media over their representation of Chinese culture and people.

The latest controversy comes in response to a photograph of a woman wearing a traditional, Qing Dynasty-esque garment, staring hauntingly at the camera while holding a Lady Dior handbag. The ad has been accused of pandering to Western stereotypes of Chinese people.

The photograph was swiftly removed from the exhibit, which closed on November 23, and the photographer has posted an apology on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, humbly accepting netizens' critique.

Dior has not publicly apologized for the photo. Liu Jianna at China Daily has called for an , and while this wouldn't be the first time Dior has apologized , the brand has been mum on the issue.

Anger from Chinese netizens is understandable and valid. And critics have addressed the fact that the photo is much less glamorous than other pieces in the collection.

Many expressed concern with the of woman featured in the image: freckled, tanned (or seemed tanned due to the lighting and angle), with smaller, monolid eyes, and less pronounced features, styled to look like she lived a couple of centuries ago. paired the photo with this headline: "Is This the Asian Woman in Dior's Eyes?"

The controversy comes just months after Jing Daily lauded Dior's Guochao menswear for avoiding "cultural cliches."

Many commentators also took pains to pull out photos of the photographer herself. Yes, the photographer whose image caused such an uproar, , is herself a Chinese woman.

Born in Mongolia and raised in Beijing, Chen has been lauded as a rising star and was dubbed the "Chinese Annie Leibovitz" by . state-backed publication Global Times

She has a stunning portfolio of work, including (but far from limited to) a collection of covers she shot for i-D magazine in 2012, featuring ethnic minority women from regions throughout China.

Many of the comments on Weibo maligned her latest work, claiming she has portraits where she looks "international and attractive," while she "purposely made Chinese women ugly for international brands and publications."

There are ample historical reasons for people of Chinese heritage to be sensitive to these slights. Many racial slurs specifically attack our physical attributes: slant, panface, yellow peril.

One can argue that having a strong opinion on the matter is a newly-earned privilege. Most luxury brands didn't feature Chinese faces on their billboards and runways consistently until China started becoming one of the biggest markets for luxury goods. With purchasing power came influence, a collective voice that global brands now take seriously in matters of representation.

But there is a fine line between demanding authentic, respectful representation and bullying brands and individuals . Many of the online comments are stepping over that line.

"Chen Man's previous work titled 'The 12 Colors of China' is her most famous work. But she didn't show the beauty of Chinese women through her lens. Some look Black, some look Native American, anyway, they don't look Chinese," wrote one fashion blogger on Weibo (screengrab below).

The long-overdue shift is undoubtedly worth celebrating. But while employing this newfound influence to demand more accurate, authentic Chinese and Asian representation in the media, we shouldn't forget this: There isn't one way to look Chinese.

But there one way to be considered beautiful in China. Just ask the filters - or the plastic surgeons.

Chen Man's i-D covers feature women from some of China's 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities. And even amongst Han Chinese, from Mongolia to Sichuan to Hunan, there is variety in our features.

The question "what's the average height of a Chinese person?" is moot, because depending on the region, the average Chinese male height parallels those of the average Swiss man or the average Costa Rican man. A wide range of climates and altitudes means we also sport a wide range of skin tones.

While some might argue that current Chinese beauty standards are rooted in centuries of Chinese aesthetics, they actually reflect recent trends.

Pale skin, large eyes with double folds, tall and slim nose with small nostrils, pointed chin, soft, rounded cheekbones, pouty lips - all the normative markers of so-called beauty are heavily advertised by plastic surgeons or achievable through popular photo editing apps.

Wild conjecture here, but does anyone else feel like these add up to something resembling Barbie or an anime character?

To be clear: plenty of Chinese people naturally sport these features, especially the Uighur ethnic minority.

Speaking to NPR in 2019, Urumqi-based model Xahriyar Abdukerimabliz stated confidently, "Not to brag, but we are very good-looking. Our facial features are naturally attractive. We've got great eyebrows, big, beautiful eyes, and double eyelids that weren't created by a surgeon."

And brag he should, he's a very handsome man. The NPR article went on to describe how, over the years, as China's consumer market evolved, local brands no longer wanted to hire white models (to give their brands a more international, and therefore 'high-end' look), so they started looking for something in between. Uighur models, with their Eurasian features and Mandarin fluency, naturally snatched up plenty of jobs.

I myself had a five-year part-time modeling career in Taipei, where I was often the only Asian face in a line-up of white (English, Estonian, Brazilian, Ukrainian) models. While growing up, magazine covers and billboards mainly featured white models and celebrities, spare a few local celebrity endorsements.

Agents and clients have tried to convince me to wear colored contact lenses, or to pretend I could only speak English, to pass me off as mixed-race - for higher compensation.

Is it any wonder that we've internalized such a skewed standard of beauty when, for decades, we've seen little to no representation of ourselves in the media?

None of this is to criticize Chinese or mixed-race people, but to point out the harm in promoting a specific set of features: pale skin, larger eyes, taller nose, softer bone structure. This is what's considered 'beautiful' in most of East Asia.

The features that have been so heavily criticized, the same that have drawn such ire from Chinese state media and netizens, have been used to deny opportunities, drive up filter and editing usage, and increase plastic surgery demand. Worst of all, they are employed to bully the women unfortunate enough to be featured in these controversies.

But all of these are Chinese features. There shouldn't be just one way to Chinese. So while we demand international brands to do better, let's not demean ourselves and our own in the process.

Demand better by demanding diversity. Instead of casting for features that conform to Western stereotypes, widen the net.

Many domestic Chinese fashion brands have already embraced these attitudes. NEIWAI is an excellent example of a brand that promotes inclusivity and female empowerment with the campaign "No Body is a Nobody."

If the goal is to have an authentic representation of Chinese beauty and combat international brands' preference for hiring Chinese models of a particular look, we need to demand diversity. More Chinese women should be celebrated, not less.

Bullying Chinese women into conforming to a narrow, Eurocentric standard of beauty is like pulling them out of the frying pan and into the fire. And that's not okay.
This article was updated at 2:55 PM on November 24, 2021, to clarify that Dior has not issued a public apology for Chen Man's controversial photo. The brand has, however, said that it "respects the feelings of the Chinese people." Cover image via Weibo

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Chen Man's Photo Scandal Highlights China's Warped Beauty Standards

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Last week, French luxury brand Dior became the latest in a string of foreign brands to draw heavy criticism from Chinese netizens and media over their representation of Chinese culture and people. The latest controversy comes in response to a photograph of a woman wearing a traditional, Qing Dynasty-esque garment, staring hauntingly at the camera while holding a Lady Dior handbag.

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Power and the Body

In a recent press conference in Tampa, Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis instructed students that they could take off their masks, saying, “Please take them off. Honestly, it’s not doing anything. We’ve got to stop with this Covid theater. So, if you want to wear it, fine — but this is ridiculous.” This interaction speaks to the power an individual has over their own body and the extent that others will go to control it. Everyone should have power over their own body, regardless of others' opinions.

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DeSantis, who is running for reelection this November against a field of Democratic challengers, has been a leading voice against Covid-19 restrictions and mandates for masks, vaccinations and vaccine passports. The Republican governor outlawed Florida's schools from passing local mask mandates for students, sparking a protracted battle with some of the state's largest school districts and the Biden administration over the issue.

DeSantis' supporters praised him for speaking out against masking students, something that has been a flashpoint issue for schools in Florida and beyond, while Democrats try to paint him as a callous leader for how he addressed the Tampa students at a press conference on Wednesday.

"Ron doesn't realize it's not about the masks, it's about him being an asshole," Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, a Democrat vying to become governor, wrote in a tweet.

DeSantis, though, defended his actions by pointing to recent events with Democrats, this week's State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

"Let's not forget that just 36 hours ago, Joe Biden and the radical Democrat hypocrites were parading around the Capitol without masks, and without so much as a peep from the corporate press, but suddenly permitting children to unmask is 'unacceptable,'" the campaign email reads.

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DeSantis defends scolding students over masks - and fundraises off it

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DeSantis, who is running for reelection this November against a field of Democratic challengers, has been a leading voice against Covid-19 restrictions and mandates for masks, vaccinations and vaccine passports. The Republican governor outlawed Florida's schools from passing local mask mandates for students, sparking a protracted battle with some of the state's largest school districts and the Biden administration over the issue.

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Image courtesy of Megumu

"Fair skin, slim figure and double-eyelids: these are the three conditions Japan's media expect for their public images." The Tokyo-born Australian-Japanese model and creative Megumu tells us, matter of factly, based on her experiences in the industry. "It started with my generation, and since then, pretty much only half-white half-East Asian models have been cast to model Japanese fashion. I understand it's beneficial to me, but the lack of diversity when it comes to race and body shape in this business is unbelievable."

Monolid eyes and short noses are both traits particular to East Asian people that are widely perceived locally as 'unaesthetic'. In a 2016 survey by Dove, 92% of Japanese girls between the ages of 10 and 17 stated that they are not confident in their own appearance. Out of 13 countries polled, young Japanese girls were shown to be the most prone to hate their looks. One of the primary factors behind this is surely the excessive imposition of often unobtainable beauty standards by the country's media.

In Japan's creative industries, the demand for half-white, half-East Asian models is extremely high. And although recently Japan's advertising industry has been following Western trends and becoming more aware of a focus on diversity, the bias towards Western looks is still strong. "I'm also getting tired of these fake pro-diversity ads," Megumu says. "It's just smug businesses and creators from the industry thinking 'that'll show 'em!' I want this business to become fair to all models, and not just a one-time ad because of some movement."

Having represented herself as a model since she was a teenager, last year Megumu signed to Japan's NUMBER EIGHT agency. "I've worked as a freelancer for a long time and thanks to that, I've been able to make a name for myself and do whatever jobs I want, without having to listen to the adults around me. It shaped my sense of independence," she says. "But I realised that negotiating the conditions of a job can bring about a lot of stress. I've been rejected many times from big advertising jobs just because I didn't belong to an agency - they didn't trust me. No matter how hard I tried, sometimes I just didn't get anything in return; it was quite a sacrifice."

According to Megumu, however, this experience certainly wasn't time wasted. "I don't have any regrets: I am myself because I've tried my best as a freelancer," she says. "I don't know why, but I've always thought that if you don't accomplish something all by yourself, it doesn't really count. I wanted to take a step forward as an individual." Now nearing her mid-20s, something has shifted in Megumu and she's come to another conclusion. "I've been starting to realise that if you ask for help, it doesn't automatically make you weak," she says.

As an example of her recent change of heart, she recalls the time she collaborated with the Korean brand WHY NOT US on a collection that she designed and a campaign she creative directed: "I was trying to do everything by myself, and I ended up physically and mentally too tired to go to shoots I was producing. That's when I decided to ask a friend to act as an assistant on the shoots - they'd remember all the smaller preparations that I'd completely forget. I realised that people aren't able to live completely by themselves, and understood that there's a real strength in asking for help."

With this inspiring new attitude, Megumu's immediate plan is to start a podcast or radio show. "I've always loved discussing stuff one-on-one with friends, so it'd be nice to broadcast that online. It would be like a 'secret account' almost; somewhere where I appear more 'naked' compared to on social media. One of my favourite podcasts recently is Majime ni Ero-Kaigi (Sex Talk Gone Serious). It's a show about OL s openly talking about their sex lives - it's interesting and refreshing listening to people that don't really exist around you."

Megumu's ultimate dream though, is to open her own modelling agency. "The world is changing," she says. "I want to open a modelling agency in Japan where we embrace a model's body shape and the colour of their skin: where we respect their individuality." Does she have a role model that she looks up when she envisions these dreams playing out, we wonder? "I think all women who have accomplished something are cool, but I can only be myself, not anyone else," she says. "I want to be the kind of woman who is always growing, who is always better than her previous self."

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Tokyo model Megumu wants to help diversify Japan's beauty standards

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Image courtesy of Megumu "Fair skin, slim figure and double-eyelids: these are the three conditions Japan's media expect for their public images." The Tokyo-born Australian-Japanese model and creative Megumu tells us, matter of factly, based on her experiences in the industry.

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This article discusses India's relationship with colorism and "whiteness". The author shared that when she was born her grandmother had told her grandfather “A girl is born. She is dark-complexioned. You better prepare for her future.” In India, there is huge stigmatization about skin color and its relationship with class, socialization, and marriageability. Much of India's infatuation regarding fairer skin originated in the 14-20th centuries when the  Dutch, French, Portuguese, and British invaded, settled, and colonized India. "During the British Empire, skin tone prejudice became formally engrained; the colonizers kept light-skinned Indians as allies, giving them extra advantages over the rest of the “blacks.”". It was also noted that many of the lower-class citizens had darker skin due to hard labor in the sun. This further perpetuated "Whiteness" as lighter skin indicated white-collar jobs and thus higher status/class.

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Illustrations by Srishti Guptaroy for BRIGHT Magazine

W hen I was born, my paternal grandmother wrote a letter to my maternal grandfather: "A girl is born. She is dark complexioned. You better prepare for her future."

It is not clear if my grandfather was offended by the doomsday prophecy for the dark-skinned me, or if he just wanted to win the upper hand. He wrote back to her, "Those who think [her future is bleak] should look at their faces in a dirty puddle." His response created a rift between my paternal and maternal family that has never healed.

I grew up in north India in the 1990s. My Brahmin family was full of government servants who were still carrying the colonial white man's burden of racial prejudices and superiority complexes. Growing up in the close proximity of a large extended family, I was the only dark child. " Kaali-kaluti, baigan looti / Blacky-black smeared, she robbed the color of an eggplant," my cousins would taunt when they wanted to have a laugh at my expense. I laughed along with them, eager to fit in.

My skin color was particularly concerning to my mother, since we were an upper-caste Brahmin family. Anytime someone would call me dark, my fair-skinned mother would correct them and tell them I was "wheatish," one of the many euphemisms in India for brown skin. It was her way of comforting herself that her daughter was a tad bit higher in the hierarchy than truly dark people.

F Fair skin has long been part of India's national psyche. The various settlers, rulers, invaders, and colonizers who entered India starting in the 1400s were relatively light-skinned. This includes the Dutch, French, Portuguese, Mughals, and of course, the British, who were in India from the 17th century until India's independence in 1947. During the British Empire, skin tone prejudice became formally engrained; the colonizers kept light skinned Indians as allies, giving them extra advantages over the rest of the "blacks." The British East India Company even named their settlement at Fort St. George "White Town" and their Indian settlement "Black Town."

The British colonizers were able to build on India's existing caste system, a socio-economic hierarchy with origins in Hinduism but which now permeates across Indian society. The upper castes like the Brahmins and Kshatriyas were traditionally powerful (and also fair-skinned), while lower castes (including the "untouchable" Dalits) performed manual tasks and had darker complexions. I know this dichotomy intimately; growing up, my relatives would often look at me and say, "Never trust a dark-skinned Brahmin or a fair-skinned Dalit."

Kathy Russell Cole, author of the book, "The Color Complex: The Politics of Skin Color in a New Millennium," notes that many people from lower castes have darker skin because for generations, they have been subjected to hard physical labor in the sun. Since caste and class often intersect, fair skin is also perceived as being evidence of "better financial and social status of a person."

India's colorist attitudes have not gone anywhere. Politicians continue to make color-based prejudices based on geography and caste. Gendered colorism, in which dark-skinned women face particular discrimination, directs job and marriage prospects. And Indians continue to lighten their skin, using a variety of creams, bleaches, and homemade products. Is there any way to remedy India's obsession with skin color?

D During a trip to a north Indian village, an old woman walked up to me to say, "Every morning, at 5 a.m., you should drink half a cup of fresh, non-boiled cow milk. The complexion of your child-to-be will be fair." I plastered a smile on my face. I was not even pregnant. But colorism runs so deep that this was the best advice she thought to offer me.

Women have passed on similar age old "wisdom" to attain fairness for generations. "Apply gram flour, milk, and turmeric on her face daily," my mother was told when I was a kid, so I "would not look like a Madrasan anymore." Madrasan refers to a person from the southern city of Madras, now Chennai. North Indians are typically lighter skinned than South Indians, who live in a hotter climate. Colorism exacerbates this geographical divide.

Colorism also has a pervasive impact on job and marriage opportunities. Fair people are perceived as more presentable. In 2008, the state of Maharashtra sponsored 100 dark-skinned tribal girls to train as flight attendants. Only eight of them were eventually recruited, that too as ground staff - likely in part due to their complexion. Similarly, the description of women in the arranged marriage market often includes skin tone shorthand like: f = fair, vf = very fair, and vvf = very very fair. (This practice is not as rampant for prospective grooms.)

Ratna Soren, a 24-year-old anthropology student from Hazaribagh, a small district in the eastern state of Jharkhand, is seen as a misfit in her family because she is still single. All her younger cousins are married. She has used Fair & Lovely since she was 4 years old. "It still hasn't changed my complexion," she says. This has elicited incessant rejections from prospective grooms. "I am seen as a burden on my family. A girl with dark complexion must have more dowry to offer if she wants to get married in India," she says, getting emotional. "My parents cannot afford it."

In some extreme cases, colorism has even taken lives. In 2014, a woman in a posh suburb of Delhi hanged herself because her husband abused her for being dark-skinned. The same year, a schoolteacher named Brototi Das set herself on fire, fed up with the constant humiliation she suffered from her family for her dark complexion. Yet another woman poisoned the food during a family function, killing five, allegedly tired of her family's taunts over her skin color. All of these women were under the age of 25.

Their ages are notable. Though colorism is often considered a colonial relic, young Indians can be just as guilty of perpetuating it. In a 2015 essay, author Neha Mishra cited a survey that asked Indians between the ages of 20-25 to describe "pretty." 71 percent of those surveyed used words such as "fair" or "light." The survey also revealed that the pressure to look fair is much higher on Indian women than men.

Color discrimination has also played a huge role in the world's most prodigious film industry. Bollywood films often feature songs that glorify fair skin and deride darker skin shades. For instance, in the 1990s film "Suhaag," the male protagonist lusts after women with fair skin and dark sunglasses. A more recent song talks about how the two lead actors' hearts start beating fast upon seeing "white white faces."

Most actors who have dominated India's film industry have been fair-skinned, particularly the women, from Madhubala in the 1960s to Kareena Kapoor and Katrina Kaif today. To make matters worse, some of these actors also make extra income by endorsing "fairness" products, further perpetuating the notion that when it comes to complexion, lighter is simply better.

"D "Dark skin has been a source of stigma for Indian women long before the arrival of globalization," say Radhika Parameswaran and Kavitha Cardoza, authors of a paper about India's obsession with light skin. "However, the intensified promotion of light-skinned beauty in advertising since the onset of economic liberalization points to the role that market forces can play in exacerbating divisions of gender, caste, region, and class."

India's skin whitening market is expected to achieve an annual market revenue of $720 million by 2023. It is currently dominated by Fair & Lovely, a fairness cream that was launched in 1975 and which today holds more than 50 percent market share. Fair & Lovely has long marketed itself as the savior for unmarried women to find grooms - and for married women to keep them.

Hindustan Unilever, the multinational conglomerate that produces it, has not shied away from using blatant colorism to sell its products. A controversial 1990 ad features a young Indian woman who is heartbroken when she hears her father say, "Kaash beta hota / If only I had a son." She runs to her bedroom crying, where she sees a television ad for Fair & Lovely. The advertisement cuts to the protagonist, now happy with her lighter skin, making more money, and taking her parents out to dinner. The father beams approvingly. A brazen cocktail of colorism and patriarchy, the ad was heavily criticized when it aired for shamelessly exploiting the aspirations of Indian women, and for pinning financial and romantic success on fair skin.

Recent Fair & Lovely ads do not contain this blatant misogyny, but instead drip with corporate-led feminism; they suggest fair skin as a tool for female success. You can become a pilot, a district collector, or a rich athlete by using their product. And in a bid to increase profits, they offer products to lighten other parts of Indian women. The company now sells armpit lightening cream - and even vagina lightening cream.

An estimated 60 percent of Indian women - and 10 percent of men - say they use fairness products. Alarmed by the health dangers of fairness products, the World Health Organization began to study and promote the strict regulation of these creams. It noted that mercury, a common ingredient found in skin lightening soaps and creams, can cause rashes, kidney damage, and even cancer.

Some skin lightening procedures in India include chemical peeling, laser treatment, bleaching, and fairness injections. In 2016, Shalini Verma took a three-month course to lighten her skin just before her wedding. Her picture that had been sent along with the marriage proposal was lightened by several shades through Photoshop, as is common practice. She would not meet her groom until their wedding day, and Shalini says that she didn't want to disappoint him. "He was taking me to USA, my dream country," she says. "Taking a few injections on my face, if it pleases him, is no big deal."

