The Dreamseller_ The Calling - Augusto Cury [59]
A male designer challenged him tensely, “I don’t believe any of that. That’s ridiculous.”
“I wish it were. I would love for my ideas to be foolish.” And he spoke the number “four.”
At that moment, a young woman, confused, asked, “Why do you count while you speak?”
The dreamseller turned and stared at me silently. It seemed like some great force was dragging him into the hearts of families who were losing their sons and daughters. His eyes swimming with tears at the thought, he turned to the crowd and said:
“Lucia, a shy but lively young woman—creative and an excellent student—weighs just seventy-five pounds, despite being five feet, five inches tall. Her bones stick out under her skin, forming a repulsive image, but she refuses to eat for fear of putting on weight. Marcia, a smiling, extroverted young woman, an enchanting girl, weighs seventy-seven pounds and is five-foot-three. Her cadaverous face drives her parents and friends to despair, but even so she refuses to feed herself. Bernadette weighs less than ninety-five pounds and is five-seven. She used to like to talk to everyone but has isolated herself from her boyfriend, her friends and lives in chat rooms on the Internet. Rafaela weighs one hundred and five pounds and stands six feet tall. She played volleyball and liked going to the beach and running on the sand, but now she’s starving to death.”
He paused again, looked attentively at his audience, and said:
“In the time you’ve been listening to me talk, four young women will have developed anorexia. Some will survive their troubles, others will not. And if you ask these young women why they don’t eat, they’ll answer, ‘Because we’re obese.’ Billions of cells beg them to be fed, but these woman have no compassion for their bodies, which lack the strength to exercise or even walk. This desperation to reach this ideal body type, this stereotype of what is beautiful, has managed to suppress a vital instinct living things have never managed to block out naturally: our instinct to eat.”
And he stated that if those individuals lived in tribes where the stereotype wasn’t so powerful, they wouldn’t be sick. But they live in modern society, which not only propagates an unhealthy thinness but places excessive value on a certain type of eyes, neck, bust, hips, the shape of a nose—in short, a world that excludes and discriminates against anyone who doesn’t measure up to the standard. And the worst part is that all this is done subtly. He emphasized:
“I don’t deny that there can be metabolic causes for eating problems, but the social causes are undeniable and unforgivable. There are fifty million anorexics in the world—as many as the number of deaths in World War Two.”
Suddenly the dreamseller put aside his somberness, changed to a more pleasant tone and climbed on top of an armchair beside him and called out:
“The social system is clever: It shouts when it should keep quiet and keeps quiet when it should shout. Nothing against the models and the intelligent and creative designers, but the system forgot to shout that beauty can’t be standardized.”
Various people, international models and famous designers who were passing by, were attracted to the eccentric man showcasing his ideas. There were already people across the world fighting those stereotypes in society, but their voices were but a whisper compared to the monstrous system. Drunk with indignation, the dreamseller once more turned to his incisive Socratic method:
“Where are the heavier women in these shows? Where are the young women with less shapely hips? Where are the women with prominent noses? Why, in this temple of so-called beauty, are there no young women with saddlebags or stretch marks? Aren’t they human beings? Aren’t they beautiful, too? Why is the world of fashion, which came about to promote well-being, destroying women’s self-esteem? Isn’t that a socially acceptable rape of self-esteem?”
Listening to this indictment,