Of Tiaras and World Peace

hello all and thanks for interacting

i`ll take you all one-by-one

hossp: cynical, yes. I think I mentioned that. and to your question of why i compare a little girls happiness with a palestinians misery - i dont, she (i.e. the little girl) does - when she promises world peace on her coronation.

echoboom: ok.
rozaiba: thank you, once again, for taking my line of thinking further. yes you are right, the struggle of the real woman should not take a backseat.

sameerJB: its` amazing how everything i submit quickly turns to religion! a lot of you out there need to give Islam a rest - seriously, religion is dragged all too often in vain in too many discussions that could really do without it. and whining: seriously! honey, if u knew me better u would know im not whining! i was taken in by what i saw and saddened by how little it took to belittle anothers pain. read the piece again if you didnt catch that.

and yes this is my personal view and nowhere have i demanded that you agree with me. my only concern is to raise questions. if instead of pondering you choose to pass judgement on my intentions then theres nothing i want to do about it.

``see the beauty of the world`` - i never stopped you or anyone from doing so - my cynicism takes a specific form against people i personally interact with in my daily life. it finds easy location in urban begums and beauty pageant organizers and participants because ive seen these specific groups try too hard to prove that they are something that they are not. they have such a hard time allowing glamour into their lives without ridding themselves of its guilt. theyre the ones who dont want to see the beauty of the world - natural or created - take your grievances up with them because as far as appreciating beauty for beauty`s sake goes, im completely with you.

zahraJ: always a pleasure. i think one answer addresses all concerns you raise here: this piece and the one before it had to follow a certain agenda because i wrote them as comment pieces for the tft as their fashion correspondent. they feel, and rightly so, that fashion writing needs to be a lot easier for their local readers to digest it. even these were too ``theoretical`` for them. whatever that means. ive had to simplify and filter and make things easy and that compromised me - therefore the ``something missing``. but im sort of back-on-my-own now. so i hope the something missing problem will not re-emerge.

thank you for sharing the opinion. i appreciate it. i hope i can keep u coming back.

ill look into ``the present``.

Khadija,

My last post had some missing sections. I guess I was under the influence of a hilarious comedy, ``Along Came Polly`` that I simply loved. I cannot stand Ben Stiller, but I still watch his ridiculously lovable comedies...I find Jennifer Anniston a full fledge nukli actress and churail at times but it`s fun watching her antics :)

I wanted to mention that you are one the very few Pakistani Writers on Chowk that I like to read despite the fact that I may not agree or subscribe to your point of views.

Also, I really liked the first article I had read by you for some different reason. Lately, there is something missing :) Khuch Kaha Naheen Jaa Saktaa.

Eid Mubarik to you.

Best Wishes,
Zahra


General Note: The obsession with shaved legs and arm-pits is quite amusing. I guess the said poster grew up or was exposed to people from stone ages who had no clue on personal hygiene and grooming. Even the very reference to the above again and again displays a backward mindset and exposure. And, I thought, there was a move to send Man to explore other planets...What an irony!

Khadija,

Hi Again!

1. In my opinion, you are comparing different aspects of life/people to establish a co-relation. Somehow, the arguments are not very appealing to develop that .

2. There are all kinds of pageants, but there have also many interesting women who have been selected for those pageants. At least the ones I saw and have read about had women who had some substance to them as well. In fact, one of the pageants had a brilliant ballet dancer(if I am not mistaken). The woman had some issues with her hearing since her childhood but had learned ballet and when she was nominated for the pageant, some snippets from her life story were played in the background. If I am not mistaken, I think she was Ms. America - Alabama. And, yes she was pretty. But also she was a handicap who worked very hard to learn ballet.

3. In America, beauty pageants are not the only way of promoting a cause and sponsoring homeless, poor and others. To your point that ``social cause`` should not be tied to the glamorous stuff...I am with you on that. There are 100s of other genuine causes which are well sponsored and taken care of without any umbrella factor. Since I have been part of many therefore I can tell you from my first hand experience. And, just from a personal perspective, I would say getting into an initiative where the community contributes towards the development of a society is a very fulfilling experience.

4. In my very strong opinion, the begums have the right to squander or rightfully utilize the money of their men however they want to. There are all kinds of women who exist everywhere on the planet earth. You are not going to change their perception about life. What you will learn at the end will be to adopt the set of values that you consider worthwhile and eliminate the ones that you do not acknowledge in others! Your core will stay the same but you end up developing further provided you are in a healthy surrounding where that growth is natural.