There are other explanations too, like choice feminism. "If I want to be fair, I should be allowed to, right? What is so Western about it?" asks Divya Bahl, a 30-year-old corporate communication executive. She undergoes chemical peels of dark spots at least four times a year. "I want to look good," she says. "So whatever it takes."

Beyond the physical risks, Kavitha Emmanuel, founder of the campaign "Dark is Beautiful," warns that color bias creates a mental health epidemic. "Western stereotypes about young people's looks, their skin color, their hair type is making young Indians struggle for their identity," Emmanuel says. "They face low self-esteem, feel bad and hopeless about themselves, and retreat into a shell."

F Fortunately, there are small signs of progress. After sustained campaigns against fairness cream ads, the Advertising Standards Council of India issued guidelines in 2014, stating that "ads should not reinforce negative social stereotyping on the basis of skin color" or "portray people with darker skin [as]...inferior, or unsuccessful in any aspect of life particularly in relation to being attractive to the opposite sex."

Akanksha Verma, a 32-year-old model based in Delhi, says she initially struggled to find assignments because of her dark skin. "I was always told that my complexion is not suited for luxury brands," she recalls. "It is only after these debates around colorism that I get to endorse luxury clothing brands."

A news anchor, who requested anonymity to protect her professional reputation, told me that she was restricted from presenting news on air for almost a decade because of her complexion. "Since the discourse [on colorism] in the last five years changed, my editors realized that I was sharper at news debates and finally let me anchor news shows," she says. "Though, the woman anchor on prime time continues to be the fair one." She says the same parameter has not applied to men. "Beautiful Indian men are supposed to be tall, dark, and handsome," she says. "Not women."

The "Dark is Beautiful" campaign has also pushed companies to change their tactics. Simran Nagpal, an advertising professional, says that in order to avoid controversy, many fairness creams are now repackaged as brightness or glow creams. "A lot of cosmetics companies, in order to project a progressive image, do not advertise their fairness products but continue to have them in their offerings," she says. "They want to at least pretend to be on the right side of things."

There have also been global campaigns like " Unfair and Lovely," which invited women to post their pictures on social media to celebrate dusky and dark skin tones.

But progress is never a straight line. In June 2017, research firm Global Industry Analysts released a report projecting that global spending on skin lightening will triple to $31.2 billion by 2024. India and China have the highest estimated growth rate. The driving force, the report says, is "the still-rampant darker skin stigma, and a rigid cultural perception that correlates lighter skin tone with beauty and personal success."

A As a dark girl who did not use bleaching or fairness products, my family thought I spent my life compensating for my "unfortunate" complexion. Whether it was doing well in school, riding a heavy power scooter (unthinkable for a teenage girl in small-town India), or being the first girl in the family to pursue higher education in another city, not having to worry about protecting my skin turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

I have been able to hold a steady career as a journalist, be financially independent, and be the first girl in my extended family to choose her own life partner - all seen as ways I have made up for not being "good looking," or more accurately, light-skinned.

My dark complexion turned out to be a ticket to freedom.

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Fair, But Not So Lovely: India's Obsession With Skin Whitening

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W hen I was born, my paternal grandmother wrote a letter to my maternal grandfather: "A girl is born. She is dark complexioned. You better prepare for her future." It is not clear if my grandfather was offended by the doomsday prophecy for the dark-skinned me, or if he just wanted to win the upper hand.

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“Thanks to our society’s fat-phobic, antiaging diet culture, much of our negative self-talk is directed at our bodies and how we look. The more negative self-talk we engage in, the less happy we are, and yet it is socially sanctioned.”
This article highlights the normalization of eating disorders and dieting in Hollywood and how it can be detrimental not only to those in Hollywood, but also those who follow celebrities and look after them.

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We Know the Dangers of Eating Disorders—So Why Are We Still Celebrating Weight Loss at Any Cost?

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“Vanderpump Rules” star Ariana Madix is among a wave of women who recently opened up about being praised for a previously unhealthy version of herself.

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https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/style/la-europe-plastic-surgery-wars-my-patients-france-live-fear-hollywood-look-1107503/
The article discusses how France's plastic surgery industry tries to steer clear of Hollywood plastic surgery, because "An actress here [France] wants to look her age but better...In LA they want to look younger. We think if a facelift shows it's a disaster," (Lepage). This applies to how pop culture can be very influential in both standards and plastic surgery, as here we see France doesn't want to be seen as having any work done, but only to obtain a youthful look.

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Though the French haven't earned a reputation over the years for being modest, when it comes to plastic surgery, they are positively demure in contrast to Angelenos. "My patients in France live in fear of the Hollywood look," says Parisian plastic surgeon Olivier Claude. "Sophie Marceau is in her 50s and looks wonderful - nobody knows what she had done. People in the U.S. think Nicole Kidman and Megan Fox look good, but we think they look overdone." Christophe Lepage, also a plastic surgeon based in Paris, adds, "An actress here [in France] wants to look her age but better: Isabelle Huppert just had a face-lift and looks healthier and more relaxed. In L.A., they want to look younger. We think if a facelift shows, it's a disaster."

Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Brent Moelleken counters that the Hollywood emphasis on a youthful appearance is a necessity, not a luxury, and that what Europeans may regard as "overdone" is merely professional maintenance.

"Actresses here are very proactive, and at the slightest sign [of aging], they get a little something done or they won't work or stay relevant," he says. "Nicole Kidman is 50, and she wouldn't be on the cover of magazines if she didn't have anything done."

Plus, in Hollywood, there is a premium placed on looking like a star, observes Zurich plastic surgeon Enrique Steiger: "European actresses want to look like Audrey Tautou or Emma Watson; in L.A., they want to look more glamorous, like Angelina Jolie."While face-lift techniques are the same on both continents, in L.A., "the approach is more dramatic: America has some of the best surgeons technically, but they go further."

According to Lepage, many French people in the entertainment industry opt for a less drastic thread-lift (from $2,500) rather than a full face-lift, while Claude maintains that French women "think wrinkles can be cute and show expression, but in L.A., they hate wrinkles." Parisian plastic surgeon Nelly Gauthier, with a clinic just off the Champs-Elysees, says Plexr - a new noninvasive treatment that uses infrared heat to lift the eyes (from $600) - is gaining popularity over less subtle surgery.

Overall, there are more nonsurgical options in Europe: "We have 30 or 40 brands of filler because we just need the CE [Conformite Europeenne] mark, which is easier to get than FDA approval," says Lepage.

Bodies, too, are more modest, especially in France. Breasts that fit into a champagne glass always have been the ideal, and a waifish form is prized over a voluptuous figure. "The average volume for implants in France is 200 to 300 ccs [of saline or silicone]; in L.A. it's 300 to 400," says Lepage.

Adds Parisian plastic surgeon Jean-Brice Duron: "The average size of [breast] prostheses in the U.S., compared to what we use in France, is almost double."

Instead of implants, says Steiger, "HD contouring, where we take small amounts of fat from some areas and inject it into breasts or other areas, is a hot new thing and gives a softer effect" (from $12,000).

But the tide seems to be turning, according to Marina del Rey plastic surgeon Grant Stevens, who has worked in France: "French women want a smaller breast size, but now Americans are moving in that direction. I call it the French effect: This year, women are downsizing, with implants removed."

All signs point to there being a parallel Hollywood effect in Europe as well, particularly in the U.K. "Where before, everyone was about slender lips and silhouettes, everyone now wants the fuller lip, a bigger bum," says London-based plastic surgeon Tijion Esho, who cites Emily Ratajkowski and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley as "lip idols," as are the Kardashians.

Esho blames social media for driving this change: "People are even bringing altered images of themselves using Snapchat or Instagram filters and saying, 'I want to look like that.'"

Esho says Meghan Markle already is a major plastic-surgery reference in the U.K.: "A lot of people want nose shapes like her - she's going to be the new princess, and how much bigger can you get than that? People are in love with her, and with her being a new royal, it dictates trends."

As for Kim Kardashian West, her biggest European legacy may be behind her: "Now, everybody is looking at nonsurgical butt lifts, the Brazilian butt lift, or BBL" (from $1,380), says Esho, who adds that minismart lipo - which melts fat using a laser rod (from $6,900) - is surging as the procedure to trim waists for that infamous hourglass figure: "Everyone wants a more dramatic change between the hip and the bottom ratio."
This story first appeared in the May 2 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

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L.A. vs. Europe Plastic Surgery Wars: "My Patients in France Live in Fear of the Hollywood Look"

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Though the French haven't earned a reputation over the years for being modest, when it comes to plastic surgery, they are positively demure in contrast to Angelenos. "My patients in France live in fear of the Hollywood look," says Parisian plastic surgeon Olivier Claude.

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https://www.nature.com/articles/palcomms201640
This connects to identity because it is talking about how women view themselves after seeing other women online with edited photos. Edited photos create a false sense of what someone should look like.

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Introduction

The female body has continuously been a battlefield of diverging concepts, regulations, values and modifications. It is seen as reproductive, sexual, insatiable, as a commodity, a place of purity, as Mary and Eve, of sin and flesh and monstrous appetites-a map of spatial, temporal and lived female experiences. The relationship between women and media representations of beauty, sex and youth have been extensively explored and critiqued by gender and feminist theorists alike (such as Susan Bordo, 1993; Amy Shields Dobson, 2007, 2011, 2014; Susie Orbach, 2009). Yet, as the age of digitized beauty progresses, alongside a growing personal capacity to technologically modify our own images as many in Western society, and other societies, now can, there is a greater need for discussion as to how this is affecting women's relationship to their bodies. This article examines women's relationship to media and cultural representations of female beauty standards and how this has filtered into the presentation of self via digitally modified images, ultimately positing that this disjuncture between body and image produces a socially collective "Digitised Dysmorphia". To briefly clarify the context of this discussion, the female material body and its transcending digitized-image are being considered in relation to specifically prescribed types of femininity within a Western, patriarchal, mainstream or "malestream", heterosexual society.

As an introductory paper intended to initially conceptualize the term "digitised dysmorphia", I will explore its relation to image-editing technology, body theory and the way in which the image materialises in place of the body to question how the digitization of one's image, an "ideal" version of an individual's appearance, has further skewed what is considered a "standard" body, particularly a standard female body. I will posit that digitized dysmorphia manifests through the digital image, as the altering of supposedly undesirable parts of the self through modifying and fixing the visual and virtual appearance of an individual's self through various apps. This is considered within the context of both collective and individual editing of the female body, using digital technology to sculpt the body's image into virtual proportions based on society's imposed standards of unattainable, unrealistic and specific types of feminine aesthetics (often narrowly modelled on stereotypical, white, slim, able-bodied Westernized aesthetics), which saturate today's culture. This article is in no way exhaustive, but merely treading initial ground to posit the term of Digitized Dysmorphia in order to begin to articulate the ever-growing experience of disparate relations between women's bodies and their digitized images.

I suggest that digitized dysmorphia exists on a spectrum with Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), but as a socially conditioned dysmorphia, shaped collectively by societal pressures, constructs of beauty and the technology presently available to attain these standards in image form. Advances in image technology have arguably further enabled and intensified this socially dysmorphic perception of female bodies through the way in which the digitally modified image has so greatly infiltrated fashion and advertising imagery, so that social perceptions of women's bodies are no longer truly based on natural (digitally unmodified, un-tampered) bodies. Nowadays, women not only feel pressured to bodily compete with socially generated beauty standards, but to compete with their own image too-in some ways the image offers the only way to attain the unattainable beauty standards. Yet, through this, women are merely perpetuating this skewed perception of what female corporeality "should" look like. Subsequently, I will posit that digitized dysmorphia manifests among women, particularly in image-driven Western culture, who see their bodies as flawed in reality, and who therefore edit their images to digitally correct what they see as "wrong", enabling the image to transcend the material, anatomical body and form a digitally reconstructed ideal self-image. Many women are trading in their material bodies for photographic copies that represent what they want to be, should be, could be, need to be within Western society. The unfortunate reality of this phenomenon is that in years to come many of us will be unable to recognize ourselves within the images created through digital modification.

However, and I stress this point, I do not intend to posit digitized dysmorphia as an exclusively negative term, loaded in the same way as BDD. Although I suggest that digitized dysmorphia stems from a negative socially constructed pressure to attain beauty standards and therefore the reasons behind this dysmorphia are negative ones which need to be addressed, the dysmorphia itself potentially has both negative and positive possibilities where women can take agency of how they are perceived, despite existing within the framework of women's beauty-oppression. The technology behind such modifications could arguably allow a level of transgression or dissidence around how an individual grapples with notions of self-representation. Yet, since the choices one is capable of making when digitizing one's dysmorphia are restricted to the prescribed beauty norms offered by software designers, perhaps such editing transgressions are already thwarted. Since the image modifications are enabled within a pre-determined criteria with only certain enhancements made possible, these image-technology specialists have still designed specific looks and advocated what one should be aiming to achieve and what should be desirable, possible and attainable.

To use Bryan Turner's term, we live within a "somatic society" ( Turner, 2008: 1) in which the body is positioned as the site where major political and personal issues are expressed, problematised and worked through. The female body has become the site of such issues pertaining to notions of beauty and body image, and how this body may be digitally, technologically reconsidered. Western culture's idealized standards of beauty are ones that can never fully be embodied by any individual. However, because of photo-editing software, such as Perfect365 that has been made accessible to the general public, many can now manipulate images of themselves to fit their image ideals, which ultimately transcend the boundaries and limitations of the physical, material body. Society as a whole has produced a dysmorphic perception of what the female body should look like. This has occurred not only through the products which weight, surgical, beauty, sex and fashion industries continuously offer to women while simultaneously putting pressure upon them to fix, alter or modify their bodies in some way, but through the technology that has been created to assist this process digitally. Nowadays, what the body cannot achieve, the image can, and this notion and the relation this particularly creates between women and their body images, are key points to this article.

Body dysmorphic disorder and the female body

First, I will outline Body Dysmorphic Disorder and the shared similarities it has to what I term "digitised dysmorphia", which is arguably created through the use of digital modification apps. Following this, through examining theories pertaining to the body and the problematic relationship many women have to their body images, I consider how digitized dysmorphia has occurred within Western Society, particularly among young women. Since the early 1980s, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, or BDD, has been gaining greater acknowledgement within the field of psychological disorders. Phillips (1998), a leading expert in BDD, outlines the commonalities found among patients with this disorder, articulating that:

In severe cases, the individual suffering from BDD experiences significant anxiety about their appearance and can develop obsessive and often compulsive habits and routines, such as continuously grooming, checking their appearance in mirrors and camouflaging the "offending" body area, for example with make-up or clothing, when out in public. These behaviours can disrupt and significantly impact the sufferer's ability to function in their day-to-day life.

During Phillips' research, she noted the statistical differences in the severity of BDD and the relation this had between men and women. She questioned the assumption that it must be more common for women to suffer from BDD than men, because of women appearing more focused on their appearance since society places a higher premium on their levels of attractiveness, stating that: "Indeed, research findings from the general population indicate more women than men are unhappy with their appearance" ( Phillips, 1998: 155). This may shed light onto why studies into mild cases of BDD often find that women are more affected than men within their research, due to the societal pressures placed upon women generally. Yet, comparatively, Phillips (1998) stated that in moderate to severe cases of BDD, "out of the several hundred people I've seen, 51% have been men". (155-156). This gender difference between mild cases and moderate to severe cases arguably demonstrates how this disorder is deemed more than an issue that has simply been societally produced by the pressure upon women to look a certain way, since men suffer from this disorder as much as women in moderate to severe cases. Subsequently, this is where digitized dysmorphia diverges from BDD. I believe digitized dysmorphia is generated by societal pressures to look a certain way, and is currently directed more towards women's than men's bodies to meet such criteria and standards.

However, with the rise in male media imagery, which now idealizes a toned, slender physique of a well-groomed male body, perhaps this will not always be the case. In fact, recent studies have begun to find that "there has been a growing preoccupation with weight and body image in men, which parallels this increased 'visibility' of the male body ..." ( Grogan, 2008: 30). Consequently, whilst society has normalized the preoccupation women perceivably have over their looks, the similar effect that increased visibility of the male body has had upon men suggests a highly influential link for both men and women between bodyimage and societal pressures upon this image-slowly body-image satisfaction or dissatisfaction is becoming more than just a women's issue. The preoccupation over one's looks has been normalized to such an extent for women that this is not seen as pathological in itself, yet interestingly, because of the increase in male media imagery, when men exhibit body-image dissatisfaction, anxiety and image concerns that mirror the preoccupation normalized for women even to a small degree, this can be perceived as pathological. This difference in societal perception not only highlights the unequal nature of prescribed gender norms, but also qualifies this preoccupation and fixation on looks as unhealthy, culturally perpetuated through the pressures induced by our idealized-image-saturated society. Ultimately however, digitized dysmorphia is still a gendered issue that I believe focuses upon women and the unattainable standards of femininity because of the amount of exposure, visibility and pressure that has been placed upon the female body to perform certain looks.

I use BDD as a comparison to digitized dysmorphia because of the way in which findings from mild cases have reflected how societal pressures currently impact women in greater ways than men, suggesting that women generally show more signs of body dissatisfaction, preoccupation with appearance matters and a social body dysmorphia of what the female body should look like. Subsequently, the sociocultural factors that play a role in mild BDD can be seen as influential in alternative forms of body dysmorphia too, whether socially or digitally experienced. Appearance matters are advertised, marketed, documented and broadcast in daily TV shows, women's magazines, fashion adverts and media images, or even the perfectly proportioned, shaped mannequins of fashion store window-displays. Studies have shown that media imagery has an influential effect on those susceptible to body dissatisfaction and dysmorphia, particularly young women who perhaps identify more often with the models displayed within such media. According to Leon Festinger's social comparison theory (1954), "we desire accurate, objective evaluations of our abilities and attitudes. When unable to evaluate ourselves directly, we seek to satisfy this need for self-evaluation through comparison with other people" ( Grogan, 2008: 118). This comparison can take place between an individual and media images too, suggesting the power media images can have over individuals, particularly young women who are most prevalently imaged within media. When an individual can see the perceived similarities and dissimilarities between their self and images of idealized, relatable bodies of similar ages, genders, ethnicities, bodies that are perceived to embody Westernized cultural standards of beauty, this comparison can create either body-image dissatisfaction or satisfaction within the individual.

Within Bodies (2009), Susie Orbach reflects upon the expanse of body-image dissatisfaction and the skewed dysmorphic relation women have to their bodies from being socially conditioned, or at least continuously told, that their bodies in their current states are never good enough and always need more work to be shaped and moulded into the ideal:

Orbach highlights how the industries play upon women's body insecurities, collectively turning a hyper-critical eye towards female bodies and all their supposed physical faults. Something can always be enhanced or modified and for every defect there is a solution, or so we are made to believe by those involved in shaping notions of beauty. Rather than being naturally beautiful in a person's own individuality, society continually prescribes a Westernized standard of beauty that unceasingly narrows, not just in waist size, but in the generic, homogenous perception of beauty it idealizes, which is often considered as white and able-bodied. Therefore, while BDD is clinically perceived as a disorder, the prevalence of social body dysmorphia, which I argue is a precursor to digitized dysmorphia, could be considered a collective phenomenon fuelled by the increasing power of beauty-related industries and the cultural norms they inscribe for female bodies. Nonetheless, this now goes further in that women are not only competing with unmodified images in the media or with each other, but with edited photo-shopped images and "digital beauties"; artificially produced digital subjectivities that proffer an ideal woman, which have ultimately enabled women's social body dysmorphia to extend into a digitized dysmorphia of how female bodies should look, can look; need to look.

When considering social norms in relation to the formation of bodies, Butler (2004) articulates how:

Physical bodies are coded and marked by certain groups and categories and therefore, the body is never a natural product. This public dimension is never in an individual's control nor exclusively through the choices they have made to present their body in a certain way. Bodies can be marked by social norms without the desire to be identified in such a way-this is especially so for women, when certain types of femininities and female aesthetics have been commodified and capitalised upon within beauty and sex industries. While social norms govern more than the individual's physical body, the performative realities of the body's aesthetic inscription which adhere to certain norms are often the way in which one can initially recognize or mis-recognize an individual's social identity. As a result, while individuals have the capacity to resist social body norms in the material world and may even attempt to resist, it is not always easy to subvert the labels which others may nevertheless seek to impose upon material bodies. Nonetheless, the digitized, dysmorphic image that proffers an alternative visualization of self may arguably highlight the more explicit, overt attempts at a subversive resistance to this external labelling. Subsequently, the ability to digitally alter one's image can provide the opportunity to modify the body-image to how one wants to be perceived by others, and even by oneself.

