Normal day at the office today. I usually don't eat proper breakfasts anymore because work starts early in the morning. If I am doing field work, I only eat lunch and dinner. If I'm in the office, I bring a fruit to munch, have lunch, and dinner. Not really a good idea rationally speaking but it's my little comfort that I'm not eating three fattening meals. See. Linda Chung works, and it's not something I can keep myself from thinking about. The media is powerful and we should be highly critical of it. With that said, I have totally succumbed to the general concept of beauty portrayed in the media. It's hard to keep up a healthy image of yourself "as is" if the media denies it, if your peers deny it, if your family denies it, and if the whole society denies it.
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The West has influenced the Asian concept of female beauty in very unfortunate ways. You cannot ever be beautiful until you are pale and tall, or until you have large busts. I say "or" because large busts can accentuate your waist (but your waist should preferably only have skin wrapped around your bones). You must be the ultimate human Barbie, if not naturally then artificially.
There are tons of products to choose from in beauty shops like Sasa, Bonjour, and Colourmix, to help you achieve this notion of beauty. They are all set up to cater towards female consumption. Skin too oily? too dry? too DARK? This cream. Add some powder. Don't need to test whether it matches your skin tone, just use the lightest one. Then add some blush. Now you need to "put your eyes, ears, mouth, and nose back on" (there's actually a Cantonese phrase for this) with mascara, eye liner, lipstick, eye shadow... Sometimes I wonder how someone can still make an expression with all this powder caked on their faces.
As Dr. Aaron Koh said to the BA (language studies) students during a summer camp talk, "Ads make us feel like there's something missing in our lives, that our lives are not complete until we buy a particular product." Most professors at York Fine Arts bring up "purpose and intent of media and art" on a daily basis and I was really glad to hear that people are also looking at what ads do to us in Hong Kong. If you think you're bombarded by the media in North America, think again. This is way more intense. It gets to the point where you can't even have a moment of silence to yourself to reflect upon your day. It's amazingly hard for me to sit down and blog. I get a thought and the next second it's gone from my brain because something (usually on a screen) has distracted me. Can't imagine having to study or research in this environment...
Anyway, I brought two US peaches into the office today for munching. I really miss the assorted berries, nectarines, peaches, plums sold in Canada during the summer. Strawberries are like luxury products here. While I was washing the peach in the pantry, a cleaning lady walked up to me,
"is that a peach?"
- yes
"did you eat anything before this?"
- no
"you can't eat the peach without something in your stomach, it will give you a stomach ache!"
- really? I didn't know...
"you need to eat something, like biscuits."
- oh... I'll go buy some downstairs then. Thanks.
"nothing in your office?"
- no
"okay wait, I'll go get some for you"
- thank you!!
She went away and came back quickly with two packets of biscuits :) So nicee...! I'm not entirely sure whether eating a peach on an empty stomach will give me a stomach ache, but I certainly don't want to take that chance.
My tummy's like a bunny's,
breakable like glass,
can only take grass,
or acid will burn
and blood will return
opening the wound again would really suck.
There was also a man who shared an umbrella with me when I was caught in pouring rain, but I'll tell you that story another time.
