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.

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.

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.

Puerto Rico = Gangster's Paradise

As I eat a plain hot dogs with ketchup I think about my island’s economy. Yesterday as I talking to a friend I realized how closed are the economic circles of my island. Funding rarely reaches its destination and proposal money stays in the hands and projects of a few that don’t share the information so others don’t get the opportunity to be granted money. It’s really frustrating to see how the rich keep getting richer at the expense of the working class while the poor keep growing poorer and ignorant by the millisecond. There is no money to fix the economy, no money to fix the school system, no money to fix the public health insurance system and yet there is money for political campaigns and televised advertisements that are meant to encourage us to work for a system that does not work for us.  Puerto Rico used to be a paradise, now, all that remains is the nostalgia of better days. Today it is just a sick commonwealth that is becoming sicker and sicker by the minute. The cancer of poverty continues to spread, the social abyss keeps getting wider and wider and the people keeps getting more violent and hopeless. We need a glimmer of light, but it is going to be a monumental quest to find it within all this dirt and corruption that lies beneath the surface. Tourists, don’t let yourselves be fooled, the island is not safe, even police officers are abusing tourists and locals, it’s not paradise, (slaughter of animals and dirty beaches) and it is not a happy place to be right now, (if you don't believe me, ask the mother of the 18 year old boy who was killed in a car jacking a few days ago or the family members of the fast food manager who got shot in the head in an armed robbery on Thursday[I think]).

You're not a 100 dollar bill, not everyone is going to like you.However...

 Regardless of who you are and how you act, people will always have their awkwardly fantastic (as in fictitious) opinions about you. I mean, you could be a declared saint and there will still be people that will find something wrong with who you are, what you do, what you wear and more importantly, what you think. Why do I say this, well let’s just say that just now for no specific reason I started reflecting upon a situation that happened to me a while ago with a certain person that for anonymity’s sake I will call, DUH!. DUH! was seen by everybody as a happy go lucky person filled with the knowledge of traveling the world, to me, DUH! Seemed like an ok person, so I decided to be-friend DUH!. One time when we were having what I considered an academic, open minded argument, I told DUH! that I considered war an unnecessary thing, responsible for destroying so many lives and yet, soldiers became soldiers because it was their decision, so whatever happened next to them once enrolled it was not only the government’s fault for creating conflict, but also the soldier’s fault for becoming soldiers. My point was of course personal responsibility; don’t blame unto others what is a consequential misfortune of your fully aware, conscious decision taking. DUH! Took it in such a personal way that up to this day it (will refer to the person as it to maintain full anonymity) will not speak to me, it won’t even acknowledge my presence in a room and has told people horrible things about me, my personality and my personal believes. So I guess it really doesn’t matter what you do to try to make other people be friendly with you, they will still paint the picture of you in their minds that better suits their perspective of reality, so might as well just keep walking and enjoying life being who you are and not who anybody wants you to be.