The pressure to be beautiful: the modified image and feminine Masquerade

After considering the public dimension of the body and the industries that shape the societal constructs of what the body should supposedly look like, this section explores the position of femininity and this societal pressure to attain certain beauty standards in relation to the technology that allows users to digitally alter their images. The notion of feminine "masquerade" was originally theorised by Joan Riviere (1929), yet later reconsidered by various theorists such as Luce Irigaray, Amelia Jones, Laura Mulvey and Mary Anne Doane, whose working theories may provide better understanding in this article's context. Doane (1982) articulated how, "the masquerade, in flaunting femininity, holds it at a distance. Womanliness is a mask which can be worn or removed" (81). In other words, femininity is never fully "owned" and embodied by women, it is a façade worn by women for men, a masquerade of what is expected of women. Irigaray (1985) sheds further light on this by defining "masquerade" as "An alienated or false version of femininity arising from the woman's awareness of the man's desire for her to be his other, the masquerade permits women to experience desire not in her own right but as the man's desire situates her" (220). This consideration of femininity is apt in situating the highly heteronormative and capitalised way in which patriarchal, Western society has manufactured women's aesthetics for the male gaze. Yet, the expectation and pressure to perform this masquerade has now extended past the reality of the body and the varying physical modifications it may undergo into the virtuality of one's photographed body-image as representative of the self.

What the body cannot achieve, the image can through apps that serve to reiterate acceptable/desirable standards of femininity, such as Skinny Camera, that says "Forget about diet and weight! Slim down, pose and look thin with Skinny camera", or Photowonder that claims to have over 100 million users in 218 countries. However, one of the most striking apps for digitizing your dysmorphia is Perfect365, which won the 2012 CES award for innovation in design and engineering, and offers to give you precise beauty by adjusting your face and make-up. The software was created and manufactured by ArcSoft, "the global leader in imaging intelligence technology" ( ArcSoft, 2015) who proudly proclaim the extent of their presence in improving images by stating "there's a great chance ArcSoft has already improved an image you've seen." ( ArcSoft, 2015). Perfect365 is also accessible as a "free makeup app for iPhone, Android, and Windows Phones" ( ArcSoft, 2015), which offers in-app purchases, however, to download it to your Windows PC costs US$49.99, which arguably blurs the boundaries further over the issue of beauty and types of femininities as commodities.

It is difficult to ascertain the percentage of female users from the software's approximated 60 million users because of the company's confidentiality and privacy policies. Nevertheless, by examining the product's advertising strategies and marketing tools, it is apparent that they have purposefully targeted their advertising for female consumption, far more than male consumption, something which is particularly evident when they highlight tools to alter and experiment with make-up and hair styles. When viewing Perfect365's main advertising page, www.perfect365.arcsoft.com, the example images that "needed correction" were exclusively female, as they were in their promotional video, which was also voiced by a woman. Additionally, the app boasts how easy it is to link the app with Facebook, Instagram and various other social networking sites in order to upload edited photos straight from your phone to an online platform. Subsequently, although this app is only specifically free (with minimal in-app purchases) to those using iPhones, Android or Windows Phones, and therefore is not accessible to everyone, in the United Kingdom alone 76% of adults own a smartphone ( Deloitte, 2015) and have the potential to download and use this app, or similar ones, at the press of a button. Technology, particularly in Western culture, has integrated with society where most restaurants, cafes, pubs and even stores and shopping centres advertise free Wi-Fi or access to paid Wi-Fi. For many this means that anytime, anyplace, they can continue to manufacture notions of ideal selves and normativity by creating digitized images-reconstructed, edited images-that can then be posted in online settings. Alongside critiquing female bodies in mirrors, we now have digitized dysmorphia: critiquing the digital image through having the choice and control to virtually modify what we dislike to create idealized selves for online identities instead.

Yet, what struck a dissonant chord was the way in which, Sean Mao, the VP of Consumer Products at ArcSoft, spoke of Perfect365, articulating that,

The selfie trend gives some sense of control back to the subject of the photograph, since the subject becomes their own object. However, "the precise makeup placement", as well as Perfect365's "pre-set templates for flattering" ( Spring Lake Equity Partners, 2014) posit a contradictory perception of the supposed control and power the user has over their images. If one is bound to adhere to a fixed criteria of enhancements, even if there are numerous possibilities, the pre-set or specified nature of such templates and tools still influences and advocates the type of image one should be aiming to achieve and what should be possible or acceptable for the edited, digitized, dysmorphic version of self. Although this app, to a certain extent, extends the liberty of creative digital self-expression, enabling the image to transcend the material body in innovative ways, the app still has limitations, guidelines and an agenda, supplying certain modes and types of feminine (or masculine) aesthetics that arguably adhere to social norms, trends and styles.

The agenda behind such technology may lie in the fact that image technology has firstly facilitated the shaping of an "ideal" beauty standard (creating the problem and the demand) and then provided the templates and tools for the general public to gain such standards (providing the solution and the supply). The use of photo-editing has been acknowledged by many theorists, particularly Sarah Grogan (2008) and her review of body theory, highlighting how,

Consequently, these types of femininity and supposed social standards of beauty are in themselves skewed, no longer based upon anatomical, material bodies, but upon the way in which the female body can be and has been manipulated by technology itself. Similarly, O'Riordan (2007) examines how "Information and communication technologies, through cyberspace, re-produce normative simulations of naturalized female bodies and this normativity is intensified through digital forms" (232). Her paper's central focus is on the mediation of natural physical female bodies through those designated as artificial physical digital images ( O'Riordan, 2007: 233). These "Digital beauties" take form through popular culture within computer games, adverts, websites, and VR scenarios to name a few and alarmingly viewers are not always aware of the difference between physically natural and artificially simulated female bodies. O'Riordan (2007) highlights how these virtual bodies almost take on an ontological status through their simulation of movement and "discursive creation that must draw on stereotypes of femininity in order to signal 'female' " (240). She concludes the analysis by articulating how these "digital beauties" contribute to how female bodies become reduced to simply "the body" in many forms of popular digital culture, "contained, mapped, inverted as a template, and re-produced as a model of how bodies 'should' be, through the power of a generalized concept of normality" ( O'Riordan, 2007: 240). And yet, Western society's booming beauty and sex industries continue to fuel this epidemic of stereotypical femininity through hyper-sexualising and aestheticising the images of female bodies, and now digital beauties, as currency and commodities to desire, obtain and perfect in any way possible. Digital technology, or at least the way in which many now use it, has enabled us to extend this beyond the material body itself; in our digitized culture, the image, rather than the material body, holds power and is a currency to bargain with. This is clearly demonstrated and exploited by the various industries pertaining to the body, such as the dietary, surgical enhancement and fashion industries, and by individuals such as Instagram stars who have marketed themselves via their body image.

The issues, concerns and social fixations on female beauty standards are unfortunately not new ones. Within The Beauty Myth (1990), Naomi Wolf highlights how societal pressures to be beautiful have gradually intensified as a backlash to feminism:

While women may presently be experiencing more social power, society has undermined women by increasingly valuing their worth by their aesthetic image, pressurizing women to focus on their bodies and standards of beauty. While women compete with men in employment, education and society, in return they are expected to adhere to feminine protocols in order to aesthetically please the male gaze within a public sphere that was originally perceived as his. Twenty-six years after Wolf's critique, this remains an issue, where image-saturated media continues to emphasize what women should be striving for with adverts such as, "Are You Beach Body Ready?" and Victoria's Secret's "Perfect Body".

As Sean Mao, VP of Consumer Products at ArcSoft, considers Perfect365 to do, digital-images perhaps allow individuals to reclaim the body as one's own in Western society's digital culture-to take control of the body's public dimension, going beyond the limitations of the material body into the alternative possibilities, as well as expectations, of digitally edited images of selves. Digital body-modifications provide an outlet for individuals to decide who and how they want to be. Rather than being governed by social norms, perhaps we have the subversive prospect of governing them. Technology enables us to construct, deconstruct and reconstruct the self to our individual specifications, on our own terms-an opportunity for multiplicity, fluidity and disguisal of the self that prior generations have never had. Therefore, the use of such technology may be seen in an alternative light as combating beauty culture's oppression by playing with its rules and boundaries. Nevertheless, most often these terms are geared towards embodying the standards pressured upon women in the material world, and the opportunity for diverse and multifarious self-expression is often quashed.

Agency and the "interpretative flexibility" of technology

In previous sections of this article, I continually return to the conflicting position of digitized dysmorphia, which I see as both a potential obstacle to women's liberation and perhaps a dysmorphia that provides a level of agency and liberation to the user in that the modified images provide a form of "negative freedom" (Berlin 1969) from bodily pressures that their material body cannot readily escape. Digitized dysmorphia is in itself a form of negative dysmorphia that has arisen due to the harmful societal pressures placed upon women's bodies to look a certain way and industries have capitalized upon this, manufacturing technology to assist this desire to attain beauty ideals. The fact that women are inclined to alter their body images, due to pressures to look a certain way, one they feel is unattainable within themselves, but is necessary to achieve in order to obtain social acceptance, is a negative, problematic, alienating and socially created relationship between women and their bodies that needs to be further addressed.

Having said this, perhaps the counter-argument is that although digitized dysmorphia is a largely negative phenomenon, shaped by prejudice and the belief that one can only attain such ideals of beauty through modifying the image of oneself, there is a certain liberation, a relief of sorts in that these technologies, while the perpetrators of such ideals, enable a person to finally embody these previously unattainable social standards and their own internal ideals of self-image. Fahs (2014) considers the Marxist notion of a freedom to and freedom from model-the freedom to do what an individual wants to do while also having the freedom from the demands of others and oppressive structures. Fahs considers the neglect of negative liberty within the narratives of the sex-positive movement that largely focused on the positive liberty, the freedom to express and expand sexual diversity, rather than the freedom from oppressive constructs of female sexuality. Similar to the politics of sexual freedom, the dualism of negative and positive liberty articulates the problematic positioning of digitized dysmorphia within the discussions of aesthetic freedom for women's bodies, their images, and women's agency and choice in these aesthetics. On the one hand, there is the need for freedom from societal pressures and unrealistic ideals inscribed upon female bodies that continue to find new ways of fashioning, dieting, surgically enhancing and digitally altering these bodies to obtain such standards. On the other hand, an individual should have the freedom to use such image-apps, fashions, diets and surgery; to choose to do what they want to do with their own bodies. Nonetheless, this positive liberty is arguably still firmly embedded and created within the confines of the oppressive pressures placed upon female bodies and therefore a false sense of liberty, where both the negative and positive liberty is ultimately negated. Theorists such as Davis (1995) have highlighted the dualism of such beauty pressures, noting that women are not ignorant to their own oppression, they see through their oppressive conditions even as they may comply with them. Women are knowledgeable and active agents who make their own body-image decisions, even if these are decisions based on a constricting range of acceptable options. The choices women make are still seen to be choices as they are undertaken, even if they are limited and defined culturally by what is societally perceived as beautiful and what is actually available to assist them to reach these standards. Davis argues that women's agency needs to be acknowledged, yet equally placed within a framework that considers women's bodies as commodities and therefore shapes the choices women may feel able to make regarding their bodies. In this regard, digitally altering one's body image is a choice, one that women have agency over, even if they are aware of the surrounding framework that restricts their self-expression.

Arguably, women may feel more control and agency within such a context of digital modification because of the ability to change one's image themselves, rather than relying on a surgeon or beauty technician, and they equally have the capacity to alter parts of themselves that perhaps cannot be accurately altered physically. Therefore, what type of online freedoms does this enablement offer to individuals who have digitally moved past their anatomical body's appearance and the supposed flaws or abnormalities they believe their bodies to have? Perhaps the editing of an individual's image may provide the freedom to express alternative selves, which conceivably buck the beauty trend and are truly individual. Yet is it naïve to suggest this, is the editing process ever as transgressive and dissident as this digital software potentially allows, since the choices one makes are always restricted by, or related to, cultural definitions of beauty? Consequently, does this modifying and editing of one's image merely demonstrate how regulated we are by social norms, and how inter-connected the virtual and material world are to the shaping of each other, whereby cyber-spaces, where we can interact with digitally modified images, simply enable us to reach normative ideals? It is questionable as to whether the "interpretative flexibility" of the technology used within the visual manifestation of digitized dysmorphia, the modified images and the dysmorphic view of self they generate provide the freedom to play with or escape labels that have been societally inscribed upon material female bodies. Does this allow for agency, expressing a more fluid, diverse or multiple form of self, or does this digitized dysmorphia simply accentuate the masquerade and disparity between digital and material realities of female bodies?

The "interpretative flexibility" of imaging software has arguably enabled individuals to take control of the "out-of-control"-the beauty standards imposed upon women-allowing for the digital reimaging of bodies and along with this the re-representation of selves, perhaps in the individual's own terms, beyond the boundaries they experience within their material bodies. Wajcman discusses technologies' "interpretative flexibility", articulating how:

Yet, the way in which these imaging apps are advertised and used by Instagram stars (people who are not famous through a traditional route but through an Instagram career) and celebrities alike, suggests that the real opportunity and possibility for control of the image often merely intensifies the desire and ability for the individual to fit their ideal self-image, based on social body norms. Digitized dysmorphia is a socially constructed condition that is enabled by digital technology, yet it stems primarily from the cultural commodification of beauty and certain types of femininity. Yet, this form of modification has been normalized almost to the point of being expected in our current beauty culture, perhaps most starkly among Instagram stars and their viewers. The repetitive societal saturation of such modified images within the media has likely normalized these aesthetics to such an extent that any mode of subversive innovation with non-traditional beautifying options was likely thwarted before these technologies even became available for public consumption.

Furthermore, one can argue that there is only so much potential for "interpretative flexibility" when certain technologies are produced with male-dominated patriarchal values, sexism and misogyny behind their creation. For example, Wajcman, (2006: 62) observes that pornography is often "designed for a predominantly male audience and reflecting their choices. Moreover, cybersex entrepreneurs were the driving force behind key technical innovations, such as interactive CD-ROM soft-ware and improved on-screen image definition". This exemplifies how the disparate power-dynamics and material resources of patriarchal and heteronormative Western society mean that while one can create a level of "interpretive flexibility" in how this technology is then used, the original intentions and marks of the makers leave traces within these technologies. Therefore, not only are we digitizing a dysmorphia bred by male-dominated patriarchal views of what women should look like, but we are also using male-dominated patriarchal technology to do so.

Similarly, Wajcman critiques the actor-network theory, a theory described by John Law as one that considers all objects, human and non-human in the natural and social worlds, to generate and be in a continuous web of relations with each other from where they are located. Consequently, there is no reality or form for anything outside the performance of these relations ( Law, 2009). Wajcman highlights an overlooked aspect of this theory in that:

Through this one can posit how man and masculine as the universal, the norm and the positive to be measured against, always finds woman and feminine to be lacking, the Other, and the negative in binary opposition. All who do not fit the standard can arguably find technological systems reproducing the same social prejudices as the offline world.

One could argue that photo-editing technology in fact requires subjects who are "not standard" to mould and be fixed into standardised individuals. Yet, similarly, this technology contains the continuing dualistic nature of "interpretative flexibility" and standardization which can be evidenced through the experience of Essena O'Neill, an 18-year-old Instagram star who recently exposed the truth of her dissonant online and offline self-images and how she became consumed by social media due to the validation of self she received via followers liking her images. The "interpretative flexibility" of imaging technology and various media platforms gave O'Neill the opportunity to promote herself in a certain way, with a type of femininity that enabled her to gain publicity, sponsorships and modelling contracts. Conversely, through a complete reconstruction of her online profile, including deleting images and re-captioning those which remained, O'Neill bravely exposed the feminine standardization of these digitally modified images, articulating the reality of her constructed image and how inauthentic she felt. She was gaining sponsorship to wear certain clothes in the photos and would take photo shoots over and over again to get the right "candid" pose and position before editing selfies for hours in order to get the perfect look, a look very much based on the normative ideals generated by the fashion and beauty industries. Rather than simply leaving social media, O'Neill decided to first re-write the captions under certain images to shed light on the mental state and perception of her material, offline self behind the perfect digitalized images and through this, the online representation of self she had created.

Although the vast majority of her pictures have now been deleted, journalists and fans have copied her heartfelt truths, including a personal video uploaded to her YouTube channel exposing the reality of her media-consumed existence. One photo caption read:

And another:

This constant option provided by technology to alter the body's image, where the image ultimately goes beyond the boundaries of the material body and the limitations or constraints the physical body may have, has both positive and negative repercussions on how we perceive ourselves both offline and online, which warrants further exploration. O'Neill's broaching of the disparate nature of online and offline realities of body image reflects the notion of feminine masquerade on a highly visible level and how alienated women have arguably become from their bodies. Nowadays, one can edit their appearance of self, electing certain parts to show to online audiences, and while the technology provided to do this may appear flexible in how users consume such apps, this technology frequently emphasizes and perpetuates certain standardizations of femininity. It thus creates a digitized dysmorphia of female bodies that merely contributes to a vicious cycle of the beauty standards expected of women and the difficulty this places on the material body's ability to resist societal norms.

"Digitized Dysmorphia" and the online and offline representations of self

While I have considered digitized dysmorphia in relation to women's body image and the societal pressures behind the desire to attain such ideals, how may the altered image be used online? The use of image modification has been discussed in relation to O'Neill's Instagram photos, yet the image can arguably be used within other online contexts, which warrant deliberation. Although there is an expansive array of CMC (Computer Mediated Communications) that now incorporate live video and audio, such as Skype, Webcams and Facetime, there are still dating sites such as Tinder, chat rooms and social networking sites, such as Myspace, Instagram and Facebook, that heavily rely upon the use of still-images and written text. Consequently, not only does digitized dysmorphia exclusively metamorphose based on the choices made within the editing process of an individual's digital image, but through the way in which these modifications may influence, and ultimately alter, an individual's online representation of self and the way people interact with them. While the use of still-images has been considered with regard to the Instagram star O'Neill, what happens when these digitally altered images are used to represent the self in the formation of online relationships? In the context of online dating sites, chat rooms and social networking sites that exclusively allow or can be used predominantly with still-images and text, 2D interaction allows users to choose to maintain an unreadable and unverifiable level of self, which is perhaps restricted and ultimately less trustworthy than the physical self and the material body language this offers. However, Whitty and Carr (2006) undertook a study that compared nonverbal offline flirting, structured on Givens' five phases of courtship, to cyber-flirting, demonstrating how we are in fact adapting to cyber-interactions with one another, finding alternative ways to incorporate the material body into cyber-relations.

When analysing how these stages, cues and codes took place in online settings, Witty and Carr focused on "how the body is presented in cyberspace-even if it is not one's 'actual' body." ( Whitty and Carr, 2006: 30). In this sense, rather than the tangible, physical body, the way in which online users reconstruct and represent their bodies takes precedence instead,

It is interesting that Whitty and Carr point out the fact that these photos may not always be the actual material body of these individuals, yet what becomes more important within online interactions is the representation of the body, the way in which the individual desires it to be presented. The use of emoticons, laughter and bringing attention to one's attractiveness or joking with a sexual undertone were other ways of expressing nonverbal flirting cues in an online setting. Therefore, the material body is still present in its reconstructed, translated form and this is necessary in order for cyberspace flirting to occur. Whitty and Carr go so far as to state that, "the reconstruction of the body is imperative to the success of many interactions over the internet." ( Whitty and Carr, 2006: 45). This suggests that whilst flirting and other online interactions have great success without the physical presence of the material body, this does not mean the material body is not incorporated and translated in some way in order for these interactions to be effective. In similar terms to Winston Churchill's well-known statement, ultimately, we shape technology and thereafter it shapes us, altering communication and ways of interacting to one another by finding alternative ways to incorporate and translate our bodies. Digitally modified images, where the user has the ability to choose their bodily representations, are perhaps just one way of achieving this.

In addition to this, Whitty and Carr found that those intentionally seeking romantic relationships by registering on online dating sites often wanted to move the online relationship offline as soon as possible in order to find out the authenticity of the individual. The analysis of research participants suggested that:

online daters do not want to waste time getting to know one another online. In fact, 65 per cent of the sample stated that they typically met their date within a week of first making contact online [...] The explanation given for meeting people so quickly included [...] a lack of trust in people's profiles, and a desire to get to know the ' real' person behind the profile as quickly as possible. ( Whitty and Carr, 2006: 127).

