I am handsome. Really?

During my teenage years, I was convinced that I was not one of those guys with charming looks who instantly won girls over.  Had I known then the word "nerd," I would have instantly connected with that emotion-laden word.  In addition, almost every other week, like clockwork, a big fat zit would appear on my nose.

We never talked about feelings those years.  I did not even know it was possible.  All I knew was that I felt sad sometimes.  And perhaps was even on the verge of tears--but, of course, boys don't cry!  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder is all baloney, I decided.

I was not exaggerating much when I blogged a few months ago on life if one is not the object of dreams.  As I wrote there, I bet there are many among us who worried, or worry even now: "What if I were nothing but an ugly pile who could not, and would not, attract anyone?"

Of course, the pressure to look good is immensely worse on girls and women.  Even on older women.  A few years ago, when I told my mother that she ought to walk more, and get some sun on her for the essential vitamin-D, my father immediately jumped in and said that she could easily go for short walks in the morning after having coffee.  Seems logical, right?

My mother had a response that I could not have imagined.  She said that she had to look presentable when stepping out, and that meant she could do only after showering (or, take a bath, as they say in the old country.)  To her, going for a walk was not all that simple a thing as stepping out of the house.

A young Irish woman writes about the "embarrassment I felt as a teenager about not fitting some ideal of beauty."

Yes, we have all been there in some manner.  She then makes an important point about the contemporary "inclusivity ": "somewhere along the way, the message of inclusivity went from “every kind of person can be beautiful” to “every person is beautiful," which she argues is "actively harmful."

Wouldn’t it be freeing to admit that most people are not beautiful? What if we stopped prioritizing pleasing aesthetics above so much else? I wonder what it would be like to grow up in a world where being beautiful is not seen as a necessity, but instead a nice thing some people are born with and some people aren’t, like a talent for swimming, or playing the piano.

Quite an interesting way to think about it.  We say some are good at swimming, while others---like me--swim like a rock.  We state it as a fact.  The truth.  Why can't we be the same way about appearances?  Hmmm ...

In another part of the world, in Bangladesh,  a 29-year-old photographer documents the pressures on women in Bangladesh to be attractive through a unique series of photographs like the one that I have included in this post.

The women in Habiba's photos look bright and colourful but their faces are entirely covered, representing a loss of the inner self even though outwardly the women have made great efforts to look beautiful.
Habiba wants to draw attention to how much of themselves Bangladeshi women have to compromise to make others happy.

Life is complicated in so many ways!

Source

The Irish Saint ... Pattabi?

Rest assured. I am not losing my mind.

I know it is not St. Pattabi's Day.

But, in case you forgot ... I want to remind you something about the visiting Prime Minister of Ireland, Leo Varadkar.

What has that got to do with Pattabi?  I was playing on "P" of Patrick and came up with the Hindu name of Pattabi.

So, why Pattabi?

Leo Varadkar is not "truly" Irish. If trump and his minions lived in Ireland, they would have burnt giant crosses across from Varadkar's home and tried their best to deport him.

The 39-year-old Varadkar is Ireland's youngest prime minister. He's the son of an Indian immigrant and the first openly gay politician in the post.

His father was a brown-skinned non-Christian immigrant from a shithole!

Maybe you forgot.  But, remember that I had blogged about him, less than a year ago?

Here's an excerpt from that post:

In that ancestral home of his--in Ireland--an "American" history is being created: The son of a Hindu immigrant is all set to be the next prime minister of Ireland.  He is only 38--younger than JFK's age when he was elected president.  And, oh, this young man is gay:

A gay son of an Indian immigrant is now all but certain to become the next prime minister of Ireland, a country that has rapidly been leaving its conservative Roman Catholic social traditions behind.
Leo Varadkar, who was chosen on Friday by the Fine Gael party to be its leader, and therefore the head of the center-right governing coalition, will be the first openly gay taoiseach (as Ireland’s prime minister is called), and, at 38, the youngest.

The kind of a story that we normally associate only with the US.

Who were/are his parents?

Mr. Varadkar was born in Dublin in 1979, the son of an Irish Catholic nurse from County Waterford and a Hindu doctor from Mumbai, India. His parents met in England in the 1960s and lived in India for a time before moving to Ireland.
Growing up in a country where religious divisions have historically run deep, he attended a Catholic elementary school and a Protestant high school that followed the Church of Ireland tradition. He told The Irish Times in 2015 that he was raised Catholic but was “not a particularly religious person.”

