In a Barbie world

When the image, fattened on soundbites, assumes mega proportions, reality vanishes into thin air. What's left then is a synthetic world, whe...

When the image, fattened on soundbites, assumes mega proportions, reality vanishes into thin air. What’s left then is a synthetic world, where the difference between a flesh-and-blood creature and a doll may be just incidental. It really does become a Barbie world as a consequence, where everything right from smiles to shrugs is plastic.

The Aqua song, I’m a Barbie girl in a Barbie world…You can brush my hair/ Undress me anywhere… could well be the anthem of this new, “improved” beauty culture that the country suddenly seems awash with. It would be grossly unfair then to expect the face in the looking glass to bear the sweet innocence and spontaneity of yesteryear. Every aspect of it, from eyebrows to incisors, have been altered, enhanced or replaced to conform to some international standard that exists somewhere in the star-lit stratosphere, totally devoid of context or meaning. They are, in fact, little better than measurements for a table or chair. What’s more, emotions, whether of happinessor sorrow, are feigned and speech itself issues forth as byte-sized aphorisms spiked with political correctness. One young beauty contestant recently, when asked to describe beauty, actually went into a rhapsody. “It is harmony of body, mind and soul,” she trilled. Never mind if what she said made no sense — being beautiful has nothing to do with being sensible, or that at least seems to be the trend.

Last year’s rage, Miss World 1997 Diana Hayden, even got a computer to design a whole new smile for her, and her teeth bleached to keep that smile ever-bright. True, Hayden herself cannot be held responsible for her obsessive search for seeming perfection. She was just playing the beauty game set to rules conceived by the global, multi-billion dollar cosmetic industry. But the buck doesn’t stop with Hayden, it never does. She, in turn, becomes an icon, a stereotype, a star to which other young women all over the country will now seek to hitch their wagon. Where there was one girl consulting an expensive cosmetic dentist, there are now thousands drawn to the sparkle of Hayden’s smile like moths to a flame. And like moths, most will emerge from this rum business with their wings singed, and their own sense of self-worth destroyed.

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When the six-year-old beauty queen and a former Little Miss Colorado, Jon Benet Ramsey, was found murdered last January it raised questions in the US about the five-billion-dollar pageant industry that paraded some 1.5 million girls under 12 down its catwalks every year. It was discovered that so competitive was the field that parents actually starved their children, pulled out their baby teeth to insert cosmetic plates with false adult teeth and got them to prance around in revealing outfits in a horrible mimicry of adult behaviour. Yet these pageants were defended on the grounds that they gave shy girls poise and confidence and helped them in their future careers.

Arguments that are familiar enough even in this country. Unfortunately, the klieglights of glamour and fame have away of blinding people to the narrow line separating the beautiful and the bizarre.