This contrasting approach to online cyber-relations debatably proposes that depending on the individual's intentions and the cyberspaces they choose to inhabit, the way in which technology and the digitally altered image impacts upon the person's offline or online selves can be more or less pronounced. The level of digitized dysmorphia may vary depending on the intentions of the individual in performing such alterations of self-image, whereby in this instance, the ability to form a dating-profile, in which the individual knows they are within a space where they are specifically looking to impress and attract others, can lead them to go further than "showing their best side" by altering their image into an idealized version of themselves, expanding the disjuncture between body and image. The lack of trust in people's profiles equally highlights that we are implicitly aware of the potential inauthenticity of how people may choose to digitally imagine themselves online, given that online daters often look to meet in order to disprove the pre-determined assumption that their date may not be who they say they are.

Comparatively, let us once again consider how the reality of the material body can affect the online self-image presented by individuals and the reasons one may decide to digitally modify their image, dysmorphically skewing their perception of self. Conceivably, escaping the physical body through inventing cyber-identities around digitally modified images can liberate some from the realities of their anatomical, material bodies and interactions within the physical society around them. Through examining the Instagram star O'Neill and Whitty and Carr's research on online-dating habits, one can recognize how these selves function in tandem for the individual, demonstrating how online discourses are constrained and shaped by the lived experiences of the individual within the material world and sometimes vice versa. Rather than disparate spaces, material and virtual worlds are equally fundamental to the formation of one another, having the power to influence and mould each other. Thus-far this discussion has focused on many of the negative impacts of digitized dysmorphia and merely alluded to the more liberating or subversive potentials this dysmorphia of self-image may create for users online. However, for some, the internet enables people to forge more positive relationships to themselves, as well as to others, in ways they would struggle to do in face-to-face interactions because of being shy, socially anxious or lacking social skills.

For example, when Turkle (2012) interviewed Audrey, a 16- year-old junior, within her analysis of online user activity and socializing habits, Audrey expressed how online platforms gave her the opportunity to try out certain behaviours and looks. By doing so, she could gauge the reaction of other users and therefore increase the behaviour or style, if she gained good feedback from performing herself in such a way. Likewise, when she gained negative feedback from certain behaviours and modes of self, such as when she tried being ironic or witty, she would then retreat and decrease this behaviour. Subsequently, these online platforms served as an educational tool for learning how to perform the self. Arguably, modifying an individual's look via image-technology has the potential for the same experimentation with visual identity. One can try on a new look and see what feedback they gain and whether it is the way they want to truly be perceived or not. Digitized dysmorphia is in some ways a test of how we interpret the social dysmorphia of female appearances and whether what one believes is the ideal truly suits their image.

Ultimately, this experimentation with the performance of self has a positive/negative impact for many upon their online and offline lives, where Audrey, for example, expresses how "her online avatars boost her real-life confidence" (Turkle, 2012: 192), which may be the same for those who gain positive online feedback from their modified images of self. Conversely, one must always be wary of how these online interactions can also be detrimental to self-expression, when one's creative outlet is met with cyber-bullying, misogynistic trolling or "flaming" responses. The TV movie, CyberBully (2011), articulates the detrimental impact this negative feedback can have upon an individual and their self-image, both in how they retreat from online interaction, but equally offline interaction too. While individuals can hide behind a screen during their communication with each other, the words can still hurt and psychologically affect those who suffer them more than the perpetrators may at first even realize, demonstrating how the online and offline realities of individuals can intermingle and produce both negative as well as positive effects. Subsequently, online is not immune to offline nor vice versa and both spaces have the potential to impact an individual and their body-image negatively or positively.

To conclude, the often standardised, homogenized, conventionally attractive, feminized body in Western society's current beauty culture has become a display piece, performing the culturally inscribed normative standards in order to be deemed an "acceptable" body. Women see their flaws, defects and imperfections and are told by the beauty industries that there is always a solution, a way to fix the female body that does not fit regulated beauty standards, but must be moulded into them. Yet, the addition of digital technology, which enables the digital modification of the image, arguably alters the already modified Western material body further, affecting the relationship women have to their material bodies and body-image in both positive and negative ways, intensifying the disjuncture between the body and the image further. The ability to extract oneself from the physical body could be liberating for some by removing the body prejudice often experienced in everyday lives by those who do not convey an acceptable body, transcending the limits of one's physical body. However, the necessity and pressure to alter one's image only highlights how socially coerced and pressured individuals (particularly women) are to strive for a more "perfected" image of self.

The popularity of apps aimed at perfecting the body, air-brushing and erasing the raw image in exchange for an increasingly narrow, standardising perception of female beauty that excludes, marginalizes or simply overlooks differences in race, able-bodiedness and even gender identities (whereby female transgender identities are presented with restrictive forms of femininity to adhere to), emphasizes how entrenched with homogenized, Westernized and unattainable beauty standards our image-saturated culture has become. The use of these digital tools simply presents an extension and intensification of the material world's gendered aesthetic contradictions and inequalities, exposing the pressures and extent to which femininity has been commodified and how the photoshopping of models' images within the media and advertising, as well as the use of digital beauties has hyper-idealized expectations of feminine aesthetics. The playing field has been levelled by enabling widespread public access to such technology, to those who have the money or gadgets to download these apps, allowing us to compete with better odds. Yet, the reality that such competition and necessity to reach such beauty standards is becoming so entrenched as to warrant the use of digital modification, and is creating pressure not only for the physical body, but the image too, is arguably quite alarming and needs further consideration. Depending on the perspective, we suffer from, or flourish through, digitized dysmorphia, either to make the best of commonplace aesthetic oppression or to liberate oneself from the shackles of the physical body, enabling the individual to transcend the boundaries of their material bodies and the oppressive reality of unattainable beauty standards.

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How to cite this article: Coy-Dibley I (2016) "Digitised dysmorphia" of the female body: the re/disfigurement of the image. Palgrave Communications. 2:16040 doi: 10.1057/palcomms.2016.40.

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Isabelle Coy-Dibley

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Coy-Dibley, I. "Digitized Dysmorphia" of the female body: the re/disfigurement of the image. Palgrave Commun 2, 16040 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2016.40
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"Digitized Dysmorphia" of the female body: the re/disfigurement of the image - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

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What has the digitization of female appearances, the altering of female bodies not only in media but individually among the general public through the use of apps, done to human sexual interactions and senses of self? Western society's booming beauty and sex industries have hyper-sexualised society, over-selling the female image as a currency and commodity of desire.

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I spent this past summer in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the capital of a third-world country in South Asia. It's the fifth most densely populated city in the world and is home to the world's largest river delta.. But what comes to mind when you think of the beauty scene in Bangladesh? Do you picture ancient ayurvedic remedies passed from generation to generation? Well, while every Bengali person and their mother has their own turmeric DIYs, you might be surprised to learn that many beauty enthusiasts in...

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Hairfall & 'True White': An Inside Look at the Bengali Beauty Scene

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I spent this past summer in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the capital of a third-world country in South Asia. It's the fifth most densely populated city in the world and is home to the world's largest river delta.. But what comes to mind when you think of the beauty scene in Bangladesh?

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https://www.ayana.com/travel-blog/balinese-tooth-filing-ceremony#:~:text=The%20tooth%2Dfiling%20ceremony%20or,least%20once%20in%20someone's%20lifetime.

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The tooth-filing ceremony or Mepandes / Metatah in Balinese language is one of the most important religious ceremonies for the Balinese people that must be performed at least once in someone's lifetime. This ceremony is symbolic for the Balinese Hindu teenagers who are ready to enter the world of maturity and adulthood.

The purpose of implementing Metatah ceremony is to remove impurities and passions in the human body and soul which are covered by the character of "Sad Ripu" so that they can discover the true nature of humans.

"Sad Ripu" are six types of enemies that exist in humans. These are:

1. Kama - Lust/Negative desire

2. Lobha - Greed

3. Krodha - Anger

4. Mada - Intoxication

5. Moha - Confusion /Foolishness

6. Matsarya - Jealously

Metatah ceremony must be assisted by a priest from the Brahmana caste and is known as "Sangging". Usually the ceremony starts in the morning and accompanied by religious prayer, special traditional Balinese song and gambelan (Gender) as well as attended by extended family.

The process begins with a Sangging offering mantra and then participants' pray to God and ancestors, for salvation so that the ritual runs smoothly. In the main ritual, the participants are asked to lie down, open their mouth and showing their teeth. The feeling ceremony of the six teeth is a symbol of filing six human natures which are considered as enemy of human being. Then the Metatah participants must put their saliva into the small coconut fruit. Three days after the ceremony the coconut fruit that contain saliva must be throw into the sea or river. All Hindu parents in Bali must provide and arrange Metatah ceremony for their children.

They say that if one doesn't do the tooth-cutting ceremony, the soul will be punished by the "Betara Yamadipati" in hell (Candragomuka Crater), which is biting the base of the bamboo petung. The implementation of this ceremony is the obligation of parents towards their children, so that the child becomes a real human being called "Dharmaning Darma-Rena Ring Putra" in Indonesian.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The tooth-filing ceremony or Mepandes / Metatah in Balinese language is one of the most important religious ceremonies for the Balinese people that must be performed at least once in someone's lifetime. This ceremony is symbolic for the Balinese Hindu teenagers who are ready to enter the world of maturity and adulthood.

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https://time.com/magazine/us/4623396/january-16th-2017-vol-189-no-3-u-s/

This article describes the fetishization of botox injections in the United States. Although botox carries many risks for patients, injections have increased substantially in recent years. And while botox has traditionally been used as a cosmetic treatment, it is not being prescribed as treatment for any number of conditions. Although it is unclear whether botox even has any benefit in treating these conditions, many Americans view botox as a "cure-all". Many Americans seem to believe that if Botox can cure wrinkles, it can cure them of other illnesses as well.

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Forget wrinkles. Botox is now being used to treat migraines, depression, twitching eyes, overactive bladders, sweaty palms and more. Some call it a marvel of medicine; others caution the risks are still unknown. Inside the exploding business and strange science of Botox

During a recent therapy session, one of Dr. Norman Rosenthal's regulars said he was considering suicide. It wasn't the first time the patient had entertained the thought, and even though he was on antidepressants and always kept up with his appointments, Rosenthal, a licensed psychiatrist with a private practice in North Bethesda, Md., wanted to offer his patient something else.

"I think you should get Botox," Rosenthal told him. "You should schedule an appointment on your way home."

It was peculiar advice coming from a shrink, but not without precedent. In 2014, Rosenthal, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine, and Dr. Eric Finzi, an assistant professor of psychiatry at George Washington School of Medicine, published a study showing that when people with major depression got Botox, they reported fewer symptoms six weeks later than people who had been given placebo injections. "I'm always on the lookout for things that are unusual and interesting for depression," says Rosenthal, who is widely considered an expert on the condition. "I've found Botox to be helpful, but it's still not mainstream."

It's also not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for depression, not that that stops doctors from prescribing it that way. Such off-label use of Botox, like that of any FDA-approved drug, is legal in the U.S. That's because once a drug has been approved by the FDA for a condition, licensed physicians are legally allowed to prescribe it for any medical issue they think it could benefit, regardless of whether it's been proved to work for that condition.
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Now, thanks in large part to off-label use, Botox-the wrinkle smoother that exploded as a cultural phenomenon and medical triumph-is increasingly being drafted for problems that go far beyond the cosmetic. The depression suffered by Rosenthal's patient is just one example on a list that includes everything from excessive sweating and neck spasms to leaky bladders, premature ejaculation, migraines, cold hands and even the dangerous cardiac condition of atrial fibrillation after heart surgery, among others. The range of conditions for which doctors are now using Botox is dizzying, reflecting the drug's unique characteristics as much as the drug industry's unique strategies for creating a blockbuster.

Botox is a neurotoxin derived from the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. Ingested in contaminated food, it can interfere with key muscles in the body, causing paralysis and even death. But when injected in tiny doses into targeted areas, it can block signals between nerves and muscles, causing the muscles to relax. That's how it smooths wrinkles: when you immobilize the muscles that surround fine lines, those lines are less likely to move-making them less noticeable. It's also why it's FDA-approved to treat an overactive bladder: Botox can prevent involuntary muscle contractions that can cause people to feel like they have to pee even when they don't.

In 2015, Botox, produced by pharmaceutical maker Allergan, generated global revenue of $2.45 billion-more than half of which came from therapeutic rather than cosmetic uses. That noncosmetic revenue is likely to balloon in the years ahead as doctors try out Botox for even more off-label uses and as Allergan conducts studies of its own.

"In the majority of these cases, it's the doctors at the front line who start using Botox off-label, and then we see the treatment of things we never expected the toxin to work for," says Min Dong, a researcher at Harvard Medical School who studies botulinum toxins in the lab and has no financial ties to Allergan. "I meet with physicians who are using the toxin everywhere-for diseases you would never know about."

The potential of the drug is enormous, but it isn't without risks. Most of the experts I spoke with agree that in small doses, Botox is safe when administered by a licensed professional, but not everyone agrees that its safety extends to all of its newer off-label uses.

In recent years, a number of high-profile lawsuits have been brought against Allergan in which plaintiffs claimed that off-label uses-for ailments including a child's cerebral-palsy symptoms, for instance, or an adult's hand tremors-resulted in lasting deleterious side effects. Still, the drug's acceptance in a growing number of doctors' offices worldwide, and its revenue growth, show no signs of slowing.

It's a remarkable arc for a drug that only a few years ago was associated with Hollywood cocktail parties where guests came for Bellinis and left with a forehead full of Botox injections. It highlights the advances that can occur when physicians, seeking new therapies for their patients, explore creative new uses for approved drugs-basically, real-world experiments that take place largely beyond the reach of federal regulators. That, in turn, raises questions about the risks of deploying medicines in ways that have not been fully vetted. But it happens all the time.

The drug has come a long way since its ability to smooth facial wrinkles was first discovered, by accident. In the 1970s, ophthalmologist Dr. Alan B. Scott started studying the toxin as a therapy for people with a medical condition that rendered them cross-eyed. "Some of these patients that would come would kind of joke and say, 'Oh, Doctor, I've come to get the lines out.' And I would laugh, but I really wasn't tuned in to the practical, and valuable, aspect of that," Scott told CBS in 2012. Scott named the drug Oculinum and formed a company of the same name in 1978. In 1989 he received FDA approval for the treatment of strabismus (the crossed-eye disorder) and abnormal eyelid spasms.

Two years later, Allergan bought Oculinum for $9 million and changed the drug's name to Botox. At the time, Allergan was primarily an ocular-care company that sold products like contact-lens cleaners and prescription solutions for dry eyes, bringing in about $500 million in annual sales. Allergan says it saw Botox as a drug for a niche population: it's estimated that 4% of people in the U.S. have crossed eyes, for which the drug was initially approved, and Allergan made about $13 million in sales from the drug by the end of 1991.

In 1998, David E.I. Pyott became CEO of Allergan. He was enthusiastic about Botox's wrinkle-reducing potential, he says, and pushed the company to conduct a series of studies on the matter. In 2002, Botox earned FDA approval for so-called frown lines-wrinkles between eyebrows-marking the first time a pharmaceutical drug was given the green light for a strictly cosmetic purpose. In 2001, the year before Botox was approved for wrinkles, it generated about $310 million in sales. By 2013, the year it was approved for overactive bladder, Allergan reported nearly $2 billion in revenue from Botox.

In just over a decade, the number of people in the U.S. receiving cosmetic botulinum toxin type A injections-mostly from Botox but also from another brand called Dysport, which commands less than 10% of the market-exploded. From 2000 to 2015, use of the toxins for wrinkles increased 759%. It became a cultural phenomenon too, spawning Botox parties, Simpsons jokes, even greeting cards. In 2008, Sex and the City character Samantha famously quipped, "I don't really believe in marriage. Now Botox, on the other hand, that works every time."

But today it's the medical uses of the drug that are the great moneymaker, in part because doctors are getting a better handle on how to use it. Botulinum toxin type A is one of seven neurotoxins produced from Clostridium botulinum. Contracting botulism is bad news: it can cause blurred vision, persistent trouble swallowing and worse. In one recent case, close to 30 people were hospitalized in Ohio in 2015 after attending a church potluck. One person died. The outbreak was ultimately attributed to a potato salad made from improperly home-canned potatoes that were harboring the bacteria. Given its level of toxicity, some countries have even explored its potential use as a bioweapon.

With Botox, however, the dose makes the poison. In medicine, it's used in such small amounts that most experts deem it safe. "It's fascinating," says Dong, the Harvard researcher. "These are the most toxic substances known to man, and they are also the most useful toxins used in medicine right now."

Botox works by temporarily immobilizing muscle activity. It does this by blocking nerve-muscle communication, which makes the injected muscles unable to contract. Paralyzing muscle activity is how Botox can steady a straying gaze, eliminate an eyelid spasm or stop signaling from nerves that stimulate sweat in a person's armpit.

Botox has also been shown to prevent chronic migraines, but there, it's unclear exactly why Botox works. (For doctors, reaching a firm understanding of how Botox prevents migraines will be tricky, since they don't know for certain what causes the severe headaches in the first place.) "There were multiple clinical trials for migraines, and most of them failed," says Dr. Mitchell Brin, senior vice president of drug development at Allergan and chief scientific officer for Botox. "It took a long time to figure out where to inject and how much." Today people who receive Botox for migraine prevention get 31 injections in different spots on their head and neck. The effects of Botox can last about three to six months depending on the condition.

The use of Botox for migraines was, like many other new applications for the drug, a kind of happy accident. A Beverly Hills plastic surgeon observed that people who got Botox for wrinkles were reporting fewer headaches, paving the way for studies about migraines. Similarly, doctors in Europe were intrigued when they noticed that their patients who got Botox for facial spasms were sweating less than usual.

"It's pure serendipity," says Brin.

Though people often associate pharmaceutical discovery with giant industrial laboratories and expansive, rigorous clinical trials, the mission creep for Botox-as with many other drugs that have received government approval for one specific use-has been driven by off-label use.

In the case of Botox, doctors who experiment off-label say they do so because they're looking for better treatment options for their patients. "In my 30 years of medical practice, Botox is one of the most impactful treatments I had ever seen," says Dr. Linda Brubaker, dean and chief diversity officer of the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, who independently studied Botox for overactive bladder before the FDA approved it for that condition in 2013.

Many of the women she saw in her practice didn't want to take drugs for the disorder over the long term. Brubaker found that about 70% of women she treated with Botox reported an average of three leaks a day, compared with the average of five leaks a day at the start of the study. "It's a very rewarding option for them," she says.

It's true that Botox's ever expanding uses have been largely physician-driven. But drugmakers are also often aware of off-label uses long before those uses are officially recognized by the FDA; that's how Botox ended up being approved for wrinkles, after all.

Some industry insiders say it's not unusual, if still legally murky, for drug-company representatives and doctors to share information with one another about the different ways an approved drug may be used. If a doctor notices that, say, a treatment for crossed eyes also "takes the lines out," he may mention it to the representative from whom he buys the drugs. That rep may share that with another of his clients, and so on.

U.S. pharmaceutical companies are prohibited from marketing a drug for unapproved purposes until they've submitted proof to the FDA of its efficacy and gotten the agency's green light. If they skip that step, they're breaking the law, and the penalties can be steep.

In 2010, Allergan pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $600 million to resolve allegations that it unlawfully promoted Botox for conditions-including headaches, pain, spasticity and juvenile cerebral palsy-that at the time were not approved by the FDA. In one of the complaints, prosecutors said that Allergan "illegally, vigorously and without any thought to the possible negative health effects to which it subjected patients, promoted off-label uses of Botox." The U.S. Department of Justice also argued that Allergan exploited on-label uses for cervical dystonia-a disorder characterized by extreme neck-muscle contractions-to "grow off-label pain and headache sales." Prosecutors also argued that Allergan paid doctors to give presentations and trainings to other physicians about Botox uses that at the time were off-label.

As part of the settlement, Allergan agreed to plead guilty to one criminal misdemeanor misbranding charge and pay $375 million. The company acknowledged that its marketing of Botox led to off-label uses of the drug. Allergan also agreed to pay $225 million to resolve civil charges alleging that the marketing of Botox had caused doctors to file false reimbursement claims, though Allergan denied wrongdoing. The company said in a statement that the settlement was in the best interest of its stockholders because it avoided litigation costs and "permits us to focus our time and resources on ... developing new treatments."

