Will the Real Miss Sri Lanka please stand up?

I have received quite a few forwards of the youtube video of the Sri Lankan contestant for Miss. Universe, and there seems to be some attention given to it in the blogopshere as well, mostly, I was pleasantly surprised to see, by the men, who are arguing in defense of the girl. Here's the thing. When I first saw the video I cringed. As a stickler for good English, I was embarrassed for the girl, and embarassed she represented our country. Then I read the comments below the video, and on the heels of my embarrassment came something akin to rage. Primarily at myself, that my initial reaction had been so horrifically obnoxious, and secondly at the commentators, the ones who ridiculed her, and even worse, the ones who made excuses for her.

Some of the comments verbatim:

what a stupid cow. Is this the personality of a Miss Universe contestant? What's wrong with Sri Lanka?  

WOW GO SRI LANKA YOU ROCK! I AM SO PROUD TO BE SRI LANKAN.... NOT!!!! WHAT A SHAME! SO SAD! what is wrong with u people? dont u think its just rude and misguiding to send someone like that?? its just wrong. u are creating stereotypes! crazy!

WTF??? there is much more hotter Sri Lankan girls than this out there.. this is ridiculously stupid.. :\

Any and every blame has to go to the judges. I also agree that there are plenty of beautiful intelligent women in Sri Lanka who are much better than this, well rather than laughing at this poor girl why not get off your asses and start representing your country and we wouldn't be in this mess

Why is everyone so eager to prove that there are hot girls who can speak English in Sri Lanka? Is that the standard by which the worth of a country or a people is measured? I especially like the last comment, the one which so righteously defends the "poor girl" and sends out a call to arms for all the beautiful intelligent women in Sri Lanka to please stand up. Yes, all the beautiful girls, please drop whatever you're doing and come parade around on a stage so your selfworth can be rated on a scale of 1-10 depending on how you look in a bikini. And speaking of intelligent, the girl was asked about her advice to a man, the best gift she's received and to make a variety of nonsense noises; hardly mensa question, so everyone figured out  she's not smart how exactly? Interestingly, many of the comments refer to Jacqueline Fernandez as the ideal Sri Lankan woman. What a joke. Yes, she's a beautiful woman, but do people who visit Sri Lanka actually expect to see packs of her lookalikes walking around? Would you judge all American girls after having watched the infamous Miss South Carolina? Do you expect all Indian women to look like Aishwarya Rai?

Imagine for a moment that I give a crap about the Miss Universe competition and let's take a look at this 'standard' that everyone keeps talking about: the Miss Universe standard. Obviously a Western standard, based on beauty, body, presentation, IQ, professional qualifications, background ability to moo like a cow in an endearingly charming yet seductive manner. But funnily enough, it's not the Western world who expect this 'standard', or maybe I should say not just the Western world. We Sri Lankans seem to have fully embraced the concept, or maybe we're still suffering from our colonial hangover. On the one hand we righteously, or maybe rightly, bash the US when it comes to our country and its coduct, but then we turn right around and expect our girls to fit into a stereotype set by them. We forward these videos around and ridicule the girls because of their accent and clothes and the things they say and set the precedent for others to ridicule them, falling over ourselves in the rush to apologize shamelessly for our fatal error in misrepresenting Sri Lanka by showcasing one of the masses, instead of applauding them for having the courage to present themselves on an international stage to be judged by millions.

Just for comparison I watched Miss India, who to my eye looked every bit your exotic beauty, speaking in beautifully cultivated English with just enough Indian in her accent to make her foreign (Suheir Hammad's beautiful poem comes to mind). I was very impressed with Miss Trinidad & Tobago who appeared very composed and genuine. That's actually all I watched because if I had to see one more girl go through the indignity of making sheep noises to win a competition I just may have imploded.

This pageant makes me sick. Not just because it degrades and objectifies women, not just because it pits women against each other based on nothing more than their genetic makeup and how well they've rehearsed generic answers on world peace, but because it has gradually become the standard by which the entire female population of a county is measured upon; because it continues to enforce the archaic view that a woman's worth can be stripped down to her looks, that her beauty can and must be categorized as inner and outer beauty. And mostly, that she needs to aspire to a standard set by the world and that she is deserving of our ridicule if she fails.

We should be ashamed of ourselves. I know I am.

Old Man Content

the happiest person I know
lives in a house by the sea

there is one table
four chairs
and a hammock

the view is
cliffs
waves
dolphins
sunrises

the colours are
blues
greens
yellows
reds

he is
a seaman
a surfer
a diver
a historian
a revolutionary

the happiest person I know
lives in a small house by the sea,

Photographing Poverty

If we were playing a word association game and I said poverty, what is the first word that would come to mind? And the first image? To me, it is most often your standard African child, swollen belly, spindle legs, standing by a dusty road while the flies hover about her face. Ask me about poverty in Sri Lanka and the first images that come to mind are village school children, with big smiles and starched white uniforms, as seen in brochures and donation websites.