How fascinating!  Almost a made-for-movie story!

Varadkar reminds us:

“If my election today shows anything, it is that prejudice has no hold in this Republic,” Varadkar said at Dublin’s Mansion House after the results were announced, adding: “Around the world people look to Ireland as a country where it doesn't matter where you come from, only where you want to go.”

I should never matter where you came from.

Only in America!

Lemme give you the response to the title of this post right away before you read further: NOT!

When JFK became a presidential candidate, as a Roman Catholic in a country where Protestants viewed Catholics with a great deal of suspicion, he had to go out of his ways to make sure that voters understood that he would not be a Vatican candidate.  In a stirring speech about the separation of church and state, and his Catholicism, JFK said:

contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic.

An Irish-Catholic-American was elected president.  And JFK happens to be the only Catholic ever to have been elected to the White House.

In that ancestral home of his--in Ireland--an "American" history is being created: The son of a Hindu immigrant is all set to be the next prime minister of Ireland.  He is only 38--younger than JFK's age when he was elected president.  And, oh, this young man is gay:

A gay son of an Indian immigrant is now all but certain to become the next prime minister of Ireland, a country that has rapidly been leaving its conservative Roman Catholic social traditions behind.
Leo Varadkar, who was chosen on Friday by the Fine Gael party to be its leader, and therefore the head of the center-right governing coalition, will be the first openly gay taoiseach (as Ireland’s prime minister is called), and, at 38, the youngest.

The kind of a story that we normally associate only with the US.

Who were/are his parents?

Mr. Varadkar was born in Dublin in 1979, the son of an Irish Catholic nurse from County Waterford and a Hindu doctor from Mumbai, India. His parents met in England in the 1960s and lived in India for a time before moving to Ireland.
Growing up in a country where religious divisions have historically run deep, he attended a Catholic elementary school and a Protestant high school that followed the Church of Ireland tradition. He told The Irish Times in 2015 that he was raised Catholic but was “not a particularly religious person.”

How fascinating!  Almost a made-for-movie story!

Varadkar reminds us:

“If my election today shows anything, it is that prejudice has no hold in this Republic,” Varadkar said at Dublin’s Mansion House after the results were announced, adding: “Around the world people look to Ireland as a country where it doesn't matter where you come from, only where you want to go.”

I needed such a positive news to offset the bleakness here in the land of the free.

Pregnancy and fetus: religious dogma meets law and medicine

It was only a couple of months ago, a pregnant woman, who was less than halfway through the gestation period, suffered a miscarriage.  Even though it was clear that the fetus would not develop into a full-grown child, and even though the mother and the father explicitly preferred an abortion, the hospital staff refused to carry it out.  Over the next few days, the mother developed multiple problems that led to several organs failing, which, in turn, killed her.

It was a multinational story as well: the mother, Savita Halappanavar--a dentist herself--and her husband, were legal residents in Ireland, after immigrating from India.  The Irish law prevented the medical personnel from carrying out the abortion.  The law itself being a reflection of the strong Catholic traditions.  As Katha Pollitt wrote in the Nation:

This was not a case of choosing between the fetus and the woman—the seventeen-week fetus was doomed, and nothing could have saved it. But it still had a heartbeat, and abortion is banned in Ireland.

Pollitt quoted the husband's report:

“The doctor told us the cervix was fully dilated, amniotic fluid was leaking and unfortunately the baby wouldn’t survive.” The doctor, he says, said it should be over in a few hours. There followed three days, he says, of the foetal heartbeat being checked several times a day.
“Savita was really in agony. She was very upset, but she accepted she was losing the baby. When the consultant came on the ward rounds on Monday morning Savita asked if they could not save the baby could they induce to end the pregnancy. The consultant said, ‘As long as there is a foetal heartbeat we can’t do anything.’
“Again on Tuesday morning, the ward rounds and the same discussion. The consultant said it was the law, that this is a Catholic country. Savita [a Hindu] said: ‘I am neither Irish nor Catholic’ but they said there was nothing they could do.”

Now, here in the US, a Catholic hospital is claiming that a fetus is not a person.  Yep, a Catholic hospital, where one might expect an argument that a fetus is a person whose life is valuable--as they have when it came to various medical insurance controversies.

So, why would a Catholic hospital deny that personhood to a fetus?  "because there is money at stake."