I like Oprah for many reasons. But I have a very hard time subscribing to her Oprah Magazine. I am not even sure if it is ``O`` or ``Oprah`` or ``Oxygen``... I always end up giving that to my friends and family as gift subscription. Oprah had a very tough life till she reached where she is right now. She is not the slimmest, the tallest and has all the other Ms. Universe`s attributes. But she has a very charismatic and a proactive personality. Please do read the story about her struggle with her weight and how she dealt with it.
In her case, I would say that she has earned it vs. being given things on a plate or being someone`s begum to cherish the lavish things in life. It`s just that some like to earn to be able to cherish life the way they want to and to be able to contribute wherever they want to and however they want to. Some like to rely on others for the aforementioned aspirations of life.

5. I agree with you that if you want to enjoy life or care to enjoy life you should do that without any remorse or guilt trips. True.

6. You article also touches upon a number of issues that are not considered as issues in the West but become issues when the Eastern World starts dwelling on them.

7. By the way, S.Johnson`s ``The Present`` is a sweet book. You may like to give it a quick read.

I dont know if this is cynicism but whining definitely it is. This article takes one small selctive sample from a huge heterogeneous mixture, anlayzes under the microscope using a narrow slit of personal moral world view, filtering out the rest and seeing it as contrary to her personal moral views thereby strengthening the belief in her personal moral view.

If everybody has the right to veto according to personal moral view, there wont be many institutions, businesses, means of livelihoods, economy and govenment standings except for those places where people have no right to veto, such as communism, totalitarian or Islamic system with infallable revealed truths and any deviaition means decapitation in public .

Lets assume the authorities listen to Khadija Hassan to the delight of ecoboom and ban the beauty peagents. Tomorrow Farangi_Kush whines about too many people shaving their faces and that one is also granted with everybody is asked to grow beards. just these two action would cause lose of thosands of jobs, loss of governement revenues from bankrupt gillette, remigton and other whiskers removing technology companies, and then hamzad afaqui or ghalib zaman or ecoboom demand banning of alcohol and alcohol industry goes down the drain. What is the reward or substitute for eliminating pieces one by one from the engine of economy for the sake of a moral society according to narrow, old and stale belief systems. The camel hide industy is not large enough to absorb so many newly unemployed from entertainment, razor and alcohol industries.

Stop the obsession with things wrong and immoral and see the beauty of the world in three dimentions and colored instead of two dimentions and black and white. Things are just too interconnected and can not be eliminated for the sake of belief and cynicism. The whole system starts crumpbling if such mechanism is allowed to happen with ease. It is no different than the rigidity of Islam and infallabilty of injunctions. Do you see any Muslim scholar, Islamist or fundamentalist supporting removing some ayah of quran or rejecting slective hadiths? once that happens, an avalanche of eliminations set in motion. That is why, the defenders defend all corners and nooks of it. Can you imagine how fast political side of Islam will collapse or reformation coming roaring in only if all muslim men stop shaving armpits and groins and all muslim women start shaving legs and armpits only.

Khadija Hassan.


This kind of thinking is muslim. A CHOWK no-no. Not appreciated by the rabid humanistics or margarine-muslims.
If you want to be counted among the educated ones please glorify nudity, deviancy, and liquor-use. These are, in the eyes of these dollar-for-dummies, qualities and characteristics which has made the west a paragon of progress.

These now-I`m-desi-now-I`m-nots measure their IQs by their alcohol-count.
These now-Im-desi-now-I`m-nots are modern `cause of their nudity-amount.

Beauty pageants are one of the most successful marketing tools out there. They make no sense. In their defense, people say that it’s no different than any other form of entertainment. However, these pageants resemble more like a product…a box of cereal maybe where it is realized that the substance or essence of the product really isn’t all that but if you package it correctly it’ll sell well. So the ‘cover-up’ with philanthropist notions and promises to help save the world.

It’s not necessarily cynicism that may force one to stray away from such shows. There are better stories out there. Such as that of thousands of other 20 year-old single-parent black women trying to rise into adulthood, out of poverty, take care of their kid(s), work earning a meager salary and trying to maintain a decent GPA so she can graduate with a degree.

Man!
This is cynical! May I just call you ``Cynical Queen!`` No offense meant.
Why pick on little girl`s happiness and compare that with Palestian misery.
I like the voyuer part. Guess! voyuerism is defined differently than, I believe, what you imply. I hope you know that.
This is cynical!!!