Photographic depictions of poverty always give me an uncomfortable feeling, and a two-way argument of sorts arises in my head; a conundrum if you will. On the one hand, I would never deny that stark poverty and need exists in populations across the world, and awareness is required for the funds that are necessary to give help where help is needed. Non-profits and NGOs depend on the hand to mouth, hand to pocket feelings incited by the shock value these pictures provide: the starving child, the diseased mother, the barely-clothed man; they depend on that uncomfortable feeling you get when a small child runs up to your ac'd car at a traffic light and convinces you to buy a packet of kapuru bola that you really don't need. Never mind that your ten rupees goes from his hand to his pimp's drug dealer, how can you say no to a child so obviously in need? The pictures and depictions are a call for collective action to put clothes on a naked child and water in dehydrated mouths. And a short drive out of Colombo up north or to the east will show you where (some) of the money goes, in the proudly emblazoned logos of the particular organization on the clay roofs and water buckets of new houses in re-established villages. (Read PP's post on the workings of a non-profit)

There is however more to it, for me, that has to do with feelings of discomfort that always revolve around dignity, morality, ethics. How ethical is it to take a photograph of a little girl, happy on her first day of school, then use that picture to tell a story of poverty, simply because she doesn't have a cellphone in her pocket or a shiny watch on her wrist? How ethical is to take a picture of a farmer tilling his field in his traditional loin cloth and then using that as a depiction of low income lifestyles, of third world living? Why is it that we do not smile at how the little girl's uniform is always starched bright white with immaculately straight pleats, and why do we not call the farmer a small business owner? What of the dignity of these "subjects"? Do they know that they're being used as an example of poverty? And more importantly, do they consider themselves poor? For me, this has always been a valid point. Man has always been self sufficient. Through sheer guts, brains and will power we have come further than any animal ever has. And yet, there is a large population of us now reduced to less than animals, disabled, hindered, crippled by a society that has set objective standards for a subjective world. Take for instance the classification of countries as developed, developing or underdeveloped, or first world- third world, or industrialized and newly industrialized, emerging and developing; there are countless ways to classify a people, a culture, a society, to make them feel inferior, to demean their way of life.


This video, on the idea of a 'single story' as told by Chimamanda Adichie spoke to me very clearly on the danger of depicting only one aspect of a people. She says "The consequence of a single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar". And I think therein lies the problem when we attempt to portray poverty in a picture. When we donate money, give charity, we do so with sympathy, pity, charitable thoughts for the "less fortunate". We give them labels and stereotypes, which are more often than not self-fulfilling prophecies, and then we run around trying to give them money to 'fix' them. We don't look beyond the wattle and daub huts to the alternate lifestyle, because an alternate lifestyle without computers and phones and tv doesn't seem possible. We don't see the traditions and rituals so similar to ours, we don't see romance and friendship and love and kinship between people, we just see them as the other.

What is the middle ground then? How do you use pictures to portray an accurate description of a situation? And furthermore what do you do about it? Money is a quick fix; as the old saying goes, teach a man to fish. There needs to be dialogue, education and policy changes in order to create a sustainable difference for the people we want to 'help'; what do they need vs. what we think they need. And instead of throwing those words around at conferences and workshops, we need to see it take place. Of course, therein lies the next problem..

When My Time Comes

I imagine it would be dark,
silent,
but comforting,
like the cool air of a whirring fan
from under a warm blanket at night,
not terrifying, like shadows at the window.
I imagine it to be quick,
but painless,
like falling in love with a smile,
not like a deep cut from a sharp knife.
I imagine it would be at dawn,
as the dark night turns pearly gray
and the first blush of a sunrise tints the sky,
as the birds ruffle the sleep from their feathers
and the scent of fresh dew rises from the grass.
I hope it will be then,
in that way,
at that time,
like a silent friend who has heard my plea
offering me his hand.
And when this life has ended
and this body is no more,
I wish to fly free on ocean breezes,
to float gently over white-tipped waves
until I sink below the surface,
to rest at last in deep deep waters.

Hard Times (in Pictures)

This year so far has been  horrific in terms of natural disasters, and what's happening in Pakistan right now is just unbelievably sad. Millions of people displaced and injured, thousands dead, crops lost, infrastructure destroyed, disease, food shortage, and now with fasting beginning this week, and monsoon season not yet over, it's unimaginable how these people are going to make it through the month, let alone the foreseeable future. More here and here.

I have never seen photojournalism the way they do it on the Big Picture (via gutterflower). Their pictures from Pakistan are jaw dropping, not only in the emotion and scenery they have managed to capture on camera but in the stories they tell. Parts 1 and 2.