An Anthropologist Wannabe

TLC's "Little People, Big World" is making waves among the viewing public in North America. They portray the everyday lives of the Roloff family. Matt and Amy Roloff are in their mid-40's and both are dwarfs or little people. They have four children, just one of whom is a "little person".

What I would like to know is this: Is "Little People, Big World" a legit excuse for voyeurism into a dwarf's world, or is the show really helping to educate people about dwarfs and dwarfism?

Will we allow little people to truly live "normal" lives doing everyday things like most of us? Or will we continue to gawk at them making them feel that their physical differences do separate them from the rest of us?

Finally, I would love to read some books on dwarfism, so if anyone has any titles to suggest, please pass them on.

SABAH, The Movie.

While everyone else was watching the Oscars, I watched "Sabah, the movie" instead. Here's a short synopsis: It's about a 40-year old Syrian woman who lives in Canada. Sabah has never married because, after her father died, she allowed herself to fall into the role of her mother's caretaker while her brother took over as head of the household, ruling all the women in his family with an iron fist. I guess, this being a movie, one has to forgive the stereotyping, but Sabah is the kind of woman who would just cower under the glance of a man, so firmly embedded in her cultural consciousness is the expectation that a woman is never seen to do anything that would seem provocative and that includes, never having a bare head, never looking a man in the eye, never giving him the "come on" even inadvertently. Anyway, one day, Sabah does something radical - she goes swimming!!! She is usually the lone swimmer in the gym pool until one day a man joins her and accidently uses her towel when he gets out to answer a call on his cell phone. When Sabah goes to reclaim her towel it sparks off a highly unlikely friendship between the two which leads to a wonderful romance, at once bashful and passionate. Unfortunately, because he's a white man and a Christian, Sabah cannot let anyone in her conservative Muslim family know about her boyfriend...obviously I cannot tell you what happens next because that would amount to a "spoiler" and I would hate to be accused of that, what I can tell you however, is I would have called this movie, "A 40-year Old Virgin-2"!

Seriously though, this is a wonderful movie where culture and romance are conflicted - makes you so appreciative of how falling in love is so uncomplicated in the western world, or is it?

Apparently blondes have been having fun since the end of the "Ice Age"

A new study has found that north European women evolved blonde hair and blue eyes at the end of the Ice Age to make them stand out from their rivals at a time of fierce competition for scarce males.

According to the article in "Evolution and Human Behavior", "...blond hair originated in the region because of food shortages 10,000-11,000 years ago. Until then, humans had the dark brown hair and dark eyes that still dominate in the rest of the world. Almost the only sustenance in northern Europe came from roaming herds of mammoths, reindeer, bison and horses. Finding them required long, arduous hunting trips in which numerous males died, leading to a high ratio of surviving women to men.The increase in competition for males led to rapid change as women struggled to evolve the most alluring qualities. Peter Frost (a Canadian anthropologist) believes his theory is supported by studies which show blonde hair is an indicator for high oestrogen levels in women..."

Now we all know that celebrity blondes such as Marilyn Monroe, Jessica Simpson, Reese Witherspoon and Paris Hilton are held up as ideals of feminine allure. However, the future of the blonde is uncertain.

A study by the World Health Organisation found that natural blonds are likely to be extinct within 200 years because there are too few people carrying the blond gene. According to the WHO study, the last natural blond is likely to be born in Finland during 2202.

A nice little (well, not so little actually) article in the Guardian yesterday on how tanning became popular in Europe.

"...Tanning, according to a widely recounted anecdote, began in 1923, at the moment that Coco Chanel stepped off the Duke of Wellington's yacht at Cannes and into the gaze of the waiting cameras. The designer, the story goes, had spent too long in the sun by accident - but thanks to her status as an arbiter of style, her skin tone was interpreted as a fashion statement. For centuries until then, a pale skin had been the preserve of the moneyed classes; browner shades spoke of outdoor manual labour. It took the development of mass foreign tourism (and, possibly, Chanel's endorsement) before a tanned skin in Britain came to stand for something different: the leisure and wealth to take holidays in sunnier climates. One survey, conducted in 2000, found that almost 50% of Britons holidaying abroad considered coming home with a tan the most important reason for going in the first place..."