As with any drug, Allergan is legally required to make known Botox's most severe potential side effects, and in 2009 the FDA required Botox to bear a black-box warning-the strongest type of warning label given to any drug-cautioning that there was evidence the drug had been linked to serious side effects. With Botox, this includes effects spreading from the injection site to other parts of the body, causing muscle weakness, double vision and drooping eyelids.

In physicians' offices-where patients typically don't see the box the vials are packed in and therefore may be unaware of the black-box warning-the onus is on doctors to outline the potential risks with any patient choosing to try Botox for any condition, FDA-approved or not.

Ray Chester, an attorney in Austin who has represented several plaintiffs in lawsuits against Allergan, says that just about all the cases he has handled involved off-label use of the drug. In 2014 a New York couple argued that Botox, which they chose to try off-label to treat their son's cerebral-palsy symptoms, caused life-threatening complications. The family was awarded $6.75 million by a jury. Allergan, which initially planned to appeal, ended up privately settling the case with the family, and the terms of the settlement have been kept confidential.

Though the off-label use of drugs makes many experts-including some at the FDA-uncomfortable, the practice is de rigueur in medicine. It's how doctors learned that Lyrica, which is approved to treat nerve pain, can treat anxiety, and how they learned that finasteride, a drug that treats enlarged prostates, can reduce male baldness.

"A separate balancing of risks and benefits is necessary for each intended use of a drug, even once it is approved, to ensure the benefits of using the product to treat a particular disease or condition outweigh the risks," says FDA press officer Sarah Peddicord.

That's why for any off-label uses that Allergan wants to market to doctors and the public-depression, cold hands, atrial fibrillation in heart-surgery patients-the company must conduct its own clinical trials to show its efficacy and safety.

Allergan does not disclose its research-and-development budget for Botox specifically, but the company's annual R&D budget is about $1.5 billion. "This drug is not done in terms of its different applications," says Allergan's Brin. "It still has many different, exciting, meaningful opportunities for patients."

The studies using Botox for depression, like other research into Botox's off-label potential, were so encouraging that they caught the attention of Allergan. In Rosenthal and Finzi's research, 74 people with major depressive disorder were randomly assigned to receive Botox injections or a placebo. Six weeks later, 52% of the people who received Botox experienced a drop in reported symptoms, compared with 15% of the people given a placebo. "Over 50% of people responding is a high number," says Finzi. "These are people who have already tried other treatments, and they are significantly depressed."

Now Allergan hopes to replicate the findings on a larger scale, and the company is currently running its own Phase 2 clinical trial. If its results are in line with Rosenthal and Finzi's, it would be huge, paving the way for Botox to obtain official approval for the drug as a depression treatment. That wouldn't change anything for doctors, of course-they can already prescribe it off-label, and some do, with great results-but it would allow Allergan to begin marketing Botox for depression, a change that could dramatically increase its adoption and sales.

Still, Botox's use for depression raises a question that confounds some researchers. In some cases, how Botox works is evident: the toxin can block the signals between nerves and muscles, which is why it can help calm an overactive bladder, say, or a twitching eye, or the facial muscles that make wrinkles more apparent. In other cases, however (with migraines as well as with depression), scientists are flummoxed. They may have noticed that the drug works for a given condition, but they aren't always sure why-in sciencespeak, they don't know what the mechanism is.

With depression, Rosenthal and Finzi think it may relate to what's known as the facial-feedback hypothesis, a theory stemming from research by Charles Darwin and further explored by the American philosopher and psychologist William James. The theory posits that people's facial expressions can influence their mood. Lift your face into a smile and it may just cheer you up; if you can't frown or furrow your brow in worry, perhaps you won't feel so anxious or sad.

But it could be something else altogether. In 2008, Matteo Caleo, a researcher at the Italian National Research Council's Institute of Neuroscience in Pisa, published a controversial study showing that when he injected the muscles of rats with Botox, he found evidence of the drug in the brain stem. He also injected Botox into one side of the brain in mice and found that it spread to the opposite side. That suggested the toxin could access the nervous system and the brain.

"We were very skeptical," says Edwin Chapman, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, after reading Caleo's study. But in August 2016, Chapman and his graduate student Ewa Bomba-Warczak published a study in the journal Cell Reports showing similar spreading effects in animal cells in the lab. For Chapman, it explained what he was hearing anecdotally from doctors: that Botox might be influencing the central nervous system and not just the area where it's being injected.

Ironically, it's the off-target effects of Botox that have some researchers most excited. "Botox may be working in a way that is different from what we think," says Bomba-Warczak. "It may be even more complex."

Chapman and Bomba-Warczak both think Botox is safe when used correctly, but they say their inboxes quickly filled with messages after their study was published. "We were startled by the number of people who feel they were harmed by these toxins," says Chapman. "We feel these were pretty safe agents. Now it seems that for some people, they believe the toxin can sometimes cause something that may be irreversible. And that's a total mystery."

Allergan says Botox is well established as a drug and that the benefits and risks of toxins are well understood. "With more than 25 years of real-world clinical experience ... approximately 3,200 articles in scientific and medical journals, marketing authorizations in more than 90 markets and many different indications, Botox and Botox Cosmetic are [among] the most widely researched medicines in the world," an Allergan rep wrote in an emailed statement.

Even if Botox's mechanism isn't always well understood and some of its off-label uses are still unproven, interest in the drug isn't likely to wane. "Botox is a big cash cow for the physicians' practices," says Ronny Gal, an investment analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein who has watched the drug closely for more than a decade. "When I talk to physicians, they say, 'Botox is not a problem. It works and gives you the result you want.' If it works for depression and atrial fibrillation, it could be massive."

In November, the FDA held a two-day hearing asking for expert comment on the agency's rules concerning off-label drug use and marketing. Some said the practice paves the way for scientific progress and gives doctors and their patients much needed alternatives for hard-to-treat medical conditions. Others said that off-label drug use is primarily financially motivated and that it poses a serious threat to public health, particularly when drugs are used experimentally on children.

Off-label use is a topic the FDA has been eyeing for some time. "There have been many instances where unapproved uses of a drug, even when commonly accepted by the medical community, have later been shown to be unsafe or ineffective or both-sometimes with devastating consequences to public health," says the FDA's Peddicord.

It's unclear how the FDA's focus will pivot with the next Administration. President-elect Donald Trump has pledged that in his first 100 days, he would be "cutting the red tape at the FDA," and insiders have speculated that a Trump Administration would loosen the agency's already limited oversight on off-label use.

But even if the laws remain unchanged, as long as off-label uses are permitted by law, expect doctors to keep pushing the boundaries of Botox's applications-sometimes in the name of medical progress and sometimes with remarkable results.

Norman Rosenthal, the Maryland psychiatrist who recommended Botox for his suicidal patient, says he's seen the upside firsthand. The patient, persuaded by Rosenthal, did indeed get Botox shots on his forehead and between his brows. Days later, Rosenthal got an email from the patient. It was a thank-you note. Finally, the patient wrote, he was feeling better.

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During a recent therapy session, one of Dr. Norman Rosenthal's regulars said he was considering suicide. It wasn't the first time the patient had entertained the thought, and even though he was on antidepressants and always kept up with his appointments, Rosenthal, a licensed psychiatrist with a private practice in North Bethesda, Md., wanted to offer his patient something else.

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https://www.dazeddigital.com/beauty/body/article/43369/1/exploring-korea-skinny-obsession-plus-size-models-fighting-back

This article addresses South Korea's obsession over being skinny and how it is almost an societal standard at this point and how it connects to their identities.

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"If a woman weighs over 50 kg, she must be nuts" - this line told by a male protagonist of a Korean online drama Dam Naneun Jib to his girlfriend's female friend went viral after being aired last year because it touched upon a dark side of K-beauty - the obsession with skinny body types. The "50 kg myth" is an ideal created by Korean mainstream media by glorifying celebrities who openly talk about their weight being 40-something. K-pop idols often share their extreme diet regimes in order to achieve the under-50 ideal weight, with some of the most shocking ones including Big Bang's T.O.P. eating nothing but red bean jelly to lose 20 kg in 40 days or the girl group Nine Muses fitting the entire daily food intake into three tiny paper cups - also known as the "paper cup diet." Hand in hand with media-generated pressure goes the fact that most clothing in Korean department stores only comes in "free size" - equivalent to UK 8, so finding anything bigger is extremely difficult. Body positivity activist Park Ji Won says she even got turned away walking into a clothing store because the staff informed her "this is not where she should be looking."

South Korea has the second lowest obesity rate (around 5%) out of all OED countries, where the average is 19.5%. Nevertheless, a 2016 national survey revealed that over 60% Korean women and 41% men either were or wanted to go on a diet. For minors, the number was even higher for girls - 72% of them (and 36% boys) thought they needed to lose weight. According to Dr Yuli Kim, who specialises in treating patients with eating disorders, it is estimated that one out of four Korean women in their teens and twenties suffer from an eating disorder, although the number could be greater because many do not seek professional help. Celebrities are not an exception - K-pop singer IU has admitted she was diagnosed with bulimia in the past and singer Ailee opened up on the music programme Hidden Singer about her drastic diet consisting of heavy exercising and eating only 500 calories a day in order to be able to go on stage. After losing 10 kg, weighing 49 kg at 166 cm, Ailee said her body was so weak it badly affected her singing abilities and made her struggle with depression as a result.

It gets worse, celebrities who do not fit the skinny ideal frequently become targets of fat-shaming. Two years ago a then 15-year-old member of the girl group Pristin was harassed by her fans online saying she was "too chubby to be an idol" and "ruined the visuals of the group," which caused controversy given the singer's very young age. Korean comedian Lee Guk Jo has opened up about her experience on the TV show Why Women Get Mad saying, "When male comedians are fat, they get told they have the blessed looks, but female comedians get told 'If you lose weight, you won't make any money.' Then 3-4 years after they say, 'You should lose at least some weight, though." Celebrities like Lee who are considered "big" by Korean standards also often get cast for so-called mugbang - entertainment programmes where they are filmed devouring large amounts of food making exaggerated reactions.

Taylor Tak, a Korean plus-sized model now based in Australia knows a thing or two about how damaging Korean skinny-obsessed beauty standards can be - career-wise and in personal life. Tak remembers that starting at the age of 10, she spent every summer and winter vacation in "diet schools" - special programmes where she was working out and eating less than 1000 calories every day for months on end. Being "bigger" than other women, she recalls men often saw her as a fetish and would refuse to meet her in public or abandon her in the middle of the street. She only got into modelling after meeting a photographer in London who asked to take pictures of her. But returning to Korea was not easy - "in Korea, people think plus size model is a joke," she says adding that most of her work has been for clients from overseas.

But things are changing. Plus-sized model and body positivity activist Kim Gee Yang decided to fight the lack of representation of certain body types in Korean media by creating 66100 - a fashion culture magazine that celebrates diversity. "I wanted to talk about beauty that's unrelated to size, to reject the obsession with dieting and appearance and show that people should not be limited by their size. I also felt there was a need to talk about various social phenomena and news events," says Kim. She explains that Korean fashion magazines only feature plus-size models at certain times of the year like summer when most Korean women feel compelled to go on a diet, and do not necessarily create an actual conversation about body positivity. 66100 stands for clothing sizes which are the smallest to be considered "plus-size" in Korea - 66 (UK 10) for women and 100 (UK 38) for men. As well as a magazine, 66100 also doubles as an online clothing store carrying plus size clothing that shows all products on plus-size models, both of which are very rare in Korea.

Then there's Yeom Yoon Hye and Bae Kyo Hyun, who met during a plus-size model contest held by the Korean retailer J-Style. Yeom was the winner and Bae the first runner-up. As well as modelling J-Style's plus size collection, the duo have taken to social media to inspire other plus-size women to be proud of their figures. Their Instagram, which has over 100k followers to-date, showcases their vibrant fashion style, hashtagged #지금내가좋아 ("I like myself now"). "I like myself now" was even featured on national TV KBS, providing a rare chance for "bigger" Korean women to talk about their experiences on broadcast rather than be ridiculed for their weight.

When asked what the solution to Korea's body shaming issues is, Kim Gee Yang stresses the responsibility the media has to change people's perceptions. "In a society where everyone is dieting purely for the sake of their looks, we need to talk more about what kind of problems it's causing. Eating disorders, diet addiction or self-hate, these have become big issues in Korea and there needs to be a conversation about what we can do to prevent them, stop them from escalating even more and solve them." Taylor Tak adds that the culture of fat-shaming is amplified by misogyny and we need to first get rid of all the numerous restrictions regarding what a woman should look like. Although both Kim and Tak agree that the battle for body positivity in Korea seems to be a long and tough one, they and their peers do not seem to be giving up anytime soon.

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Exploring Korea's skinny obsession and the plus-size models fighting back

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"If a woman weighs over 50 kg, she must be nuts" - this line told by a male protagonist of a Korean online drama Dam Naneun Jib to his girlfriend's female friend went viral after being aired last year because it touched upon a dark side of K-beauty - the obsession with skinny body types.

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https://www.popdust.com/free-us-from-the-miu-miu-cropped-set-industrial-complex-2656786441.html

Much of the fashion industry is built upon a skinny body type. Anyone who is not thin doesn't see the same fit in clothing. For an industry that preaches inclusivity, and expression of identity, the fashion industry is extremely prejudicial.

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Every once in a while, a brand's product line holds literally every stylist captive. From the cult of House of Sunny, Paloma Wool, and other avant basic trends, to high-fashion, it-items like the Bottega padded cassette bag. Or, do you remember that week when everyone was wearing The Row. Sometimes everyone is on the same page. Each time, it reflects something about the state of the industry.
Currently, the thing everyone wants is a barely-there, cropped set from Miuccia Prada's Miu Miu brand.

Everyone's wearing it. Nicole Kidman on the cover of Vanity Fair, Zendaya in Interview Magazine, plus countless models and fashion darlings during fashion week and beyond. It's inescapable. It's iconic. But what it says about fashion? Insidious.

Paloma Elsesser is one of the most recent fashion models to be spotted in the two-piece, but one of the first non-skinny people to don the daring number.

In a recent interview in i-D, Elsesser talks about being a plus-size Black model, often flaunted around by the media. Although the article captures the moment, the fashion landscape, and the fact that despite the current parade of body positivity buzzwords nothing has changed.

Elsesser's astute observation about NYFW February 2022 and the current trendscape asserts: "Sex - or at least a voyeuristic notion of sexiness - came back to fashion in full force, not seen so brazen since the hedonistic, champagne-soaked days of a previous era. It was only inevitable, given the preceding months of cabin fever - and years of culturally-enforced puritanism. Often, it felt revivalistic, both in aesthetic and attitude; Y2K, warts and all. Bared bodies arrived on the catwalk in skimpy silhouettes that showcased glossy, svelte bodies. To put it bluntly: the runways clearly didn't reflect the conversations that a sexually-empowered generation are having about bodies and sex-positivity, but rather reverted to celebrating a singular beauty standard - one that appears as narrow-minded as it is narrow-hipped."

Elsesser confirms this idea, saying: "Last season, even though it was all about sex, it was statistically the least body diverse season in the last five years. And I was like, "But weren't y'all putting us in stretchy knit dresses for the last fifteen years anyway? So, couldn't you put us in this mesh dress now?"

Elsesser and the interviewer add fuel to the already raging fire which is fatphobia in fashion. And with the resurgence of Y2K fashion, this trend is becoming more brazen.

Low-rise jeans, stomach baring ranks, and now this? Y2K fashion was born in the aftermath of heroin-chic and in the heyday of Paris Hilton, Effie from Skins, and modern-day diet culture.

It was also the zenith of sites like Tumblr, whose influence was on more than just style, but on an entire generation's beauty standards. According to The Berkeley Beacon, "Much of the app's popular outfits and sought-after styles were centered around a degree of beauty built on unhealthy and unattainable standards. Tumblr alone played a large role in the popularization and fetishization of extreme skinniness, often to the point of disordered eating."

As niche trends from that era return, each one unlocks the memory of how fucked up that era of skinny-fetishization was. Are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past?

In a piece by In The Know, the ties between Y2K and fatphobia are revealed to be hypocritical and disgusting. "Not only are those trends hard to access for people above a size 2," they said, "but when anyone else tries them on for size, they're often seen as lazy and disheveled."

This hypocrisy is in full view in today's landscape. It's not about a specific skirtset or low-rise jeans and belly tops, it's about how we judge fashion and the value we assign to certain body types.

As Elsesser pointed out, the past year was one of the least body-diverse in fashion week history. This cannot be ignored. Despite their claims, the tastes of the industry are manifesting in Miu Miu.

Objectively, the mini skirt set is gorgeous. But why force us to watch a listless, runway parade of seemingly starving people when we'd prefer to see it above a sample size. And we should not simply meekly accept this. But we did - because it's what we remain used to. But it's time for that to change.

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Free Us From the Miu-Miu Cropped Set Industrial Complex

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Every once in a while, a brand's product line holds literally every stylist captive. From the cult of House of Sunny, Paloma Wool, and other avant basic trends, to high-fashion, it-items like the Bottega padded cassette bag. Or, do you remember that week when everyone was wearing The Row.

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https://www.vogue.com/article/fashion-and-the-body
Materiality - this article is all about challenging beauty standards and embracing female bodies as they are.

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What’s Changing—and What Isn’t—About Fashion’s Relationship to the Body?

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Even as designers embrace a more diverse runway, for models of every shape and size, body acceptance is a long and winding road. Maya Singer speaks to some of them.

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https://www.npr.org/transcripts/893006538

An NPR interview with Sabrina Strings discusses the history of fatphobia and how a search for thinness originated a few centuries ago with white women attempting to obtain bodies that were clearly different from the sometimes curvier figures of black women in order to show their social status and further differentiate themselves from enslaved women. This phobia is still incredibly prevalent today, which demonstrates the impact of perceptions of the body on society and power even hundreds of years later.

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https://story.snapchat.com/p/e16b06a0-5e60-4c3d-9aeb-5fc1a59565d8/1380091276707840
The Daily Mail capitalizes on female celebrities bodies.

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Feed your daily addiction with stories, photos, and videos around important news, celebrity gossip, lifestyle, and worldwide weirdness.

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https://historyofyesterday.com/the-bizarre-lip-plate-tradition-4150ffc4352a

I do want to note that this tradition occurs in other parts of world, like Chad, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Brazil. But according to the article, this tradition is supposed to signify a women's fertility and showcase that she's ready for marriage. The article states: "The belief is that it is a cultural ornament that symbolizes her strength and self-esteem. It is also seen as a mark of bravery and perseverance." This ties with identity, because the practice of lip plates closely ties to the way one views themselves, and how other groups view them. Specifically, that women feel better about the way they look when using lip plates (and that this appeals to other groups).

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A young lady without the lip plate. Source: Swali Africa

Lip plates or saucers are generally considered to be a "rite of passage" from adolescence to womanhood.

According to tradition, a lip plate is evidence of each woman's fertility and proof that she is ready for marriage. It is meant to show that a girl has reached marriageable age and is ready to become a wife.

Apart from marriage, the beauty of a woman is also determined by how large her lip plate is. The belief is that it is a cultural ornament that symbolizes her strength and self-esteem. It is also seen as a mark of bravery and perseverance.

A lot of self-worth is attached to lip plate because it is seen as a thing of pride. To make it more beautiful, some ladies paint their lip plates.

The use of the lip plate is also a source of distinction, particularly for the tribes that use it. It distinguishes them from other existing tribes.

As a symbol of fertility and eligibility for marriage, the lip plate is used during important occasions such as weddings and dance competitions.

Married women are also expected to insert their plates while serving their husbands.

An Old African Ethiopian Mursi Tribe Clay Lip Plate; Source: Ancient Point

Despite acknowledging this bizarre tradition, it seems quite evident that the women that wear lip plates appear uncomfortable. However, they have to do it because their tradition demands so.

At the initial stage, many women have had to endure so much pain during the piercing and cutting exercise, just right before the lip plates are fixed. Sadly, some women have carried the plates for so long that it has somehow become a burden to them.

There is also a risk of infections where ideal sanitary conditions are not met during the process of fixing the lip plates.

Eating, drinking and sleeping do not also come easy for these women because they constantly have to take out their lip plates.

These days, girls can decide if they want to wear the lip plate or not. Any lady that refuses to wear the lip plate is adjudged lazy and undeserving of a huge bride price. She will be perceived as a disobedient young lady that has refused to respect tradition.

In some cases, a refusal to use the lip plate may cause low bride price payment.

Despite its continued usage, not everyone believes that the use of lip plates was introduced to accentuate beauty. This is because of the never-ending conflicting notions that the practice of cutting and stretching the lower lips started as a way to deliberately disfigure the women of the tribe so that they would look very unappealing to slave traders.

