Society

My husband once told me that I was raised so freakishly different that letting me roam around the city alone would be similar to leaving a blind new born kitten in the middle of a national highway. I was more than over protected. I practically grew up in another planet and never even knew it until I got married and left the Andromeda galaxy for Earth. This is probably why my husband is always afraid that I might end up half dead in a canal because I took a lollipop from a stranger.

What my husband doesn’t know is that my new job has taken me to a far worse highway than anywhere I’ve ever been on. Everyday I commute through the information super highway and the things I see and hear make the news seem like a fairy tale.

Just recently, a writing assignment has brought me to Dendrophilian’s YouTube page. Dendrophilian is a self confessed atheist and a pedophilia supporter. I am not so immersed in my self delusion to think that Dendrophilian belongs to an entirely new breed. I know there are people like him and that society says their presence is a fact of life. What is discomforting is that one of his videos in support of pedophilia sounds like a dignified rational sociological thesis defense, not a violent rant against the conventions of society. What is even more surprising is that this man has more than two thousand subscribers and has been repeatedly praised for his logic and intelligence. His two videos in support of pedophilia have been viewed thousands of times, have each been rated with three stars and have combined favorite votes of more than a hundred… HUNDREDS and THOUSANDS…

… makes me want to pack my children’s things in time for the next interstellar bus ride to Andromeda.

“Don’t waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour’s duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have no doubt that the great Emerson was partly referring to psychological rewards for the common diligent worker. I think though that he was also referring to financial preparation for retirement and old age.

I suppose if you are diligent enough, you will be able to harvest your just rewards. In the Philippines though, diligence is simply not sufficient. You would also have to be blessed with an entrepreneurial spirit to help you make old age comfortable. For those who don’t know the difference between the stock market and the wet market, the future can be dim.

Take for example a former colleague who retired two years ago at the age of 60. She had been a teacher for thirty years and worked five days a week for twelve hours a day or more. She received a staggering P100,000 ($2,139) for her three decades of service. She definitely was not a delinquent but even a lifetime of honest work earned her less than what most political thieves earn in a day.

She’s not the only one who has a bleak future ahead of her. Young professionals who have no aptitude for business and have no desire to wipe the asses of foreign patients abroad have to prepare for their future with measly incomes that can barely tide over the day’s needs. Cities outside of the capital offer young professionals at the staff level an average income of P7,000-P10,000 ($150-$214) a month for 24-26 days of work for eight hours a day. Upscale offices offer a little more at around P15,000 ($321) a month for the same amount of work. Of course, first time employees would be lucky if they receive the mandated basic salary. I know a nurse who earns a mere P150 ($3.21) for an 8 hour work day.

The only way to prepare for old age is to find your way to one of the multi national companies that offer high salaries and numerous benefits. In my province, there are only about four companies that fall under this category and only one of them is hiring 10-20 people every year until they stop hiring in 2010. That can hardly help the thousands of graduates every year and the approximately 100,000 or so unemployed in my province and the surrounding regions.

Now how exactly can mere hard work in the Philippines prepare for the hours and ages that will follow the twilight of a worker’s best years?

I just recently finished a job order for a set of articles on cosmetic plastic surgery. In the end, the sight of Tara Reid’s monstrous stomach, Michael Jackson’s diminishing nose, Vivica Fox’s squiggly looking breast and Michael Douglass’ bleeding wounds were enough to send me sick and nauseated to my bed.

It was therefore a most unfortunate incident that I yet again, came across the topic on the local news. The Beverly Hills Cosmetic Surgery and Skin Institute apparently just concluded a contest for “Miss Ugly No More” with Lou Victorioso taking the top prize. The contest featured (you guessed it) retokadas or women who had undergone various cosmetic plastic surgery procedures and non-surgical aesthetic procedures.

Let’s get this straight. I personally feel conservatives have no business preaching to people who want to go under the knife. Nonetheless, we can all say what we want and I say that the “before” pictures of the top three showed more vibrant and youthful women then the stiff copies of western beauties that they had been molded into.

I also think that the contest’s title, theme and concept were a direct affront to my genetic heritage. Everything about it implies that flat noses, small breasts, chubbiness and “normal” skin tone all denote ugliness. This means that I, my husband, everyone I know and millions of average people in the Philippines have all been denied the blessings of nature and collectively been made the butt of a cruel cosmic joke.

At the very least, the concept of the contest is archaic. Anyone would be a fool to subscribe to western ideals of beauty in this day and age when flat nosed Asians and black Africans sashay through international contests with no need to apologize for their genes.

As a footnote, I remember reading quite distinctly that even western doctors do not claim that they will be able to produce perfection. People who choose to undergo cosmetic plastic surgery should have realistic expectations because you can only (luckily) be improved and not perfected. So those promotional ads and billboards for the contest that made the contestants look like they were kidnapped, experimented on by aliens and returned in super model bodies are all “male bovine manure”.

It is not new for a number of people around the world to sign up for studies and surveys to earn a little cash. In the Philippines however, a similar practice is taking a slightly unconventional turn.

Two days ago I had a chance to watch Jessica Soho’s show on Philippine television. One of her features was about how some Filipino individuals, families and entire neighborhoods consent to becoming prospects or respondents. This is not anything like American controlled-double-blind-placebo stuff kind of studies. Prospects here in the Philippines allow their teeth to be extracted by dentistry students and their faces to be exorcised of acne by neophyte aestheticians. Some use different kinds of whitening lotions on each of their arms to see which brand is more effective. One respondent lost all her teeth and is now a respondent recruiter. She performs the task with great alacrity for less than half a dollar per recruited respondent.

There is nothing really inherently wrong about this kind of practice. Sadly though, it is another picture of how much people have been pushed to desperation. While officials entertain ASEAN foreign dignitaries to a culinary extravaganza that probably cost millions, people who practically live in hovels subsist on pennies that they earn by losing all their teeth, having their faces practiced on and coloring their arms differently.

There was a point in time when both physical and mental illnesses were thought to have been curable by bleeding a patient senseless or confining him until he was convinced that there were worse things than death. Modern science has since labelled such methods as primitive and inhuman.

On a similar note, it seems highly probable that fifty or so years from now, our present methods will also meet with some disapproval. Painful surgical incisions, side effect promoting medications and hormone scrambling psychotropic drugs will eventually be viewed with vomit inducing distaste. If history were allowed to go through its natural course, current medical practices will eventually transition to less frightening solutions. The problem however with recent trends is the temptation to preempt history.

Enter the evil dark lords of pseudo supplement-dom and their quest to rule the financial market. They all have the same scripts, “There are no miracle cures but we’re better than scalpels and a few stitches and medications that make you queasy ’cause we’re all natural. You can even get your money back if you can manage to navigate your way through the fine print of our intentionally muddled return policy.”

No one can probably blame patients who can’t afford highway robbery surgical operations and who are desperate for side effect free relief. I too would admittedly shrink from pumping my body full with chemicals. It would still however, be the height of insanity to put your life in the hands of cash starved backyard ghost companies that put a bad name on real reputable supplements.

Pseudo supplements are not called drugs and medicines for a reason. It is because their claims of providing treatment are scientifically unfounded. They will rule the world though if we amazingly persist in being stupid.