I read this with great interest because where I come from face creams (and now, soap) containing bleach or skin whiteners are probably the most popular beauty product for women. One only has to turn on the TV in India or open a magazine and you're literally drowned in skin whitening advertisements. Hindustan Lever Limited's (HLL) "Fair & Lovely" advertisements are a case in point. The advertisements, which clearly associate dark skin with romantic and professional failure, and fair skin with success, had to be taken off air after protests by activists and social groups.

So, what I have to deduce from these phenomenons is that a disatisfaction with one's skin colour can be a universal phenomenon, especially among women. The sad thing is, both tanning and bleaching come with huge health risks. According to the Guardian, In some parts of Britain, skin cancer rates are now higher than in Australia, with Glasgow having the dubious distinction of being the sun bed capital of Great Britain . Tanning is so popular in Britain that some high schools noticed pupils were sneaking out for tanning sessions in their lunchbreaks, so much so, the school authorities started running lessons on how to apply a fake tan instead! But the problem with fake tanning products such as creams, spray-ons etc. is that they end up costing more to use than a regular visit to a sunbed in a tanning salon; they also leave streaks and fade faster and thus not as popular.

The most popular bleaching creams contain 4% hydroquinone, a harsh bleaching agent that can destroy the outer layer of the skin, also because these creams are absorbed by the skin, the toxic products enter the bloodstream, reaching the organs thus creating hormonal disorders and other problems- it's like feeding your body poison.

How much melanoma and skin disfigurement is it going to take before we love the skin we're in?

You've come a long way, Baby!

When I lived in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia was a rich but medieval haven in my alien eyes. I could not believe there existed a country in these modern times that would not permit their women to drive or vote and where women had to seek a husband's or father's "permission" for her to travel abroad! I could not comprehend why women couldn't work unless they worked as nurses or teachers in a "women-only" environment. But, most puzzling of all, I couldn't understand why the Saudi women were complicit in their segregation!

I still don't have the answers to any of my questions except to say, that contrary to my expectations, the Saudi women are a happy lot. They don't view their "abayas" or veils as a garment that restricts them, but rather as a garment that protects and shelters them. We as western women think it's an outrage for women to have to be all covered-up in this day and age, but if we are willing to be honest with ourselves, we will admit to having our own "veils", too. Our veils may not be made of chiffon or georgette and worn over the eyes, rather I see them as the pressure to remain a size 6 no matter what, or the pressure to remain a youthful-looking 25 no matter how old we get---this obsession with youth and weight is our veil and there's no denying that we women subjugate ourselves to it.

Anyway, today's Guardian has a more positive article on the status of Saudi women. "Although women still cannot vote or drive, the last few years have brought important changes, even if they stop well short of equality. Women can now officially exist in their own right with their own identity cards, rather than being included on the card of their husband or father. Travel restrictions have been eased, allowing them to get blanket permission from a male relative for travel abroad, rather than needing separate permission for each trip. They can also own businesses instead of having to register them in the name of a wakil, an authorised male representative or proxy."

That's all fine and dandy, but what about sexual apartheid? When will women be able to walk on the streets alone, without a male relative, without incurring the wrath of a mullah or religious police? Again, according to the Guardian, "The kingdom's sexual apartheid is enforced, in a crude fashion, by the religious police, the mutawa. Thuggish, bigoted and with little real training in Islamic law, they are much feared in some areas but also increasingly ridiculed. In Jeddah - a more laid-back city than Riyadh - they are rarely seen nowadays."
Phew that's a relief! And one of the ironies of Saudi Arabia's sexual apartheid is that women's parties are a no-go area for the men of the mutawa. They can't raid a women's party unless they suspect alcohol is present - and they are in serious trouble if their suspicions turn out to be wrong. So in that respect Saudi women's parties are a lot more fun than the male parties.
The Guardian describes them thus: "Men's parties tend to be dull affairs. In Riyadh, male partygoers just sit around. In Jeddah they play cards. In Ha'il (in the north), they may do a bit of sword-dancing. Then they go home, usually by midnight.

Women's parties are a different matter, and often carry on until 4am with dancing, female DJs and sometimes all-woman bands. "Even the most religious women, if it's only drums, they get up and dance," a lady Saudi National says. "In the west it's the young and beautiful who dance. Here, if you're overweight it's OK. The women are not doing it to show off. They're doing it to enjoy themselves."

Sooooo, who's having more fun now???