Youtube video explaining more about the lip plate tradition; Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIq9NrH6aFw

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Lip plates or saucers are generally considered to be a "rite of passage" from adolescence to womanhood. According to tradition, a lip plate is evidence of each woman's fertility and proof that she is ready for marriage. It is meant to show that a girl has reached marriageable age and is ready to become a wife.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/world/europe/ukraine-refugee-discrimination.html

This article demonstrates how social relations connect to the body. While Ukrainians are attempting to flee from their country as Russia attacks, racism runs rampant at the borders. White Ukrainians are much more likely to be given the privilege of crossing into a different country, while Black Ukrainians are told by government workers that they aren't allowed. Clearly, even in times of crisis, people and countries alike can't seem to look past race, and as a result, greatly privilege some people over others when everyone should be able to gain safety no matter what they look like.

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As hundreds of thousands of people fled Ukraine amid Russia's invasion, some international students said they were mistreated by authorities and that Ukrainians received preferential treatment while traveling on trains and crossing borders. Credit Credit... Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

Africans who had been living in Ukraine say they were stuck for days at crossings into neighboring European Union countries, huddling in the cold without food or shelter, held up by Ukrainian authorities who pushed them to the ends of long lines and even beat them, while letting Ukrainians through.

At least 660,000 people have fled Ukraine in the five days following the start of Russia's invasion, the United Nations refugee agency U.N.H.C.R. said. Most are Ukrainians, but some are students or migrant workers from Africa, Asia and other regions who are also desperate to escape.

Chineye Mbagwu, a 24-year-old doctor from Nigeria who lived in the western Ukrainian town of Ivano-Frankivsk, said she had spent more than two days stranded at the Poland-Ukraine border crossing in the town of Medyka, as the guards let Ukrainians cross but blocked foreigners.

"The Ukrainian border guards were not letting us through," she said in a phone interview, her voice trembling. "They were beating people up with sticks" and tearing off their jackets, she added. "They would slap them, beat them and push them to the end of the queue. It was awful."

The African Union and President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria have condemned the treatment of Africans fleeing Ukraine following social media reports about border guards hindering them from leaving. Africans have also reported being barred from boarding trains headed to the border.

"Reports that Africans are singled out for unacceptable dissimilar treatment would be shockingly racist" and violate international law, the African Union said.

Ukraine's deputy interior minister, Anton Heraschenko, denied that his country was obstructing foreigners from leaving.

"Everything is simple," he said. "We are first to release women and children. Foreign men must wait for women and children to come forward. We will release all foreigners without hindrance," he added, in a written response to questions. "Same goes for blacks."

Image

Martin Mpofu, center, a student from Zimbabwe living in Ukraine, is helped to walk by his brother, Maneedi, right, and Hatim Redouani, 27, from Morocco, as they take the pedestrian border crossing into the small Polish town of Medyka. Credit... Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

Ms. Mbagwu, the Nigerian doctor, managed to reach Warsaw, but said she crossed the border only by struggling and pushing her way through.

"They would say 'only women and children can pass through,'" she said. "But they were letting some Ukrainian men through. And whenever a Black lady would try to pass, they said: 'Our women first,'" Ms. Mbagwu added.

"There was no shelter from the cold. It snowed. There was no food, water, or a place to rest. I was literally hallucinating from sleep deprivation," she said.

She said her 21-year-old brother, a medical student, had been blocked at the border since Friday, but made it into Poland after four days of trying.

Not all foreigners reported ill treatment by Ukrainian authorities at the border crossings.

A Pakistani student and an Afghan national who crossed from Ukraine into Poland on Saturday said the only problem was very long lines. And a group of Vietnamese workers crossed easily into Moldova on Monday.

Mohammed Saadaoui, a 23-year-old Moroccan pharmacy student who traveled from the Ukrainian city of Odessa to Warsaw, said he did not have any problems.

"But we took a long time to find the good border crossing where there would not be too many people," he said. "There, we were treated the same way as the Ukrainians."

The International Organization of Migration estimated that there are more than 470,000 foreign nationals in Ukraine, including a large number of overseas students and migrant workers. At least 6,000 of them have arrived in Moldova and Slovakia alone over the past five days, according to the I.O.M., and many more have crossed into Poland.

Many of the foreigners fleeing Ukraine said they were warmly welcomed in neighboring Poland, Moldova, Hungary and Romania. But Mr. Buhari, the Nigerian president, said there were reports of Polish officials refusing Nigerians entry.

Piotr Mueller, the spokesman for the Polish prime minister, denied this, saying, "Poland is letting in everyone coming from Ukraine regardless of their nationality."

Piotr Bystrianin, head of the Ocalenie Foundation, a Polish refugee charity, said that so far, "problems were on the Ukrainian side."

Mohammed Amin, a pharmacy student in Dnipro, Ukraine, calling his family in Morocco from a makeshift reception center in Przemysl, Poland. Credit... Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times

More than 300,000 people have fled from Ukraine to Poland since the Russian invasion began, according to Poland's interior ministry. Makeshift accommodation is being set up across the country, and Poles are helping Ukrainians on a massive scale, transporting them through the border, hosting them in their homes, feeding and clothing them.

On Monday, Poland's ambassador to the United Nations, Krzysztof Szczerski, said his country welcomed all foreign students who were studying in Ukraine, and invited them to continue their studies in Poland.

In the years leading up to the Russian invasion, Poland had taken a hard line on migrants trying to enter the country. The army and border guards have pushed asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa back into Belarus. Last week, aid organizations said a 26-year-old man from Yemen froze to death at that border.

Some of the foreigners arriving in Poland from Ukraine over the past few days were exhausted and freezing, according to local aid organizations on the ground. Some were taken directly to hospitals because of their injuries.

Ahmed Habboubi, a 22-year-old French-Tunisian medical student, said all foreign nationals, including Africans, Israelis, Canadians and Americans, were told to go to one gate at the Medyka crossing from Ukraine to Poland, which would only process four people every couple of hours, while Ukrainians were allowed to pass freely through another gate.

"The Ukrainian army beat me up so much I couldn't properly walk," he said in an phone interview. "When I finally managed to enter Poland, the Polish authorities took me straight to the hospital," he added.

"It was absolute chaos. We were treated like animals. There are still thousands of people stranded there."

He said that Poland had welcomed him warmly.

Dennis Nana Appiah Nkansah, a Ghanaian medical student, said he saw the same discrimination at the crossing from Ukraine into the Romanian town of Siret - one rule for Ukrainians and another for everyone else. Thousands of foreigners, including Zambians, Namibians, Moroccans, Indians and Pakistanis, were directed to one gate that was mostly closed, while another reserved for Ukrainians was open and people flowed through.

Over about three hours, four or five foreigners were allowed to leave, while there was a "massive influx" of Ukrainians crossing, he said. "It's not fair," he said, but "we understood that they have to see to their people first."

Mr. Nkansah, 31, said he had organized 74 Ghanaian and Nigerian students to pitch in and hire a bus to flee together. They reached the border early Saturday morning, he said, but it took them 24 hours to cross over.

Emmanuel Nwulu, 30, a Nigerian student of electronics at Kharkiv National University, said that when he tried to board a train in Ukraine going west toward the border, Ukrainian officials told him, "Blacks could not board the train." But Mr. Nwulu and his cousin managed to force their way aboard.

Emmanuel Nwulu, left, a 30-year-old Nigerian student at Kharkiv National University, had only lived in Ukraine for seven months when the bombing started. Credit... Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times

Taha Daraa, a 25-year-old Moroccan student in his fourth year studying dentistry in Dnipro Medical Institute, started his journey out on Saturday around noon and crossed the border into Romania in the early hours of Monday morning after days without sleep.

"We were treated so badly. We took buses to the Romanian border. It was very scary then we had to walk across the border while hearing gunshots," he said via WhatsApp. "All we did was pray. Our parents prayed as well for our safety. It's the only protection we had," he added.

"I witnessed a lot of racism."

He said he was in a group with two other Moroccans and many other Africans and he asked a Ukrainian border guard to let them through. The guard started firing his gun in the air to scare them and so they stepped back.

"I have never felt so much fear in my life," Mr. Daraa said. "He asked us to move back. Snow was falling on us. As the crowd got bigger, they gave up and let everyone through."

He said the Romanians were taking good care of him and other foreigners and providing them with food and other necessities.

"They gave us everything," he said.

Abdi Latif Dahir contributed reporting from Nairobi, Kenya, Valerie Hopkins from Kyiv, Ukraine, Ben Novak from Zahony and Beregsurany, Hungary and Aida Alami from Rabat, Morocco.

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Africans Say Ukrainian Authorities Hindered Them From Fleeing

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Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.

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https://hekint.org/2017/02/28/scarification-harmful-cultural-practice-or-vehicle-to-higher-being-2/
This article addresses body modification in a lot of other places as well, and mainly focuses on it as a general concept

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Kenneth Michael Felsenstein
Bethesda, Maryland, United States

Scarification is the act of "covering, disguising and transforming the body" 1 by creating wounds in one's own flesh in order to cause indelible markings. It is perhaps one of the most misunderstood body modification procedures done today, largely perceived in Western society as a tabooed and harmful cultural practice. 2 Superficially it would seem to be a counter-intuitive self-defeating act, for why would anyone want to deliberately maim oneself or expose oneself to something so painful and risky? Yet despite this paradox, scarification is widely practiced in some manner in almost every society and has held a strong cultural significance in many civilizations. It has been viewed as developing the virtues of self-sacrifice and bravery, providing people with an outlet for self-expression and a stronger sense of identity as well as "a sense of continuity in a rapidly changing world." 3

The act of scarification itself is painful regardless of how it is done. One common method is to cut the skin with a sharp object in whatever pattern is desired. 4 To accentuate the scars "after the incisions are made, soot, used as a sterile irritant, is often rubbed into the open wounds and the flesh pressed out, so that all the cuts are raised above the level of the surface, making the scarring even more prominent." 5 This method of accentuating the scars is known as "packing." 6 Often "a hooked thorn" 7 or fishhook is used to help raise the skin as much as possible and make the scars even more pronounced. A common alternative method is cauterization 8 or "branding, in which a heated metal stencil is used to burn the desired pattern into the skin." 9 This is said to be particularly painful, as it causes all of the skin affected to peel before healing to form a prominent scar.

As a cultural practice, scarification draws its roots from a tribal primitivism that has existed for centuries in many civilizations. Perhaps the most obvious examples of this are the scarification traditions of the tribes of Africa and the western Pacific. 10 Using rock art dating, scarification tradition in African tribes can be traced back to beyond 4000 B.C. 11 In these societies, scarification played an integral role in helping to classify individuals by age, life experiences, sexual maturity, and family and tribal groupings. Such traditional demarcations have been carried down through to the tribal societies of today, exemplified by the initiation rite for young men of the tribes of Papua New Guinea's Sepik region, where "it is believed that crocodiles created humans. The initiate's chest, back, and buttocks are sliced with a bamboo sliver to test his strength and self-discipline. The resulting scars represent the teeth marks that 'swallowed' the young man during the ceremony." 12

Many societies originally used scarification to identify their fellow tribesmen from the enemy: "The indelible markings prevented warriors, who wore little clothing, from killing members of their own tribe, and ensured corpses received the correct funeral rites." 13 When the slave trade began in Africa, scarification served to protect natives as their scars "helped to prevent the wearers being taken into slavery because traders viewed unscarred faces as a sign of good health." 14 This positive connotation of tribal scarring has persisted to this day in the country of Benin, where "people who don't have traditional scars are still considered to be the descendants of slaves, immigrants, or refugees." 15

The significance of scarification extends to many other aspects of the tribesmen's lives, spiritually, politically and sexually. The pain and personal sacrifice associated with scarring has been perceived by many tribes as a mark of one's spiritual character and "a vehicle for purging emotional and physical issues [in] preparation for a spiritual life." 16 The pain and discipline needed to tolerate it was regarded by many as a sign of mental fortitude and spiritual maturation. It has also been seen in many tribes as a cathartic purging of bad spirits from the body and a medium for connecting to higher beings and transcending to a higher state of thought through the disciplined control of the pain: "Pain and suffering, whether voluntary or forced, are used in many traditions as a form of purging in order to prepare for a spiritual life whereby one lives with one foot in the tangible universe and the other resting firmly in that spiritual realm." 17 Scientifically speaking, this heightened sense of self can be explained by the rush of endorphins (essentially opiates) from the brain that occurs when one is placed in a high-stress or high-pain situation like defacing the skin, and the ensuing "period of calmness as the opiates are reabsorbed or metabolized." 18

Many tribes believe so much in this apparent spiritual connection through the act of scarification that they incorporate it into their religious rituals. In many societies, certain types of scars bear specific religious significance. For example, in the Jewish religion male foreskins are cut off eight days after birth to symbolize the covenant between that young man and God. In this and similar situations, scarification "constitutes a visible record of incarnate religious forces and a sacred chronicle of a culture's life-crises ceremonies." 19 Certain religious scars are thought to imbue qualities on the wearer throughout life and even after life; family members who receive the same scars are said to be instilled with many of the same qualities of personal strength, and "in certain societies these marks are believed to be inscribed on the ghost or spirit after death, enabling the gods or spirits to recognize the membership and status of the deceased and to send him or her to an appropriate place of posthumous residence." 20 In these tribes, scarification plays an essential part in the quest for spiritual completion.

In tribal societies scarification also plays a role in gender identity and sexual expression. Aside from their social and political significance, the scars are considered to be beautiful elements of attraction, perceived to enhance physical appearance, and considered "erotic in their sensual connotations." 21 They are said to enhance one's features and make one more appealing to the opposite sex, the etched markings indicating a sort of increased sexual viability through one's willingness to tolerate hardship and pain, a striking robustness conducive to being a good mate and parent. In many tribal societies, "the more scars a person has, the braver they are considered to be; a woman with extensive scarification may be perceived as better able to deal with the pain of childbirth." 22 Conversely, those persons who bear no evidence of scarification are considered less appealing: "In many societies people without visible incisions are seen as anti-social and looked down on as cowards and outsiders." 23 Consequently, these "young adults who stay in their home region and don't have the traditional scars often have difficulty finding a spouse." 24 In this way, the practice of scarification becomes ever more important to success within tribal societies, serving as an emblem of personal self-sacrifice and bravery.

By contrast, scarification in Western society is viewed as "self-harming, 'mutilative,' and self-objectifying," 25 perceived as "an outdated and cruel practice" 26 "considered an actual or grievous bodily harm," 27 an "involuntary marking and denial of personhood" 28 exemplified by the branding of concentration camp inmates during the Holocaust. Yet in Western culture scarification is often deeply meaningful to those who practice it as a means of freedom and escape from societal and cultural pressures.

In her book, In the Flesh, historian Victoria Pitts suggests that the negative stigma of scarification in Western society is to some degree undeserved, being for some a means of departing from accepted societal norms and demonstrating one's individuality and refusal to conform. Pitts claims that "through the revival of non-Western, 'primitive' body rituals, body modifiers aim to demonstrate symbolic control over their bodies by experiencing and adorning them in ways prohibited by Western culture." 29 Thus one woman who had cut the incisions into herself explained it was about the "spirituality of claiming myself, accepting myself." 30 She believed that by making the cuts she was transitioning to a higher state of being, transcending normal human feeling, remaining calm through the pain of it, "similar state to that of Buddhists, when they spend hours and hours in the state of prayer. It is that place of acceptance and floating and honor." 31 Pitts described that many persons who resort to scarification have been victimized or emotionally traumatized by preying individuals or by society at large, and need to change and escape from their past. For those that partake, "ritualized marking symbolically revokes former claims on the body-those of victimization, patriarchy, and control-and so is deeply meaningful." 32 Pitts also claims that women do so out of a desire to counteract the (what they believe to be) unfair gender role expectations set by society as far as standards of beauty they must maintain: "Women body modifiers have argued that modifying the body promotes symbolic rebellion, resistance, and self-transformation, that marking and transforming the body can symbolically 'reclaim' the body from its victimization and objectification in patriarchal culture." 33 In that same vein, many people who undergo scarification see it as a means of freeing themselves from "the enormous economic, social, and political pressures surrounding one's appearance." 34 Pitts defends the right of the body modifier to this form of self-expression, saying that body marking can ultimately be "a symbolic way of transforming oneself into a stronger, more self-reliant person." 35

One example of scarification in Western society is the advent of the Modern Primitivism Movement, begun in the 1990s, a subculture dedicated to living a simpler life through the more "primitive" forms of body modification such as self-mutilation and scarification. Modern Primitives attempt to use scarification much as some tribesmen, as a form of spiritual enhancement and a means of convening with a higher level of being through the pain associated with the practice. 36 Modern Primitives "believe that pain is the key to connecting the real truth and the self in the modern world." 37

Yet scarification has its dangers: local wound infections, hepatitis B and C, HIV, and septicemia. 38 Despite its many risks, however, it has been regarded by some having potential health benefits, aiding recovery from physical trauma and immunological stress, increasing resistance to stress, and a sign of viability. For many scarification is a means of connecting to society and its culture, an opportunity to mature through discipline and self-control, and an outlet for self-expression. It clearly is not just some primitive form of barbarism, but rather an unusual way for a person to interact with society. One could actually say that in scarification there is more than meets the eye!

Notes

1. Baeke, Viviane. "Cosmetics and Culture." UNESCO Courier 49.12 (1996): 19. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. 9 Mar. 2010.

2. For the purposes of this paper, the scarification referred to here excludes the practices of tattooing and piercing.

3. Houreld, Katharine. "Tradition of Scarification Begins to Fade in Nigeria." The Washington Post 24 June 2007: A.16.

4. "The Cultural Body: Body Alterations." Exhibits Throughout the Hospital: The Medical Museum: University of Iowa Healthcare. Web. 07 Mar. 2010.

5. Ibid.

6. Oultram, S. "All Hail the New Flesh: Some Thoughts on Scarification, Children and Adults." Journal of Medical Ethics 35 (2009). P. 607.

7. Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner. "Bodily Marks." Encyclopedia of Religion. 2nd ed. P. 1003.

8. Guynup, Sharon. "Scarification: Ancient Body Art Leaving New Marks." National Geographic News 28 July 2004.

9. Oultram, S. "All Hail the New Flesh: Some Thoughts on Scarification, Children and Adults." Journal of Medical Ethics 35 (2009). P. 607.

10. Ibid. 607

11. Guynup, Sharon. "Scarification: Ancient Body Art Leaving New Marks." National Geographic News 28 July 2004.

12. Ibid.

13. Clajot, Jean-Michel. "Scarred for Life." Geographical May 2009: P. 22

14. Ibid. P. 22

15. Ibid. P. 22

16. Rush, John A. Spiritual Tattoo: a Cultural History of Tattooing, Piercing, Scarification, Branding, and Implants. Berkeley, Calif.: Frog,, 2005. P. ix.

17. Ibid. P. vii

18. Ibid. P. vii-viii

19. Turner, Victor, and Edith Turner. "Bodily Marks." Encyclopedia of Religion. 2nd ed. P. 1003.

20. Ibid. P. 1003.

21. Gröning, Karl, Ferdinand Anton, and Lorna Dale. Decorated Skin: a World Survey of Body Art. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002. P. 133

22. Clajot, Jean-Michel. "Scarred for Life." Geographical May 2009. P. 27.

23. Gröning, Karl, Ferdinand Anton, and Lorna Dale. Decorated Skin: a World Survey of Body Art. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002. P. 133.

24. Clajot, Jean-Michel. "Scarred for Life." Geographical May 2009. P. 24.

25. Pitts, Victoria. In the Flesh: the Cultural Politics of Body Modification. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. P. 49.

26. Clajot, Jean-Michel. "Scarred for Life." Geographical May 2009. P. 29.

27. Oultram, S. "All Hail the New Flesh: Some Thoughts on Scarification, Children and Adults." Journal of Medical Ethics 35 (2009). P. 607.

28. Schildkrout, Enid. "Inscribing the Body." Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004). P. 323.

29. Pitts, Victoria. In the Flesh: the Cultural Politics of Body Modification. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. P. 9.

30. Ibid. P. 60.

31. Ibid. P. 60.

32. Ibid. P. 60.

33. Ibid. P. 49.

34. Ibid. P. 51.

35. Ibid. P. 71.

36. Winge, Theresa M. "Modern Primitives." Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion. P. 421.

37. Ibid. P. 421.

38. Ludovico, L. R., and J. A. Kurland. "Symbolic or Not-So-Symbolic Wounds: The Behavioral Ecology of Human Scarification." Ethology and Sociobiology 16 (1995). P. 160.

