Monday, September 26, 2011

Behind the glitz and glitter

Makati Pictures
This photo of Makati is courtesy of TripAdvisor

We have always thought of fashion modeling as a glamorous profession, pushing to the back of our minds the idea that, just like anyone of us, models are not spared from life's pressures. An article written by a former model and published by the New York Times last week gave me an insight into the dark side behind the profession's glitz and glitter.
Fashion modeling "is unprofitable work for most of the people wearing the design," says Ashley Mears, the article writer who now works as a professor of sociology at the Boston University in the United States. "Because modeling is a freelance work done on a per project basis, models don't receive benefits, have little control over the conditions of their work and never know when the next job is coming. They are arbitrarily selected and dismissed."
There is also a vast disparity, she says, in payments among models even if they do the same work. Ashley, who wrote the article ahead of the Fashion Week in New York, says some top models earn between $1,000 and $5,000 per project while others are not paid at all. She did not say why some models have to work without pay, making me assume that probably they are those who dream of going to the top and have to work - to borrow her words - in "indentured servitude.
"Fashion is a glamorous industry, but rub off the sheen and quite another scene emerges," she writes. "..for many models it is grueling. Considering the huge success of modeling's winner-take-all market, most people miss the mass of losers. This is how glamour works: as a spell. Even the word glamour has magic roots, as a charm cast to transform appearances."
Taking the cudgels for the models, she says, Sara Ziff, a model working with Fordham University's Fashion Law Institute, has formed the non-profit group Model Alliance "that hopes to give models a platform to organize for workplace protection". She says "modeling epitomizes the kind of precarious job that, since the 1990s, has been spreading from the informal labor market into traditionally more secure workplaces, like the retail and service industries ..."
The fashion models' predicament easily reminded me of the previous article, "Our complicated lives", I posted here a few days ago. Just like anyone else, fashion models have their own shares of life's pressure to eke out a living. In turn, it reminds me of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve who were banished from paradise after they ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge. "From the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken, for dust you are and to dust you will return,"(Genesis 3:19)
Pardon me for dragging the Bible into this article but, when I write, some ideas just pop up into my mind. It just occurred to me now that there is a parallelism between the Biblical tree of knowledge and science. Modern civilization, which started when our ancestors discovered that friction could make a fire, has complicated our lives to become more hurried since the dawning of the industrial revolution.
There are times when I think that civilization has deviated from what it is supposed to be - to make life easier for us and to make us more humane. The first fire that our ancestors had produced led to the age of industrialization that, like the factories it has created, compartmentalized our lives and, as I said in my previous posting, led us to new caves - our offices - in the sky crappers that rose on vast tracts of idyllic lands our forefathers used to farm.
Now comes the digital age, which is trying to divest us of our birthright as humans. Tom Rachman, author of the novel "The Imperfectionists", harped on this subject in the article, "The Future of Offline Nostalgia", which he wrote also for The New York Times. Offline Nostalgia is a movement that has risen in reaction to the advent of the digital age, in the same way that romanticism rues against urbanization as a product of the 18th century industrial revolution.
Taking note of the 19th-century romanticist movement "that briddled at urbanization and the coldness of modern commerce", Rachman expects that the "coming decade will witness a similar rejectionist movement, with the rise of the group Offline Romantics that finds the "degradation of the human mind: its splintered attention span, the struggle to concentrate, the thrum of digital excitation pervading every waking minute".
I am a romanticist myself who often harks back to the rustic life in the farming village that I left behind to pursue a dream of getting a college education, unknowing that, like civilization, that dream to achieve something more lofty would be hijacked along the way by the pervasive currents of materialism that led us to our own caves which are sorely suffocating than those of our ancestors.

Please visit my other blogs Miscellaneous at http://www.miscellandous-oddnews.blogspot.com,
Viajero at http://www.viajero-funtravel.blogspot.com
and Fun in Life at http://www.salt-funstories.blogspot.com\













Sunday, September 18, 2011

Our complicated lives

Makati Pictures
This photo of Makati is courtesy of TripAdvisor

I woke up the other day overwhelmed by the things I wanted to do. At first I intended to write a new post for this blog as it has been a week from now since I posted the latest article "Our obsession for the wealth that rust." But before opening this blog, I decided to open my email and saw a blog on how to earn online. Since it was sent by a person whose family name was familiar to me, I took a little time reading it.
When I closed my email, I saw this article on Yahoo! about aids research creating "spooky green cats." Finding it to be a good article for my other blog "Miscellaneous," I posted it there. Before I knew it, my wife had woken up. And then our 14-year-old daughter. I had to take my better-half to the hospital where she works as a nurse and our child to school afterwards before I go to work.
My cramped morning schedule illustrates how complicated my life has become since I left the farming village where I grew up with my uncle's family, having been orphaned at age 13. I assume that almost all of us - if not all of us - live complicated lives. Back then, after graduation from high school, I had a singular focus to graze my uncle's carabaos, Asian farm animals often referred to by some writers as "water buffaloes" because they have no Western counterparts.
A few days ago, a friend working as a magazine editor in Guam posted a wish on Face Book on how she wanted to quit her job because she is tired of her long rigorous working hours that deprived her of time to write more creative articles she wants to write. Another friend, a newspaper editor in Manila, told me last year that she had become tired working but just like anybody else she had to eke out a living. I knew many people are in the same situation.
I am in the same box. That makes me think at times where life is heading. Civilization, our journey from the caves to the modern sky crappers, is supposed to make life easier, but it has made our lives more complicated. Industrialization in particular has turned our world into a factory where each of us has to do repetitive tasks. I find the factory to be an apt analogy on how industrialization has compartmentalized our lives.
When I think of civilization I often hark back to life in the farming village that I left behind because I find a parallelism between my journey to the city and humankind's travel to the world that we live now. I am sure that, just like many of us, our ancestors dreamed of a better life. Their dreams led them to discover that friction can produce light and, in turn, led us to new caves - the cubicles in our offices where we do repetitive works.
I am not saying that we have not benefited from civilization. Without civilization we could not have aircons to cool our homes and offices. We could not travel in just a few hours between Jeddah and Manila when we take our annual vacation. If not for civilization, the Saudis could not have tapped the oil beneath their deserts and I could not be writing for this blog through which I share my thoughts, serious or silly, to anyone who would care to listen.
But are we happy with our lives, much happier than our ancestors? Probably, many of us are. But I'm sure there are as many of us who are not. A few days ago, I was appalled to read about the increasing suicide rate in China. The report said that those who decided to end their lives could not cope with the pressures of their day-to-day living. It was reported recently that about 26.2 million Americans are living in poverty.
Whether we admit it or not, majority of us are living hurried and harried lives. This is the price of civilization which brought us modern technology and hasten the pace of living. The rate race, as we now call our fast-pacing lives, has put tremendous pressures on many of us and at times make us hark back to the simple life we used to have. But alas! the river of life in which we are travelling doesn't allow us to go back to the past.
I work as an alternate opinion editor with the Saudi Gazette and a few days ago we received an online response to an article on women complaining about the high-cost of going to the gyms. He laid the blame on the women who chose to take office works and had to go to the gyms because they have become obese after leaving the household chores to the maids. Although the response was more of a pun, it depicted a real-life situation.
If you feel like we are on the same boat, welcome aboard.


