Ways of All Flesh

YOU CAN never be too rich or too thin, we’ve always heard. But now the government of Spain tells us otherwise – some of the waifs on international catwalks are, it insists, too thin. And so it has banned them from the Spanish Fashion Week. ‘Down with the draconian measure!’ shouts the fashion industry. A large section of the media follows suit. And we all join in this collective tut-tutting, asking: how much can a few catwalk models affect real women?

A lot. Yes, a lot. Be honest and say if you don’t first glance at the fashion pictures before going on to the news pages in your morning newspaper. You’re not the only one – most of us do it, especially the women. Scores of surveys have shown that women feel depressed after reading fashion magazines; yet they continue to do it, religiously, issue after issue. So obsessed are women with looks that, in a survey conducted by The Indian Express – cited, funnily enough, by their columnist in an argument against the Spanish ban – most women said they would rather be lame than fat.

And that’s exactly the way the multi-billion dollar fashion/ cosmetics/ slimming/ cosmetic surgery/ etc industries want things to be. The international thinning industry, for instance, is valued at over $50 billion. It is gigantic in India, too, with VLCC outlets and gyms easier to find than the neighbourhood postbox. Their profitability, and indeed very existence, depend on making women aspire to a ‘model’ of beauty (in this case, thinness) that is naturally unattainable. Once it is attained, with whatever machinations and at whatever expense, it is impossible to maintain.

So the key lies in making women continually aspire to that unattainable ideal. Catwalk models, advertising campaigns, hoardings, cosmetics counters in supermarkets, beauty contests, films, music videos, fashion magazines, and even news media, all form part of this aspirational apparatus. Women, and men, are constantly bombarded by these all-pervasive messages, a task made easier by the surfeit of visual media all around us – from cellphones and laptops to brochures and hoardings.

But why only women – given a chance wouldn’t men also want to be thin? Perhaps, but not to the extent that women do – 70-90 per cent of the clientele of slimming centres/ diet clinics comprises women. The reason is not hard to seek – women have completely internalised the expectations of a patriarchal society that demands that they look good, above all else. A woman, even in a workplace, is looked at the way men are not. So pervasive is the male gaze in most popular media – advertising, films, music videos – that even women believe that they are meant to be looked at. And looking good is equated with being thin.

It is argued that one should not worry about thinness as it is not that big a problem – only 1 per cent of US women have anorexia but 7 per cent are obese. Agreed. But what about the fact that almost 100 per cent women feel dissatisfied with their own bodies? OK, so anorexia is about low self-esteem, control issues and general unhappiness. True. Also true is the fact that all of these issues stem in large part from the way ‘attractive’ women are portrayed in popular culture – as thin, perfectly flawless and forever young.

Coming back to the main argument, why ban catwalk models who are really only clotheshorses? Suspending indignation at the ethical issues involved in such crass commodification of the human body, this begs the question – why do designers insist on thin clotheshorses? Even if clothes look better on a thin model, aren’t clothes ultimately meant for real women? This brings us back to the beginning. Women are meant to aspire to look like the thin clotheshorse, remember?

UN reform

THE SIXTY-FIRST United Nations General Assembly, which began in New York on September 12, comes close on the heels of the Israeli attack on Lebanon and coincides with the worsening situation in Darfur, Sudan. The UN’s failure to prevent either of these tragedies is a comment on its relevance, or the lack of it, in the contemporary world order. For several decades now, the UN’s mandate has been usurped by various actors-- the US has taken upon itself the role of a global policeman; the Bretton Woods institutes, namely, the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO (formerly GATT), are doing what the UN's Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) were meant to do; the Group of Eight (G8) has assigned itself such tasks as humanitarian assistance and preventing climate change.

None of these claimants to the UN’s role, however, can claim widespread support in the international arena, the most telling example being the WTO, which has become a veritable battleground for First and Third World rivalry. It would not be incorrect to say that a revitalised United Nations – as a protection against great power pressure and as a means to solve problems through concerted action – is direly needed. However, any meaningful reform of the UN would have to go beyond mere functional upgrade to a major policy re-think: just what exactly is the role of the UN?
The fact is that the only way to make the UN effective is to give it more teeth, which entails consensus on giving it the status of a supra-national body, a world government of sorts. In this regard, the ‘Binding Triad’ proposal, which allows the UNGA to amend the UN Charter in order to make it possible to pass binding resolutions with the approval of a ‘supermajority’ of members, could be one way forward. For a resolution to be binding, it would require the support of nations comprising a majority of UN members, who contribute a majority of UN funds, and whose combined populations comprise a majority of the world population. Expanding the Security Council, along with some rethink on the subject of the veto rights of its permanent members would caliberate the world body to the ground realities of today.

