Media, Advertisement and Word Choices: Skinny and Beautiful are not synonyms

I wrote this post because now that I am at home more, I have a bit more time to watch some TV, I like to leave the TV on while I do chores around the house so I can listen to the background noise. I have noticed something that I believe is worth mentioning. Looking at commercials I’ve found a horrific similarity among them and that is their focus on a common goal, to make you feel bad about yourself so you will buy their products. That’s right, the new merchandising strategy, guilt. Ads like the one of the bowflex thread climber, the NutriSystem ones and a lot of other fitness and dieting commercials target mainly women’s low self esteem and image problems to persuade them to buy expensive, non proved and sometimes useless equipment and products with the promise of a taste of “skinny paradise”. Most of these commercials strategize the constant use of the word skinny, but never the use of the word healthy. As most of us are aware (because most of us own a mirror), no two women have the same body type; therefore skinny for you might not mean the same it means for me. I mean, skinny for Queen Latifah does mean the same as skinny for Kate Moss, or Kim Kardashian, or Halle Berry, and it will never mean the same, because they are different women, with different body types, bone structures, genetic material, etc, etc. However, media and advertisement industries seem to disagree with these notions and it appears they have come to an understanding that as long as it has the word skinny on it, women should buy it because it will be good for them. Skinny has become the new “One Size Fits All” tag. This reminds me a lot of those Jimmy Dean commercials where at the end it gives you a nice display of the product and shows you the calories but there is a strategically placed plate with sausages or a sandwich so you won’t see the sodium levels. Where am I going with this example? Simple, just because it is low calorie does not mean it is healthy, the same way, just because it says skinny on it does not mean it will be good for you.    

Also people tend to forget that skinny does not equal beautiful, and that is what we should be teaching girls and women and even men around the world; fit and healthy equals beautiful, not skinny. Eating healthy and exercising properly IS loving yourself, but you don’t need expensive diet systems and expensive fitness equipment for that, all you need is to inform yourself on nutrition and health and put it to practice in a way that fits your schedule and budget. But most importantly, know that you are beautiful, smart and important regardless of anything else.

Christmas Time In Puerto Rico

Every person who has spent Christmas time In Puertop Rico knows theer is no better place to spend the Holidays, Puerto Rico's Holiday time traditions are so fun, family oriented and the food is so good that once you've had a Puertorrican Christmas, you'll never see Christmas time the same way again. :) So here's a little something for all of you out there who want to have a glimpse of what I am talking about.

“T’was the night before Christmas, Boricua Style”

Era la noche antes de Navidad en Puerto Rico y en todos lados se podía apreciar
a las familias boricuas de camino a parrandear
Titi Carmen se quedo atrás, ella velaba el lechón,
Mientras Tío Cuco custodiaba el coquito sin compasión.
Y después de la parranda, a lechonear todo el mundo!
Hasta los más viejos, en andador, llegan en un segundo.
Había arroz, lechón, pasteles, arroz con dulce y rones muy variados
Garantizado que saldrías con par de botones reventados.
Y fue entonces cuando abuelo dijo “Esperen un segundo,
sé que algo falta aquí, el lechón está muy bueno, el arroz con dulce,
riquísimo esta, y comería mas tembleque con coquito pa’ bajar.
Pero aun así una Navidad boricua realmente no es Navidad, sin que
saquen el pitorro así que vamos! A Pitorrear!”
Y así el reloj dio las doce, Y la Navidad llego.
Y todavía fiestando la luz del día los cogió.
No hay mejor Navidad que la que se celebra en Puerto Rico,
Musical, en familia, se baila mucho y se come rico.
-Yalitza Santos

My latest publication

This a link to my latest publication, it's in Spanish so, enjoy!

http://elpostantillano.com/component/content/article/318-cartas-de-una-antillanoa/2821-yalitza-santos.html

Chain Reaction

Puerto Rico has turned in a place of violence. This weekend alone (from Friday to Sunday) there have been 10 cases of murder reported. The once “Island of Enchantment” has turned into a place where people are afraid to come out of their houses because they know that now more than ever it is more of a possibility to die waiting for a traffic light to change, picking up an order in a fast food restaurant of jumping back into your car after a day of shopping. What ever happened to sense of community that moved people to take care of each other of the codes of the streets where no innocents, women or children were to be hurt in the process of “taking care of a situation”?

 While the public slowly marinates in the panic, government official and political parties focus on smear campaigns and playing a “tag blame game” amongst themselves. Red senators blame blue ones and those blame red district representatives and those blame blue mayors and those blame red senators and those then go back to blaming blue Governors and so on so forth they continue to play tag while women are being battered to death by their abusive partners, children are being physically, sexually abused and murdered, senior citizens rights are violated by badly trained and psychologically unstable police officers and citizens are being murdered and robbed in their own homes.

 Meanwhile, in the United States political parties and government officials are focused on denying people the right to public health insurance and women the right to choose whether they want to have children or not. Instead of focusing in the education and economy problems of the country they just “want to show those second class citizens who’s boss.”

 As we can appreciate here our socio-economic situation is not only our own, but it is a chain reaction. The worst part of it is that it will continue to get worse if we don’t pay attention to the social components of the problem. People need help. Not only in the economic sector, but also access to objective information, quality education, to know that they have a choice and that they will treated with respect and dignity. Otherwise these situations will only get worse; which is a shame because it is those who are innocent the ones who end up paying for the sins of the guilty.

Homosexuality a crime? I don't think so.

As I was reading an article about decriminalizing homosexuality in Africa in a cyber news portal, the first thing that came to my mind was the following question: Why do we feel the need to criminalize homosexuality? In this era, to criminalize someone for having a different sexual preference is like criminalizing people who are being born with dwarfism or with missing limbs. They were born that way, it’s nobody’s fault; nature made them the way they are.  Besides, if we were all born to be the same, act the same and have the same preferences we would all have been born women only, or men only. It is like going back to the times where you would be punished just for being a woman, of for being a different skin color. It’s wrong and it should be stopped. What should be made a criminal offense and highlighted to people everywhere that it will be punished is to act upon hateful believes and hurt those who are different from you; now that is a measurement that should be respected, acted upon and reinforced. Because no matter your sexual preference you are still a human being, therefore you should be allowed to live with dignity and pursue your happiness.

On restaurants and Translations

The new restaurant trend in Puerto Rico, is that restaurants want to have bilingual menus (which is not abad thing considering Puerto Rico is a very popular touristic destination). So what they do is that they have the name of the specialty in Spanish and right next to it a translation in “English” Why do I write English inside quotation marks? Because sometimes the word chosen to represent the concept in the menu is not exactly the right word given the culinary context of the word. People underestimate the value of a good translation. To be respected as a bilingual destination where tourists can have  a good time in their own language is not limited to just be able to translate a few words and be able to say “Yes” “No” and “Give a moment” until you can find someone who is actually fluent in the language. It is also about choosing the right vocabulary according to the represented context. A very good example is a well known restaurant that has enjoyed a well reputed name for years in the northwest area of Puerto Rico, if you order from their menu; you can always enjoy the “Parmesan Chicken Chest” as your main course, it’s bound to be delicious even though its choice in vocabulary is disastrous.

Puerto Rico = Gangster's Paradise ( a review of sources)

Funny, I posted about this same topic yesternight and here today THE local newspaper published this article:

La Isla del Chanchullo Gubernamental

It roughly translates to "the island of government deception"  and it states that Puerto Rico has turned into one of the most corrupt destinations in the Caribbean. No more questions your honor.