I have a problem when people post some gory images on my wall. Often they justify it by saying please circulate these images for social awareness. May be I am wrong but I don't like to circulate pain and suffering to others specially when they are not solicited.
Look at above images. These images too came to me unsolicited and out of habit I ignored them first. But some how these images remained in my head. So I went back to my facebook wall and scrounged older posts. There was a a strange story here.
The story of two women. But one body. Body starved, scarred, emaciated beyond recognition. A Body that was only a skeleton. A body that was used and abused in name of beauty.
How did these two women turned into skeletons? How a society can allow such inhuman way of existence. Well this is not the first time I was seeing a emaciated body. Images from Africa, and Asia( read India) of starving and hungry children are replete in international media. So what is big deal?
Look at the image again. She is not an Asian or African or hungry for food.
Isabella Caro was a French Model. Yes you read it right! She was a high fashion model posing nude on the billboard. When this image was taken Isabella was in her last stages of her life dying of condition called anorexia caused by bulimia. Bulimia is a eating disorder, when a person who eats food stars purging it out with the fear of gaining weight. This disorder became quiet popular among high fashion models and celebrities in 90s after the fashion industry started fancying female body as a skeleton thin figurines. Very soon ramp models started flaunting their emaciated bodies on high fashion making every woman rethink of their anatomy? Some designer in the fashion world had a fancy of stick figures and his/her notion of 'beauty' was experimented on live guinea pigs called ramp models.( I would like to know if there is any record in fashion history which mentions name of designer that started such a trend)
Having realized that she has been exploited in the name of beauty, Isabella started a campaign to create awareness of bulimia by showing her skeletal body on billboard and other media. She died in 2010 at the age of 28. Demands of fashion world made Isabella paid a heavy price with her life. I was trying to live that myth of beauty told tome by designers, photographers and industry she told the interviewer. she recollected how she was often told to "knock off the weight, but never to gain any". When Isabella died her family kept her death in secret as they felt shamed and sorry for her plight. No one was punished for Isabelle's condition or her death.
Look at the second image. I cannot verify this story as it never appeared in any news papers. From the image I deduce it appeared on a local television channel. According the story that accompanied the image.
The girl in the image was Asma and she was 14, when abducted from Malvani, Malad Mumbai. As a pretty girl ( photo inset shows her as young beautiful girl) she was envied by girls and teased by boys. When she went missing police refused to file a missing persons case accusing the poor parents for selling a pretty girl for prostitution. One fine day she was found in a garden in skeletal shape. She was barely alive . According to her testimony, she was raped consistently by five men for a year. Never given proper food. She began to eat paper and soil and stones. When she became 'unusable' men dumped her in a garden and disappeared. She died in 2011. No one was punished.
Asma was just an ordinary girl. She was no celebrity so even her death did not make any news in significant press. Her only crime was she was considered 'beautiful' by people.
Both woman were victim of beauty myth. So they suffered a horrific deaths. I am still wondering who defined this notion of 'beauty'? and what is so desirable of skeletal body of woman ?
It s high time women decide what is really beautiful of their own bodies than some stupid designers experimenting with women's anatomy.
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