Please visit my other blogs Viajero http://www.viajero-funtravel.blogspot.com, Miscellaneous http://www.miscellaneous-oddnews.blogspot.com and Fun in Life
http://www.salt-funstories.blogspot.com.












Friday, September 9, 2011

Our obsession for the wealth that rust

I have tried to avoid being too Biblical because it often turns off many people, particularly those who have lost their Faith. But this time I feel compelled to discuss last Wednesday's gospel.
First, it's because I was assigned to reflect on the gospel in our occasional family gathering for Bible reading to nourish our faith. Second, it gives me the chance to expound on the subject of my previous posting "Life is a loaded dice'.

But first things first, here's last Wednesday's gospel from Luke 6:20-26.

Lifting up his eyes to his disciples, Jesus said, "Fortunate are you who are poor, the kingdom of God is yours. Fortunate are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Fortunate are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Fortunate are you when people hate you, when they reject you and insult you and number you among criminals, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for a great reward is kept for you in heaven. Remember that is how the ancestors of this people treated the prophets.
"But alas for you who have wealth, for you have been comforted now. Alas for you who are full, for you will go hungry. Alas for you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Alas for you when people speak well of you, for that is how the ancestors of these people treated the false prophets."

For believers like me who want to put religion into practice, this is one of the hardest gospels to explain, particularly to people who have lost their faith, simply because it doesn't jibe with our worldly desires to become rich in material things.
Telling a poor man who has lost his Faith that he is blessed because the Kingdom of heaven will be his, would likely draw angry reactions like "don't tell me that crap, I don't need your heaven." Even among believers it is difficult to think that poverty is a blessing.
Whether we believe in God or not, nobody among us wants to be impoverished. I would still have to hear a believer say that he felt blessed when he lost his wealth. Life on earth is often a blind pursuit for worldly things - riches, fame and power. And this is what the gospel is all about - a reminder for us not to get obsessed with worldly fortunes.
Personally, I can easily relate to the gospel because I read the Bible not literally but by themes. This gospel is in keeping with Christ counsel for us not to pile up material things but treasure that do not rust. (Matthew 6:19)
It is in keeping with the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:3-23; Mark 4:2-20; Luke 8:4-15) which depicted Christ as the sower of God's counsels. There were seeds that did not grow because they fell on the path where they were trampled upon, on rocky grounds where they did not take roots and amid weeds which choked them.
I find this parable very relevant to the present times, especially when I think of the weeds choking the seeds where the weeds symbolize our worldly desires. Many of us lost our faith because we succumbed to the worldly temptations not only of the flesh but also of material riches, power and fame.
I surmise that it is against this backdrop that Jesus said blessed are the poor for they will inherit heaven. It's because the poor, who have nothing to cling on to but the proverbial straw, will depend on God for their salvation in difficult times as well as in the life thereafter. The Bible teaches us to be more dependent on God. With this in mind, there are times when I think that life storms occasionally come our way to remind us of God.
The gospel is also a reminder for the rich not to use their wealth in debauchery. It is in keeping with the Christian teaching that riches on earth is not ours but is only lent to us and must be put to good use. We cannot find happiness or peace of mind with material riches.
When we have much more of it, material wealth loses its meaning. This could be the reason why many wealthy people become philanthropists. People who don't take time to examine their lives will keep of piling material riches without knowing why.
That brings me back to the subject of my previous posting "Life is a loaded dice" - that life on earth is a struggle between our mundane desires and our lofty ideals. Although we are often vanquished by worldly temptations, the other side of us keeps on telling us to reach for sublime ideals.
This convinces me that we are not only flesh, blood and bones or, to put it another way, merely atoms. We have a lofty spirit that reminds us that life in this world is just a pilgrimage to the life beyond where the sublime reigns, no matter if atheist scientists are arduous in trying to convince us that no life can rise beyond our graves.
Let the atheist scientists, who could have been referred to in the gospel as among the false prophets, bask in the glory of their fame. Our pursuit for adulation is as illusory as our pursuit for material fortune. The Bible reminds us that everything we do in this world is of no consequence, they're just like chasing the winds. We can read that in the book of Ecclesiastes.