KENNY FELSENSTEIN is the Molecular Target and Drug Discovery Fellow of the Genetics Section of the Laboratory of Cancer Biology & Genetics at the National Institutes of Health. His passion for the history of medicine began during his undergraduate career at Johns Hopkins University, where he finished with a joint degree in public health and the history of science, medicine, and technology. In particular, he is interested in the history and ethics of body modification, the history of genetics, and the history of public health practices in Western society, particularly as they pertain to the study and treatment of cancer.

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Scarification: harmful cultural practice or vehicle to higher being? - Hektoen International

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Kenneth Michael Felsenstein Bethesda, Maryland, United States Scarification is the act of "covering, disguising and transforming the body" 1 by creating wounds in one's own flesh in order to cause indelible markings. It is perhaps one of the most misunderstood body modification procedures done today, largely perceived in Western society as a tabooed and harmful cultural practice.

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Just within the first week of 2022 7 states have proposed anti-trans bills. This relates to identity and social relations. Trans youth with bills like trans-youth can't participate in sports with their gender, want to restrict gender-affirming care, and giving students to sue schools if they meet a trans student.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/least-7-states-proposed-anti-trans-bills-first-week-2022-rcna11205

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At least 7 states proposed anti-trans bills in first week of 2022

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Throughout the first week of the year, state lawmakers in at least seven states proposed laws that would limit the rights of transgender and nonbinary youths.

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7926357/

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Paul B. Tchounwou, Academic Editor

Abstract

(1) Background: Teenagers (in particular, females) suffering from eating disorders report being not satisfied with their physical aspect and they often perceive their body image in a wrong way; they report an excessive use of websites, defined as PRO-ANA and PRO-MIA, that promote an ideal of thinness, providing advice and suggestions about how to obtain super slim bodies. (2) Aim: The aim of this review is to explore the psychological impact of pro-ana and pro-mia websites on female teenagers. (3) Methods: We have carried out a systematic review of the literature on PubMed. The search terms that have been used are: " Pro" AND " Ana" OR " Blogging" AND " Mia ". Initially, 161 publications were identified, but in total, in compliance with inclusion and exclusion criteria, 12 studies have been analyzed. (4) Results: The recent scientific literature has identified a growing number of Pro Ana and Pro Mia blogs which play an important role in the etiology of anorexia and bulimia, above all in female teenagers. The feelings of discomfort and dissatisfaction with their physical aspect, therefore, reduce their self-esteem. (5) Conclusion: These websites encourage anorexic and bulimic behaviors, in particular in female teenagers. Attention to healthy eating guidelines and policies during adolescence, focused on correcting eating behavioral aspects, is very important to prevent severe forms of psychopathology with more vulnerability in the perception of body image, social desirability, and negative emotional feedback.

Keywords: eating abnormal behavior, pro-ana and pro-mia websites, female adolescents

1. Introduction

Eating disorders are multifactorial disorders, affecting about 0.3% of female teenagers; they have a prevalence included between 1.2% and 4.2%. In particular, anorexia nervosa arises during adolescence, and it can be devastating, potentially included suicidal risk [ 1, 2, 3]. A common trait among young women with eating disorders is low self-esteem, with a tendency towards depressed moods. Many factors seem to influence the development and preservation of these disorders among female teenagers. The scientific panorama shows how teenagers with eating disorders have a distorted body image, an wrong perception of their image, and therefore, are more dissatisfied with their physical aspect, in comparison to celebrities. Body image can generate feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction and this can cause the individual to make radical choices when treating his/her body [ 4, 5]. In this context, there are a variety of pro-eating disorder communities (websites), and teenagers use social media to talk about their physical aspect, their activities, and to exchange advice about weight loss; this condition supports anorexia nervosa, as the problem of weight loss becomes relevant for their lives and the solution to their health problems. In fact, according to the scientific literature, all members of these communities have reported high levels of eating disorders [ 6].

Pro-ana and pro-mia websites are virtual spaces, in which teenagers can exchange ideas about their body image and physical aspect. An uncontrolled use of these websites is common practice among teenagers, in particular among young women, and is a factor related to eating disorders. In this regard, some years ago, several authors started to include addiction to the Internet and eating disorders among problematic behaviors in adolescents. Frequent use of social networks and the possibility to follow celebrities (e.g., influencers, models, actors, and actresses) influence perception of the self and of one's own physical and psychological way of being. This happens when there is a social meeting that can influence the user's (teenager) mood. This desire to look like celebrities on social networks can promote the insurgence and/or preservation of eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. The influence of social media is growing among female teenagers with advice and tips to lose weight and showing images of thin bodies.

In line with different studies, looking at images of underweight celebrities is associated to an ideal body image and aspiration to lose weight and these conditions can promote eating disorders [ 7, 8].

Pro-ana and pro-mia websites offer feedback on people's physical aspect: teenagers receive comments on their aspect and advice on how to lose weight [ 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17]. These forums are private and the topic being dealt with is the philosophy of absolute thinness [ 18, 19, 20]. In recent years, a study by Almenara and colleagues [ 21] demonstrated that looking for sensations and disinhibition online were both associated with a higher risk of exposure to ana-mia websites for teenage women and young adults. According to Borzekowski et al. (2010), most websites (58%) contain images of celebrities with ultra slim bodies and promote an anorexic lifestyle, and teenagers visiting pro-ana websites seem to have higher levels of body dissatisfaction and eating disorders [ 10].

Bates (2015) examined the metaphors used in a pro-ana website to talk about oneself. The author has applied the Metaphor Identification Procedure to 757 text profiles and has identified four key metaphorical constructions in self-description by pro-ana members: self as space, self as weight, and improving the self and social self. Bert and colleagues (2016) found 341 pro-ana accounts on Twitter; for each account, the authors analyzed the number of followers, users' biographical information, and have studied the most used hashtags. These accounts were very popular, having 23.609 followers; users were mainly young women (97.9 percent) and teenagers. This study demonstrated that the most used hashtags were: "thinspiration", "proana", "thin15", "'ana tips". These accounts contain dangerous information about body image, eating habits, and physical aspect. Bragazzi et el. (2019) studied 402 websites and demonstrated that the media tend to spread images of models who are abnormally thin.

In a previous study, Çelik and colleagues (2015) found a positive correlation between problematic use of the Internet and approach to food, and the problematic use of the Internet predicted these approaches [ 22]. The dimension of the effect in relation to the negative impact of pro-ED websites is related to eating pathology. Several authors have counted a large number of websites promoting dysfunctional eating behaviors such as anorexia and bulimia [ 23, 24, 25, 26].

In light of the collected data in the scientific literature, the aim of this report is to explore the psychological impact of pro-ana and pro-mia websites on female teenagers.

2. Materials and Methods

Data for this systematic review have been collected in compliance with the reporting elements used for systematic reviews and meta-analysis [ 27]. PRISMA consists of a checklist aimed at making preparation and reporting of review/meta-analysis studies easier, by identifying, selecting, and critically assessing analyzed research and analyzing data from the studies included in the review.

2.1. Criteria for Eligibility

The articles have been included in the review according to the following inclusion criteria: English language, publication in peer reviewed journals, quantitative information on language processing in movement disorders, and year of publication from 2015-2020. Articles have been excluded according to title, abstract, or complete text for the processes linked to the psychological impact of pro-ana and pro-mia websites on adolescents and to irrelevance to the topic being dealt with. Further exclusion criteria were review articles, editorial comments, and case reports/series. Moreover, it was arbitrarily decided to start our research in 2015 to provide a more recent outlook on the psychological impact of pro-ana and pro-mia websites among teenagers.

2.2. Research Strategy

This systematic review has been carried out according to systematic review guidelines [ 27]. The PubMed database has been searched from 1 January 2015 to 1 January 2020, using 4 key terms related to this topic ("Pro" AND "Ana" OR "Blogging" AND "Mia"). The electronic research strategy used for PubMed is described in . The articles have been selected according to title and abstract; the entire article has been read if the title/abstract was related to the specific issue of the psychological impact of pro-ana and pro-mia websites on female teenagers and if the article potentially met inclusion criteria. Moreover, references to the selected articles have been examined in order to identify further studies which could meet the inclusion criteria.

2.3. Search Strategy and Study Selection

Overall, bibliographical research has been carried out in the PubMed database, with final research updated to January 2020. Initial research used key terms "Pro" AND "Ana" OR "Blogging" AND "Mia". The key terms used are related to processes connected to the psychological impact of pro-ana and pro-mia websites or blogs.

sums up the flow chart of the articles selected for review. Research in the PubMed database provided a total of 161 quotations; no additional studies meeting the inclusion criteria were identified when checking the reference list of the selected documents.

After checking duplicate copies, 61 records have been examined. Among these, 28 studies have been excluded, based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. After the screening, a total of 12 studies, having checked the processes connected to the psychological impact of pro-ana and pro-mia websites on female teenagers, have met the inclusion criteria and have been included in the systematic review ().

The selected studies have demonstrated the relationship between pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia websites/forums and eating behaviors; a variety of studies have dealt with this topic, in particular research on the relation between pro-ana and pro-mia websites and the desire to lose weight.

This review has examined the psychological impact of pro-ana and pro-mia websites on female teenagers. Articles have been selected according to title and abstract; the entire article has been read if the title/abstract was related to the specific issue of the psychological impact of pro-ana and pro-mia websites on female teenagers in relation to eating disorders; and if the article potentially met the inclusion criteria. Details are reported in and . Additionally, references to the selected articles have been examined in order to identify further studies which could meet inclusion criteria ().

2.4. Bias Risk among Studies

In all studies included in this review, a potential bias of the database should be considered. Only articles in English have been used, which could have compromised access to articles published in other languages.

3. Results

Most analyzed research has focused on the negative influence of websites in female teenagers with eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. These websites have seemed to offer a sense of support to teenagers vulnerable to eating disorders. These studies have explored teenagers' exposure to these websites, personal profiles related to popular access to social network, as well as pro-ana accounts on Twitter [ 18, 21, 26, 28]. Other more social aspects, linked to communication and language, have been explored in a recent study on language and information used on this website [ 29, 30, 31]. The relationship between a problematic use and abuse of the Internet and eating behaviors in adolescents has been investigated, as well as negative online support in the case of pro-anorexia websites [ 11, 14, 22]. Psychological aspects are generally explored as a potential risk of eating disorders to exacerbate symptoms of users' websites eating disorders in a sample population [ 17, 32]. Another study has explored the physical and mental state of people participating in pro-anorexia web communities [ 33]. In particular, Almenara and colleagues (2016) have demonstrated that looking for sensations and disinhibition online were both associated with a higher risk of exposure to ana-mia websites, in male and female teenagers, although some gender differences were evident. In girls, but not among boys, the older the teenager was and the higher her socioeconomic status was, the higher the chances were of being exposed to "ana-mia" websites. Bates (2015) has identified four key metaphorical constructions in self-description by pro-ana members: self as space, self as weight, and improving the self and social self. These four main metaphors represented speech strategies, both in order to create a collective pro-ana identity and to enact an individual identity as pro-ana. Bert et al. (2016) have highlighted a high number and popularity pro-anorexia groups on Twitter. These accounts contain dangerous information, especially considering the users' young ages. The investigation by Bragazzi et al. (2019) aimed at carrying out a systematic analysis of the reliability and content of websites related to anorexia nervosa in the Italian language. Çelik et al. (2015) have shown a significant positive correlation between a problematic use of the Internet and eating disorders. A problematic use of the Internet is a predictor of eating disorders. Chang and Bazarova (2016) demonstrated that publications containing emotional words linked to stigma, the specific content of anorexia, and very correlational content generally trigger negative feedback from other members of the pro-anorexia community. Gale et al. (2015) have demonstrated that pro-eating disorder websites lead to preserving the behavior of the eating disorder. These websites seemed to offer a sense of support to teenagers with eating disorders. Hernández-Morante et al. (2015) have stated that pro-eating disorder websites influence eating behaviors, including obesity. Hilton (2018) has shed light on the role of pro-anorexia websites in eating disorders. Tan et al. (2016) have examined models of Internet and smartphone apps, for individuals showing eating disorders. Overall, any use of applications for smartphones was associated with a younger age and a higher psychopathology of eating disorders and psychosocial deficit. Yom-Tov et al. (2016) have explored the characteristics of people participating in different pro-anorexia web communities and the differences among them, and have shown that the women members of the main pro-ana website investigated seem to be depressed.

4. Discussion

According to the scientific literature, eating disorders are a serious psychiatric disease, with a mortality rate going from 5 to 6 percent, higher than all other mental disorders. In particular, anorexia is difficult to treat and, in the cyberspace, there is a phenomenon of pro-eating disorder websites, in particular pro-anorexia, that means there are many websites supporting anorexia-pro-ana and pro-mia. The aim of these websites is to promote an anorexic lifestyle. These websites can encourage unhealthy habits and in particular, can promote eating disorders [ 28, 29]. Most analyzed research is focused on the social effects of pro-ana and pro-mia websites, and different authors have demonstrated that they most frequently are visited by the young female population [ 34, 35, 36]. However, some recent research suggests that pro-ana and pro-mia websites can encourage negative eating behaviors, such as promoting a pro-anorexic approach, through suggestions and tips to lose weight. The literature mainly examines the social influence of the media and has shown that these websites and blogs show ideal images of absolute thinness [ 37, 38, 39].

Several authors have identified many bloggers focused on pro-anorexic lifestyles and diets, giving advice and tips on how to lose weight (such as laxatives, purging in the shower, excessive exercise, calorie restriction, slimming pills, limitations in eating habits), extreme thinness, negative messages about food, and information about body image. Researchers have studied other aspects that can promote eating habits such as competition among members of these blogs to lose weight and be thin. Members of these communities would like to use their body image as inspiration models, for example, in the website's gallery. This is in line with anti-recovery, because these blogs, communities, and/or websites reject recovery and medical treatment for eating disorders. Another form of resistance involved in these websites is disagreement with psychiatric and psychological treatment [ 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35].

Most users of these websites are teenagers and have a complex psychological relationship with food-maybe they use it as a reward, a punishment, or they even feel guilty for eating some specific hypercaloric foods. According to the epidemiology of eating disorders, many accounts on pro-ana and pro-mia websites are managed by girls and in 58% of cases, websites contain images intended to encourage weight loss. Young women are particularly vulnerable to this kind of website, are attracted to them, and in fact, the most common people visiting pro-eating disorder websites are 13-, 15-, and 17-year-olds [ 10].

An important cognitive aspect found is connected to recursive thought. Sharing emotions is maladaptive when users, instead of reconsidering a negative event, continue to brood over it. Thinking continuously makes a negative event more enjoyable and prevents individuals from distraction, therefore intensifying stress, anxiety, shame, and other negative emotions associated with that event [ 40]. Brooding over a negative event and its meaning, without cognitively reconsidering that event, has proven to intensify negative emotions, making users even more depressed, anxious, and angry in comparison to the initial self-revelation. In these websites, users through pro-ana and pro-mia forums always brood over the same topic. Results have shown that mainly young women feel uncomfortable and often dissatisfied with their body image, and have consequently reduced their self-esteem and have difficulty in relational and social activities [ 41, 42].

However, there is a limited number of empirical studies in the literature on the topic that have investigated the risks associated with the development of eating psychopathology in adolescents. The existing literature on pro-eating disorder websites has not focused on clinical and psychopathological behaviors that can lead also to a serious risk of suicide in young populations. It is very important to focus on the risk of using websites and forums encouraging maladaptive eating habits, especially in vulnerable teenagers with problems linked to food. Higher behavioral risks in the use of eating disorder websites show a higher tendency to isolation, negative emotions, and maladaptive eating habits, which can be predictors of eating disorders or can exacerbate subclinical pictures in vulnerable subjects.

The paper highlights the importance of a study focused on the psychological impact of pro-ana and pro-mia websites in female teenagers with vulnerabilities in eating habits. The psychological impact of images, texts, words, and of a maladaptive eating approach for an ultra-slim body is an extremely complex process, and is dangerous for teenagers' body image. There are many psychological and identity development factors, as well as socio-cognitive skills and aspects of social desirability that are involved.

Our results suggest the importance of paying attention to psychoeducation among teenagers about eating disorders, food nutritional principles, and provide correct information on factors preparing, precipitating, or preserving the insurgence of eating disorders. This plays an important role in order to improve quality in their life and to reduce the risk of eating disorders.

5. Limitations

A limitation of the present study is the scarce literature on this topic. There are few empirical studies that explain the psychological motivation that attracts adolescents to eating websites.

6. Conclusions

As highlighted in the scientific literature, pro-ana and pro-mia websites promote a negative approach to food in a vulnerable population, such as in adolescents, and these conditions can encourage the insurgence of eating disorders.

Explaining this phenomenon connected to the use of forums and websites among female teenagers is fundamental because anorexia and bulimia are very serious and dangerous diseases, with higher incidence in the period of teenage development. However, it is very important to identify online contents and raise awareness on the level of danger of these websites and on maladaptive eating approaches among young people. Different studies have found out that a negative self-image can limit quality of life and pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia websites do not cause eating disorders but can encourage them. As far as the research topic is concerned, it is necessary to implement actions of promotion of guidelines and policies for healthy eating habits in the target population. Some aspects are relevant to improve the impact of research on prevention in the teenage population because at the moment, there are not many empirical studies in the literature explaining it.

The need to prematurely recognize maladaptive signs, words, beliefs, and approaches in adolescents for healthy eating guidelines and policies with specific programs of school education, even for teachers and parents. These healthy eating contexts can raise awareness on problematic eating behaviors and identify cases needing counselling and treatment or, in the most serious cases, hospitalization, therefore reducing the potential for a wide range of teenagers being trapped in the net. Further research to understand the correlation between personality profile and the impact of exposure to "Ana-mia" websites on the prevention of mental health issues in teenagers is recommended. The issue is relevant in young populations to prevent the risk of suicide and psychopathological and mental problems in adulthood.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization C.M. and M.R.A.M.; methodology M.C.S. and A.B.; da-ta curation, C.M., M.C.S. and M.P.; writing-original draft preparation C.M., M.R.A.M., R.A.Z.; writing-review and editing C.M., A.R., L.C., M.C.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

The study did not report any data.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declared no potential conflict of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Footnotes

Publisher's Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

References

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Psychological Impact of Pro-Anorexia and Pro-Eating Disorder Websites on Adolescent Females: A Systematic Review

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(1) Background: Teenagers (in particular, females) suffering from eating disorders report being not satisfied with their physical aspect and they often perceive their body image in a wrong way; they report an excessive use of websites, defined as PRO-ANA ...

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https://www.learnreligions.com/mehendi-or-henna-dye-1770473

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Although Mehendi is generally used in many Hindu festivals and celebrations, there's no doubt that the Hindu wedding ceremony has become synonymous with this beautiful reddish dye.

What is Mehendi?

Mehendi ( Lawsonia inermis) is a small tropical shrub, whose leaves when dried and ground into a paste, give out a rusty-red pigment, suitable for making intricate designs on the palms and feet. The dye has a cooling property and no side effects on the skin. Mehendi is extremely suitable for creating intricate patterns on various parts of the body, and a painless alternative to permanent tattoos.

Mehendi History

The Mughals brought Mehendi to India as lately as the 15th century AD. As the use of Mehendi spread, its application methods and designs became more sophisticated. The tradition of Henna or Mehendi originated in North Africa and the Middle East. It is believed to have been in use as a cosmetic for the last 5000 years. According to the professional henna artist and researcher Catherine C Jones, the beautiful patterning prevalent in India today emerged only in the 20th century. In the 17th century India, the barber's wife was usually employed for applying henna on women. Most women from that time in India are depicted with their hands and feet hennaed, regardless of social class or marital status.

It's Cool & Fun!

The varied use of Mehendi by the rich and royal from very early times has made it popular with the masses, and its cultural importance has grown ever since. Mehendi's popularity lies in its fun value. It's cool and appealing! It's painless and temporary! No lifetime commitment like real tattoos, no artistic skills required!

Mehendi in the West

The introduction of Mehendi into the Euro-American culture is a recent phenomenon. Today Mehendi, as a trendy alternative to tattoos, is an in-thing in the West. Hollywood actors and celebrities have made this painless art of body painting famous. Actress Demi Moore, and 'No Doubt' crooner Gwen Stefani were among the first to sport Mehendi. Since then stars like Madonna, Drew Barrymore, Naomi Campbell, Liv Tyler, Nell McAndrew, Mira Sorvino, Daryl Hannah, Angela Bassett, Laura Dern, Laurence Fishburne, and Kathleen Robertson have all tried Henna tattoos, the great Indian way. Glossies, like Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, Wedding Bells, People, and Cosmopolitan have spread the Mehendi trend even further.