Charity pays

AN AMOUNT totaling almost $60 billion flows from developed to developing countries as financial aid each year. Relatively speaking, this is not a significant figure – it makes up only 0.5 percent of the $12 trillion GDP of all low and middle-income countries (excluding India and China). On top of that, a large part of it does not reach its beneficiaries, largely due to corruption and inefficiency. This is why the increasing ‘corporatisation’ of aid – for instance, the Gates Foundation, which was last in the news in relation to Warren Buffett’s $31 billion donation – seems a positive trend.

Now Google, the leader among search engines, which is equally well-known for innovative albeit controversial services like Google Earth and Google Print, has launched a ‘charity for profit’ with an initial investment of $1 billion. A ‘profitable charity’ might sound like an oxymoron, and it is already inviting criticism from aid puritans who prefer to stick to the no-profit-no-loss moral high ground. However, there is much about this project that wins our approval. First and foremost among these is the infusion of a strong corporate ethic and the efficiency that can come only with a profit motive. Take, for instance, Google.org’s plans to develop a highly fuel-efficient hybrid car engine that could run on electricity, ethanol and petrol. As a for-profit corporation, Google.org will be able to adopt corporate methods to sell these cars and perhaps even lobby Congress to encourage their use. Moreover, since Google.org will pay taxes, its finances will be open to scrutiny, and hopefully rule out corruption.

However, many critics like economist Milton Friedman argue that companies should stick to making money and leave charity to their enriched shareholders. Images of money- and power-hungry MNCs fattening their wallets at the expense of the gullible poor in the Third World are easy to conjure up, and are not entirely untrue. However, it is the ‘corporatisation’ of aid that has made aid work ‘competitive’. For instance, aid and development professionals from the developed world are highly skilled professionals with extensive education and hands-on experience in their fields of specialisation, which can range from watershed management to reproductive health to conflict prevention. It is a positive trend worthy of emulation. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether Google, having shown the world that ‘you can make money without doing evil’, can prove that ‘you can do charity while making profit’.

Laws of motion

THE 21ST century will be an age of significant demographic changes around the world. Along with increasing globalisation – particularly the expansion of international trade and other forms of interdependence – our world is marked by increasing disparity of income and opportunity. These factors inevitably result in intra- and inter-border movement of people, mostly from poor to rich regions and countries. The United Nations Population Fund’s State of World Population 2006, released on September 6, estimates that nearly 200 million people worldwide are now living in places outside their home countries, and nearly half of these are women. This ‘hyphenation’ of existence and identity, as critical theorist Homi Bhabha put it, is here to stay.

However, there have been several polarising trends during the past few years – especially since 9/11 – leading to security, economic, social and human rights concerns regarding migration. While many developed countries need migrant workers – to do the work their own citizens will not, to support their ageing populations and to keep the economic engines running – there has been a backlash in many countries. The debate about Hispanic migrants in the US and Britain’s decision to not allow free entry of workers from new EU member States are two recent instances. This backlash results more from politics and xenophobia than from economic reasons – many studies have lain to rest concerns that migrants depress wages in destination countries and take up a sizeable proportion of social benefits. In developing countries, the fear is about brain drain has receded a bit in the light of the benefits of remittances from abroad.

In all, international migration is a win-win situation for all. It is because it makes sound economic sense that it was included in the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) as Mode 4, which pertains to the presence and movement of natural persons. However, although international migration is about international political economy, the WTO is not the ideal forum to discuss migration, lest migrants end up being treated as commodities. There is a need for an international covenant on migration that will hold all member countries by some basic commitments to the rights of immigrants, including social, legal and political rights. Both sending and receiving countries need to put in place policy frameworks that maximise the positive contributions of migration, the former with regard to poverty reduction and development, and the latter a propos of policies aimed at inclusiveness.