In Today's papers, the big story is: Monica Lewinsky's book tour in Europe. Monica is concerned about her weight problem. On the next page, a woman from Kosovo is captured in the camera's eye, she looks like a skeletal figure, her face is the very image of anguish and fear, her mouth opened, startled into some sort of unspeakable pain.

Being caught in a war is one way of losing weight, but I wouldn't recommend it. The average prosperous, middle class American girl keeps a mirror with her at all times. She worries about her weight and whether she should consider cosmetic surgery for her nose, cheekbones or breasts. Nobody shows her what a ruptured silicone implant looks like: black and bloody, silicone dripping from nipples and deformed breasts so hard and painful they cannot possibly be touched. And no one speaks about the illness that follows, the cancer…(Diana Zuckerman, The Second Coming of Implants, Iris Magazine, The University of Virginia winter/spring 1999).

According to Diana Zuckerman, a nationally recognized expert on health and social policies affecting women, "More than 120,000 American women, many of them in their teens and early twenties, underwent surgery for breast implants last year. After years of controversy had cooled enthusiasm for implants, more women are choosing them than ever before."

Last week, The New Yorker devoted an entire issue to the world of fashion and fashion models. Why? It's a subject that sells.  Beauty and Sex. If you're not born a natural beauty, then there are other available options. Young women, who fall into the illusion of believing that they're worthless without sex appeal and that the body is everything, perpetuate a marketplace where greed prospers from the illusions our society values and promotes: Youth, Beauty and Sex.  In this case, the marketplace is plastic surgery, Dow Corning, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Baxter International and 3 M and the Media that keeps spinning the fantasy wheel of how glorious it is to be sexy.

Why did media reporters call Monica Lewinsky fat? What was the purpose? And as much as I despise Linda Tripp, I didn't think it was right for reporters to mock her appearance like schoolchildren in kindergarten. Again, the same thing happened to Chelsea Clinton. Where are these reporters coming from when they ridicule a 14-year-old girl for not being some typical blonde beach girl?! Is every woman supposed to look like Cindy Crawford? And if she doesn't, then should her existence be less valued in our society? No wonder women dread birthdays beyond 30! Perhaps if young women and these same male reporters were to visit Kosovo, they would wake up and discover the real meaning of human values, which have nothing, whatsoever, to do with a person's looks.

One way we can help girls to recognize that they are more than their bodies is to emphasize the value of intelligence and compassion, that's what I do in my philosophy classes; by introducing them to philosophy, the arts and poetry, my students begin to think more like Sophie in Sophie's World than a product in the commericial industry.  In our society, men and women are encouraged to value money as a means to an end and that end always comes down to materialism, which is to say that materialism is supposed to enhance the quality of life, people believe that the materialistic life is the happy life.  The richer a man is the more chances he'll have to win over that fashion model girl of his dreams. It's false. All of it is based on a lie, an illusion. And when men and women find out that there was nothing real about those goals, they turn to the psychologists and once again another market is born: Prozac! The solution to all anxiety problems.

As Roger Eastman put it in Coming of Age in Philosophy, "The progress of technology has not made men more content or ethical; some suspect that the glittering materialism may in fact be part of the problem.   The so-called comforts and conveniences of modern life are often of superficial value, and the price we pay for them is high."

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.  Alas!
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;...

--T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

The Media and journalists play a role here. Instead of mocking Lewinsky for her weight problem, they ought to see what the effects of judging people by their appearance lead to viz. anorexia and bulimia.  A value system built on youth, beauty, sex and materialism encourages young women to turn to cosmetic surgery.  Reporters ought to show what a ruptured breast implant looks like when the silicone leaks out into the rest of the body. But of course, we mustn't burst that wonderful little bubble of how glamorous it is to be rich and sexy! And we don't want to stop those millions and millions of dollars going into the pockets of cosmetic surgeons, we certainly want to keep the men at Dow Corning rich off our Hollywood dreams. Our economy depends on it!

--Jacqueline Marcus 

March 20, 1999

Kosovo

Emily Dickinson

American Poet (1830-1886)

We are the hollow girls
We are the stuffed girls
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.

Sunflower: metaphor for the soul