THE WEEK started in a rather interesting fashion and from the looks of it the trend will continue till the weekend. And here we are in the middle of the week and the beauty parlors are all abuzz about the minutest details and analyzing them as if their very lives depend upon it.
No, they are not talking about the ongoing pandemic and how many variants have mutated from the virus SARS-CoV-2 a.k.a. COVID-19, and the latest quarantine designation of “I Am Iloilo City”. They are talking about something much more important (well, to them anyway) – the just concluded Miss Universe beauty contest.
The fact that most Filipinos give so much importance to these beauty contests is a clear manifestation of their perverted and damaged psyche, a desperate need for approval, a fixation for aesthetics and shallow ornaments, and a deeply ingrained colonial mentality.
Folks, it was just a stupid beauty contest so chill. There’s really no need for all this melodrama. It does not really matter if she won it or not. Our lives will still be the same and people are still getting sick and dying while the virus is still around.
Perhaps all that enthusiasm and “undying love” for your “Miss Universe candidate” should be channelled into something more serious i.e. strictly enforcing and following the proper protocols of wearing facemask (properly, of course), social distancing and washing and disinfecting your hands.
You know, doing these things save lives including yours while winning or losing a beauty contest doers not.
Beauty contests for that matter are never progressive and will never serve to inspire anyone to move several notches above themselves. It is a selfish and discriminatory thing.
Of course, you will ask why?
Quite simple really. It is a contest based on an international standard of beauty and that standard is based on your genes, meaning if you are not born “beautiful” you can never develop yourself to be beautiful because it is not in your genes, unlike sports or athletics. The poor little girl from, say Balasan or Alimodian, inspired by world-class athletes can train and develop herself to be a world-class athlete and eventually win an Olympic gold.
Sports or athletics is open to anyone born “beautiful” or not. All you need is the determination to be one.
A case in point is Ilongga track and field champion Alexie Mae Brooks.; I saw her train in the Iloilo Sports Complex as a scrawny teenager. Now she is a national athlete representing the country and an ASEAN champion.
Sports is the best way as it is democratic, open to anyone, not like “beauty contests” which are only for those aesthetically beautiful.
Karl Marx once said “religion is the opium of the people”. If he were around today he’d most probably add…”and beauty contests, too.”
And for that bit of nonsense…wel,l actually to avoid the nonsense about these so-called transgenders, establishments should just put this sign on their toilets/comfort rooms “With Penis” or “With Vagina” as these days “Men” or “Women” have taken on a totally different meaning.
As I have always been saying, what’s between your legs determine your sex, not what you fancy yourself to be.
Finally for the “up yours”…excerpts from a May 12, 2021 article on www.straitstimes.com:
China’s Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine found highly effective in real world study
Sinovac Biotech Ltd.s vaccine is wiping out COVID-19 among health workers in Indonesia, an encouraging sign for the dozens of developing countries reliant on the controversial Chinese shot, which performed far worse than Western vaccines in clinical trials.
Indonesia tracked 25,374 health workers in capital city Jakarta for 28 days after they received their second dose and found that the vaccine protected 100 percent of them from death and 96 percent from hospitalization as soon as seven days after, said Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin in an interview on Tuesday (May 11). The workers were tracked until late February.
Mr. Sadikin also said that 94 percent of the workers had been protected against infection – an extraordinary result that goes beyond what was measured in the shot’s numerous clinical trials – though it’s unclear if the workers were uniformly screened to detect asymptomatic carriers.
“We see a very, very drastic drop,” in hospitalizations and deaths among medical workers, Mr. Sadikin said.
It’s not known what strain of the coronavirus Sinovac’s shot worked against in Indonesia, but the country has not flagged any major outbreaks driven by variants of concern.
In a separate interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday, Sinovac’s chief executive officer Yin Weidong defended the disparity in clinical data around the shot, and said there was growing evidence CoronaVac is performing better when applied in the real world.
In the Indonesian health worker study, and another in a Brazilian town of 45,000 people called Serrana, nearly 100 percent of people studied were fully vaccinated, with serious illness and deaths dropping after they were inoculated.
And that is an “up yours” to all those badmouthing Sinovac simply for political and sinophobic reasons other than scientific. (brotherlouie16@gmail.com)/PN
