The New York Times just wrote about body image and ideas of beauty and how fucked up they are and how they manifest themselves in society and, um, holy shit is that stuff fucked up. Shout out to Osmel Sousa, the guy in charge of the Miss Venezuela pageant, for being, like, a weird Venezuelan super villain, but instead of upsetting international trade routes or destabilizing national economies, he just perpetuates unrealistic aesthetics on to Venezuelan popular culture. His quote to open the accompanying video piece is pretty fucking epic: “I say that inner beauty doesn’t exist. That’s something that un-pretty women invented to justify themselves.”
Evidently, in Venezuela even the mannequins have gotten plastic surgery. You go to the mall in Caracas and hit up the BCBGMAXAZRIAwith your girl and you’ll both be bombarded by mannequins with gargantuan boobs and asses that only science can create. That shit might seem dope at first, but is not good for your souls, my pals. It’s weird and unhealthy and most definitely bad for both genders in the long run.
The craziest mannequins I ever saw were on the eighth floor of Opening Ceremony in Tokyo. It was, like, a super noir floor and all the mannequins had on horse head latex masks. That shit was super disturbing. I mean, not in a "reification of a patriarchal insistence on the hyper-sexualization of women that results in unrealistic physical forms" like the Venezuelan mannequins, but in, like, a "it puts the lotion on its skin" kind of way. Yo, I’m all about eliminating mannequins from shop floors. I only shop at stores that use black steel piping and wooden hangers and artfully pile the clothing in the corner and shit. I WANT MY SHOPPING EXPERIENCE TO BE CONCEPTUAL. Wait, maybe these mannequin manufacturers are simply commenting on the commodification of the human form? NOW THAT WOULD BE CONCEPTUAL AS FUCK, VENEZUELA.