Mehendi in Hinduism

Mehendi is very popular with both men and women also as a conditioner and dye for the hair. Mehendi is also applied during the various vratas or fasts, such as Karwa Chauth, observed by married women. Even gods and goddesses are seen to adorn Mehendi designs. A large dot in the center of the hand, with four smaller dots at the sides, is an oft-seen Mehendi pattern on the palms of Ganesha and Lakshmi. However, its most important use comes in a Hindu Wedding.

The Hindu marriage season is a special time for Henna tattoos or 'Mehendi.' Hindus often use the term 'Mehendi' interchangeably with marriage, and Mehendi is considered among the most auspicious 'ornaments' of a married woman.

No Mehendi, No Marriage!

Mehendi is not just a way of artistic expression; sometimes it's a must! A Hindu wedding includes many religious rites before and during the nuptials, and Mehendi plays a vital role in it, so much so that no Indian marriage is considered complete without it! The reddish-brown color of Mehendi-which stands for the prosperity that a bride is expected to bring to her new family-is considered most auspicious for all wedding-related ceremonies.

The Mehendi Ritual

A day before her wedding, the girl and her female folks gather for the Mehendi ritual-a ceremony traditionally marked by joie de vivre -during which the bride-to-be embellish their hands, wrists, palms, and feet with the lovely red hue of the Mehendi. Even the groom's hand, especially in Rajasthani weddings, is decorated with Mehendi patterns.

There's nothing strictly sacred or spiritual about it, but applying Mehendi is considered beneficial and lucky, and always regarded as beautiful and blessed. That is perhaps why Indian women are so fond of it. But there're some popular beliefs about Mehendi, especially prevalent among women.

Wear It Dark & Deep

A deeply colored design is generally considered a good sign for the new couple. It's a common belief among Hindu women that during the nuptial rituals the darker the imprint left on the bride's palms, the more her mother-in-law will love her. This belief may have been contrived to make the bride sit patiently for the paste to dry and yield a good imprint. A bride is not expected to perform any household work until her wedding Mehendi has faded. So wear it dark and deep!

A bride's wedding designs usually include a hidden inscription of the groom's name on her palm. It's believed, if the groom fails to find his name within the intricate patterns, the bride will be more dominant in conjugal life. Sometimes the wedding night is not allowed to commence until the groom has found the names. This is also seen as a subterfuge to let the groom touch the bride's hands to find his name, thus initiating a physical relationship. Another superstition regarding Mehendi is that if an unmarried girl receives scrapings of Mehendi leaves from a bride, she will soon find a suitable match.

How to Apply

The Mehendi paste is prepared by powdering dried leaves and mixing it with water. The paste is then squeezed through the tip of a cone to draw patterns on the skin. The 'designs' are then allowed to dry for 3-4 hours until it becomes hard and crusted, during which the bride must sit still. This also lets the bride take some rest while listening to prenuptial advice from friends and elders. The paste is also said to cool the bride's nerves. After it dries, the gruff remains of the paste are washed off. The skin is left with a dark rusty red imprint, which stays for weeks.

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What Is the Historical and Religious Significance of Mehendi?

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Henna has become synonymous with Hindu wedding and has made waves in the West. It's considered a cool and fun activity to indulge in.

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https://www.gold.ac.uk/news/zombie-ideas-and-equality-in-poland/
Banning abortion for women limits their bodily autonomy by stripping them of the power they would gain through the equalization of gendered healthcare.

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In October 2020, the Polish government passed a near-ban on accessing abortion, a move that critics say violates the human rights of women, puts lives at risk, and reinforces gender inequality in the country.

Dr Agnieszka Golec de Zavala has researched the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the early decline, and then rise, in popularity of Poland's right-wing government and public support for ideas which discriminate against those seen as dissenting from conservative societal norms. As a Polish woman and a social scientist specialising in social inequalities she was recently invited to contribute toward a panel at UCL about gender equality and protecting reproductive rights.

We caught up with her to expand on this discussion, exploring how a populist government has spread regressive views and how Poland's younger generations are fighting back.
Sarah Cox: What impact has the recent rise of right-wing populism in Poland had on gender equality?
Agnieszka Golec de Zavala: Poland's history with regards to gender (in)equality is peculiar. Polish women have had voting rights since 1918, relatively early compared to the rest of Europe. They have had limited access to abortion since 1932 and enjoyed full reproductive rights since 1956. However, since the fall of communism, rights and status have been systematically reduced despite them being an important driving force behind the fall. Notably, women's reproductive rights were severely reduced in 1993.

As in any country where it has a strong influence over public life, the Catholic Church in Poland worked to maintain gender inequality and hetero-normativity. But only right-wing populism has allowed the Church to wage an open war on non-traditional women who challenge gender hierarchy. While this shift is a worldwide phenomenon, Poland is susceptible because of the close involvement of the Catholic Church in state institutions since 1989. Populists got to power by fighting 'gender' and 'LGBTIQ ideology', a tortuous mental construction created to instigate fear of foreign ideological invasion and a 'disease'.

State institutions openly oppress women activists and state police target and harass them. Poland now has the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in the Western world and the Polish Parliament is currently debating laws that would punish women for terminating pregnancy. The government is also making motions to withdraw Poland from the Istanbul convention against domestic violence. The situation is desperate and outrageous.

SC: What do curbs on abortion access mean for human rights?

AG: The abortion ban is a violation of the right to privacy, the right to health, dignity and self-determination. It constitutes a differential treatment because of group membership - which is the definition of discrimination. These are basic human rights which are being violated. As a member of the EU, Poland is obliged to respect and protect those human rights but it's depriving half its citizens of them.

The Polish state institutionalises sexism and discrimination and uses state violence against women who are challenging the status quo. From the point of view of a social psychologist, this is what the Polish government is actively pursuing - it's using state apparatus and propaganda to advocate an understanding of gender categories and hierarchy that has been challenged for 200 years.

SC: How does this propaganda work?

AG: State propaganda floods the public sphere with ' zombie ideas ' - ideas that have been discredited by scientific evidence and social practice but are resuscitated and brought back into public life, repeated and repeated again until we stop being outraged. They 'start eating our brains out'. Zombie ideas spread in the way a zombie apocalypse spreads. They're dangerous, and people and institutions have to mobilise to stop them.

We're being repeatedly taught by the government that men and women constitute different 'natural kinds', that we're genetically so distinct that the categories don't overlap, and we have different characteristics and functions. That is what is being used to justify a different standing in the face of the law. Science tells us this is not true. Gender categories, and really any social categories and hierarchies, are a social construction - how we understand what it means to be men and women is culturally varied and malleable. This is not to say that gender is in any way an ideology. Rather, gender differences are not really all that meaningful and should not be used to justify differential treatment.

In psychology we call those zombie ideas 'gender stereotypes' that function as 'legitimising myths' - myths that are spread by the group that is on top of the hierarchy, for the group that is disadvantaged to believe and to not question the existing hierarchy. This is the big challenge for discussion of gender equality in Poland.

SC: What sparked recent protests?

AG: The direct incentive for protest was the contested Constitutional Tribunal ruling to invalidate the constitutionality of access to abortion on the grounds of severe defects or illness of the foetus. Over 70% of Polish society opposed this ruling. Almost 60% support abortion on demand. The protests that took place in Poland in October 2020 gathered as many as half million protesters. The leader, Marta Lempart, was named one of the women of 2020 by the Financial Times.

SC: Who is protesting and what has the impact of the protests been?

AG: The ruling coalition of right-wing populist parties has started losing popular support. But the impact was the most profound among young people. Our monthly monitor of political attitudes in Poland showed a dramatic change between summer 2020 and winter 2021 in political orientation towards the political liberal left among 18 - 24-year-old women, followed by men from the same cohort. These are predominantly protestors contesting the conservative social word-view and gender inequality. The presence of LGBTIQ activists in those protests is also important as these groups are also openly targeted by the state hostility. Last but not least, the protests are supported by activists opposing the ongoing corrosion of democratic laws and procedures in Poland.
SC: How has this issue acted as a trigger for protest against a wide range of inequalities?
AG: We've moved backwards on views of gender equality in Poland at a time when other countries are moving forward, not only guaranteeing equal laws to women but working toward gender equity, which takes the whole history of discrimination against women into account. So women in Poland are now saying they're going for a total change in discourse around gender and gender equity.

Addressing gender inequalities in Poland is necessary for this country to address any other issues of social inequalities. The state discriminates against sexual minorities - the infamous 'LGBT free zones' in Poland led to the European Union calling itself the LGBT freedom zone. Poland finds it difficult to deal with its history of anti-Semitism but it made it against the law to be critical about the nation's history which it uses to prosecute historians! Poland embraced neoliberal capitalism creating very strong classism in a very short time. There are so many man-made social divides on which the current authoritarian government preys because they work in its favour. The divide and rule strategy is not a Polish speciality but currently Poles are very good in using it. The government propagates a very exclusive and divisive vision of what it means to be Polish that serves it very well, creates enemies within and excludes them from the national community.
SC: What needs to happen to embed longer-term change and a step forward for equality?
AG: Social science shows that there is nothing as effective in changing attitudes toward equality between social groups as effectivly executed legislation is. And the legislation in democracies guarantees equal laws to all citizen. A systemic change is needed in the execution of those laws. It is very important to create a social norm of equality and justice in the public life. When laws are accepted and not violated they create a climate in which it becomes unquestionable that people's fundamental rights have to be respected regardless what social category they currently belong to. This is when a social movement that protests violations of those rights is absolutely crucial. To say: this is not acceptable and even more should be done. It is the very idea of the peaceful, democratic protest to be annoying and to disturb social mores if they violate such basic rules for democratic states.
SC: How can supporters of equal rights in Poland move forward and capitalise on the current tension?
AG: Change the government and reinstate the rule of law! As a psychologist my research looks at how we approach issues as individuals. As citizens of democratic countries we need to deal with tension, uncertainty, and different points of view all the time. The psychological question is how we approach them. It's a question of making open-mindedness and tolerance a social norm.

My research into group narcissism shows that a lot of people believe in the idea of Polish exceptionalism and that it has gone unrecognised, so they have to stand up and fight for it. Our research shows that this sentiment is what brought the populist government in Poland and populist governments elsewhere to power. It's a type of thinking related to all dangerous 'isms' and 'phobias'- all forms of prejudice and conspiratorial thinking, searching for imaginary enemies everywhere. There's now been a massive change in young people supporting this outlook. There was a mobilisation during the summer presidential elections but afterward a spectacular decrease in support for national narcissism. The fall in support from young women has been spectacular but there's also been a decrease from young men who had long been more narcissistic about Poland, nationalist, and right wing.

There's a lot of hope in this. These are the people who are participating in protests and running a new social movement and they're people with energy in their formative years. That gives us hope for change that is long lasting. They will stay with this experience and stay with this world view in their political development. It's a chance for all of us who identify as liberals in a social sense - those who stand for social justice and equality.

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'Zombie ideas' and the fight for women's rights in Poland

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In October 2020, the Polish government passed a near-ban on accessing abortion, a move that critics say violates the human rights of women, puts lives at risk, and reinforces gender inequality in the country.

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https://historyofyesterday.com/the-long-neck-women-of-the-kayan-tribe-63efdb0b7af7

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A tale of culture, controversy and exploitation

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https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/zendaya-just-took-her-hair-204431814.html
Connection to Materiality:
The fact that Zandaya's hair is being objectified and analyzed for an entire article shows that the hair has a cultural meaning and therefore is a relation to materiality.

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The day after her HBO drama aired its super-intense season-two finale, Zendaya premiered a fresh hair transformation before taking in her boyfriend's latest blockbuster. Casual day for any starlet.

In a super-brief selfie video posted to Instagram Stories on February 28, the Malcolm & Marie star showed off her curls in a new honey blonde shade. Depending on the lighting situation, she might have left her hair darker at the roots, but she's definitely got some beautiful highlights done at the very least.

Zendaya usually sticks to the brunette look, with occasional forays into red territory, but she's gone blonde before! The actor rocked a platinum blonde pixie at the 2017 British Fashion Awards, writing on Instagram, "A platinum blonde pixie tonight cause why not?" Then in 2019, she showed up to the Met gala with yellow streaks as part of her Cinderella outfit. (Also, peep the blonde wig in her W magazine spread from March 2021.)

This latest change comes after the actor dyed her hair auburn in December 2021 "for a change." In addition to showing off her sunny style, she also spent the day at the movies, taking in her boyfriend Tom Holland's new action flick Uncharted.

Peachy manicure in place, Zendaya showed off her ticket and gave the movie a "woop woop" in another Instagram Story.

Despite their busy work schedules, Zendaya and Holland have made getting together a clear priority, showing up at a New York Rangers game in coordinated hockey jerseys and dining together in Rome, just for a fun surprise.

Ever the fashion chameleon, Zendaya attended the 2022 NAACP Image Awards (where she was nominated for outstanding actress in a motion picture for her role in Malcolm & Marie) in not one but two designer looks, first in some white sparkly Valentino and later in vintage Balmain. Will her ever changing appearance ever cease to dazzle? Prob not.

If you're feeling inspired, check out our guide to at-home hair dyeing. And if you make it to the theaters, let us know if Uncharted is any good! Who are we kidding? We trust Zendaya implicitly.

Originally Appeared on Glamour

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Zendaya Just Took Her Hair From Auburn to Honey Blonde Curls

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The day after her HBO drama aired its super-intense season-two finale, Zendaya premiered a fresh hair transformation before taking in her boyfriend's latest blockbuster. Casual day for any starlet. In a super-brief selfie video posted to Instagram Stories on February 28, the Malcolm & Marie star showed off her curls in a new honey blonde shade.

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https://www.npr.org/2021/03/19/979340013/a-sociologists-view-on-the-hyper-sexualization-of-asian-women-in-american-societ

The fetishization of Asian women in the U.S. has caused not only a decrease in mobility but also aligns with Marx's and Freud's theories on fetishization. Their bodies are treated as capital gain by (typically) men in positions of power and privilege.

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AILSA CHANG, HOST:

On Tuesday, a mass shooter drove into Atlanta and targeted three spots in the area. He killed eight people, six of whom were Asian women. Law enforcement officials have held off on calling the attack racially motivated. They say the perpetrator instead blamed his sex addiction. Well, experts and many others say it is damaging to separate race from this conversation because it ignores the history of hypersexualization and fetishization of Asian women in the U.S.

Nancy Wang Yuen is a professor of sociology at Biola University. She studies pop culture and specializes in race and ethnicity in media, particularly in Asian American representation. She joins us now to help provide some context to this whole conversation. And just a warning - this conversation contains content that may not be suitable for all listeners.

Welcome.

NANCY WANG YUEN: Thank you for having me.

CHANG: So when you first heard that authorities in Georgia were holding off on calling this a racially motivated attack and instead they focused on the suspect's, quote-unquote, "sex addiction," as if that were a separate, alternate explanation for these shootings, tell me what you first thought of that.

WANG YUEN: My first thought I don't think I can say on public radio. I was just so angry, and I just thought, you know - and I also thought, like, you know, they just - these police officers and maybe all of America just doesn't understand how racism and sexism intersect.

CHANG: And this man - I mean, let's get into it. This man, according to law enforcement, said that he committed what he did this week to, quote, "eliminate his temptations." Let me ask you, Nancy, how does that connect to your understanding of the way Asian women have been hypersexualized and fetishized in American society? Like, can we just take a moment for you and I to say out loud what those sexual stereotypes of Asian women are?

WANG YUEN: I think submissive. And I've actually gotten - this is, you know, really personal, but I've actually been asked if my anatomy is different. So a kind of very fetishized, exoticized - that we're somehow even physiologically different from other women.

CHANG: Yeah.

WANG YUEN: And I think that goes back to history of fetishization of women of color in this country. And servile - what else?

CHANG: Exotic lotus flowers.

WANG YUEN: Yes, dragon ladies.

CHANG: Temptresses.

WANG YUEN: Yes. And I think with the lotus blossom, like, death at the end of movies - like, they're - they never survive. So it's the kind of "Madame Butterfly," "Miss Saigon" thing where, you know, you want them, but then you also, you know, can't have them. They're - like, they're taboo. They're forbidden.

CHANG: And let's not forget "Full Metal Jacket."

WANG YUEN: Yes. So the prostitute - right? - the Asian prostitute - and that's a very common stereotype. And the kind of, I think, propositions that Asian women get in public all surround "Full Metal Jacket" quotes. And they're horrible, and everyone knows them even though the movie is rather old. But it's now part of society or culture in general, like life imitating art and imitating kind of an imagined life, right?

CHANG: Right. So when you heard reports that this man, this perpetrator, said that he committed these shootings to, quote, "eliminate his temptations," what did that say to you about his motivations?

WANG YUEN: First of all, I thought that he completely dehumanized these women, right? He labelled them as temptations to be excised, to be eliminated. I mean, these are human beings, right? He is the one - if he has an addiction, he has the problem. Why treat whatever fetish that he has, you know, with Asian women - why treat the women as the problem? I mean, this kind of externalization of his own issues is - it was so horrible to hear. And as an Asian woman, it felt, like, totally dehumanizing.

CHANG: Yeah. I just want to take a step back here for some context and talk about some of the larger institutions that play a role here and why this happens in American society. Can we just - let's talk first about the U.S. military. How do you think the military figures into this conversation?

WANG YUEN: So the U.S. military, you know, has had many wars with Asia. And so the kind of even rhetoric of thinking of Asia as a place that you want to take over - right? - to dominate, and so there is this kind of fetishization of Asia proper as a country. And then, of course, when the GIs are over there, they're participating in the sex industry. And as a result, there have been what are called camp towns that pop up around U.S. military bases. And those camp towns have sex workers. And so the GIs, I think, associate, you know, being in Asia with sex workers, even though Asians are not any more likely to be sex workers than any other, you know, race or culture.

CHANG: Exactly, which only further reinforces attitudes that permission is granted to Asian women's bodies.

WANG YUEN: That's right. So the kind of easy access and inexpensive access and continual access through those camp towns contributes to the idea that Asian women's bodies are just for white male pleasure.

CHANG: And there's some other history here, right? I mean, this wasn't exactly part of my U.S. history curriculum in high school, but I want to talk about with you some of the other ways Asian women have been targeted by specific laws and policies in this country. Let's talk about the Page Act.

WANG YUEN: So the Page Act of 1875 actually predates the Chinese Exclusion Act, and it was an act that particularly targeted East Asian women, and it was applied mostly to Chinese women. And they thought of Chinese women as all prostitutes, right? It was a way to exclude the Chinese population. And they were successful in enacting it against women because they perceived that or they constructed that they carried venereal diseases and, actually, that they were temptations for white men.

CHANG: So what do you think the legacy is of laws like the Page Act, legacies that you still feel resonate in American society today?

WANG YUEN: I think Asian women, particularly East women in this case, are still reeling from the perception that they are prostitutes and temptations, including to - you know, linking it back to the current Atlanta shootings, where Asian women are seen as temptations and yet deracialized. I mean, we have the Page Act just to prove that we have a history of racializing Asian women.

CHANG: I mean, I'll be honest. Like, I'm 45 years old. I've been an Asian woman, obviously, my entire life. This is the first time I can remember talking to anybody about the Page Act for this network as a journalist. And I'm just wondering if you feel - even though violence against Asian women has been happening for a very long time, if you feel the conversation is different in this moment. Does it feel like it's more robust now? And if so, why do you think that is?

WANG YUEN: I actually think that Black Lives Matter is part of it, that because our society is finally having a racial reckoning, that they're becoming aware that racism exists. And now we're able to nuance race and nuance race intersecting with sexism, that all of this is America coming to a greater understanding of all the layers of bigotry and discrimination that the various groups of color have experienced in this country.

CHANG: Yeah. Nancy Wang Yuen is a professor of sociology at Biola University. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with all of us today.

WANG YUEN: Thank you so much.

(SOUNDBITE OF LE WANSKI'S "LA COULEUR DU SON")

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A Sociologist's View On The Hyper-Sexualization Of Asian Women In American Society

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AILSA CHANG, HOST: On Tuesday, a mass shooter drove into Atlanta and targeted three spots in the area. He killed eight people, six of whom were Asian women. Law enforcement officials have held off on calling the attack racially motivated. They say the perpetrator instead blamed his sex addiction.