Photo Essay: I love beauty parades

Yes, Sir. I do love them. I was in sunny Bangalore when the whole hoo haa about the Miss World beauty pageant blew up in 1996. Well, I have to thank Ganesh, Imhotep, Confucius, Zeus and the great Pasta God aka Great Flying Spaghetti Monster with meat balls in the sky, that I stayed in the same hotel as those lovely ladies and my eyes were almost perpetually on stalks. So while it was young spotty hormone driven time way back then, now I have moved on (I think).

I know all the very well known arguments against female beauty parades.  Here's a great article by Choodie Shivaram on this issue and I am taking the liberty to quote few lines from her article.

""demeaning to our culture," "devaluing to our tradition," "promoting vulgarity and obscenity," and "a disgrace to womanhood." ...... Communists deplored the event as capitalist exploitation of women and part of the multi-national corporations' carefully planned plundering of India. Women's groups found the event degrading to women.

Quite so, but at the same time, hey, I am an observer and while at the same time, I can slightly see the objections, I also am an appreciative  lover of human beauty. Take this joke "photoshopped" picture for example on the left while the real David is on the right

  

I am sure Michelangelo would be rolling in his grave but that's not beautiful to me even though it is just a plump version of his David. And irrespective of which statue you like, you do know that one arm of that statue is broken and then repaired? You still like and admire that statue, no? A disabled statue, so to speak.

So then I read the news that now Cambodia will play host to Miss Landmine 2009. I quote:

Miss Landmine parades beautiful female landmine victim amputees on the catwalk as they compete to win prosthetic limbs....

See this line?

the pageant has drawn howls of protest from rights activists and feminists, who brand it colonialist, racist, sexist and exploitative.

Sounds familiar? But go back to the woman. Since I have started working in London (many decades now), I have known many colleagues who have lost their breasts after a mastectomy.  And one thing was common on every piece of advice and gossip and reading and research and talking about  it, that it is not the loss of the breast(s) or the surgery itself that hurts the most, it is the fear that they will no longer be attractive.

And spare me the gumpf about how sexist it is. Everybody likes to look good and feel appreciated, nothing wrong in that. While I am not so sure about the fact that the contestants have to compete to get prosthetic limbs (give it to them, that's what a public health service is all about), but generally, the idea of a disabled beauty pageant is not bad at all. And I am not even touching the topic of landmines at all (but promise to do so later on).

Still, here are women, who due to no fault of their own, no longer have all their limbs. Still for a wrong purpose, they are going to show off their beauty, something like this. Beautiful girls, the fact that they are in a wheelchair is incidental. They still look beautiful and attractive.

I am going to get slated for this, but hey, here goes nothing. Here are some photographs of women who I would find attractive.

 

Both have a lovely smiles, twinkling eyes and that shows a very attractive persona.

How about this debate about the disabled pregnant woman statue in London's Trafalgar Square?

The statue on the left is said to be the personification of Venus de Milo in the Louvre. So if you can admire the right hand side, can't you admire the left hand side? Once you have seen that, read the story about the real life woman behind the statue.

Now see this real life photograph of a disabled naked woman which resembles the two statues above. Attractive? Beautiful? Wonderful? Sexy? Adorable? Lovely? Cuddly? All these and more. Nothing wrong with it at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Would I wolf whistle at these beauty pageant contestants shown below? Yes, Sir, I sure would.

Below is a photograph of a lady who won one of these pageants. You go girl, and she is damn attractive. She is beautiful and wonderful, and the loss of a limb does not take anything away from her. Her eyes display a determination and a love of life seldom found these days.

 

And there is a swimsuit competition as well as. And yes, I am sexist in saying that I find these women attractive too. So yes, I do love these pageants. I find these women attractive, and yes, even if they are disabled (and no, I do not suffer from apotemnophilia), they are beautiful because beauty is not just the presence or absence of some limbs but is in the eye of the beholder.

Technorati Tags: Photo Essay,Women

I have a tiny ET at home

So we went shopping...

we love KFC...

so do I  !!!, specially chicken popcorn...

 

we went to buy night clothes and this time we decided to go blue...

Baba says that my feet grow a centimetre every week and that I am a fuss pot about my sneakers.

sitting next to some colourful plastic shoes.

Mum liked some sandals, summer is coming....

 

And more sandals 

 

I dont like Dada's sneakers, I have an opinion about EVERYTHING! 

 

and I get very upset when dada does not listen to me and I tried to scare him by flapping my vest like a big bird.... 

 

and now in an alleyway inside Debenhams

 

and checking out the clothes... 

and then we gave up, and went to the coffee shop to have coffee, while we were having fun..

 

more fun....



and we met R2D3 :)

 

Beautiful picture from Spiegel

Pinner Parish Church

 

It was the day my little munchkin dressed up like a princess to go to her boyfriend's birthday party. It was at Pinner Parish Church. I have passed this Church many times. It lies at the end of a winding narrow road which has beautiful period homes on both sides. But given the fact that it is on a corner, I could never stop and properly admire this lovely little church, but now that I had an hour and half to kill, I dug out my little Sony Ericsson camera and off I went. I couldn't go inside but stayed outside. See here for a bit of a background of the outside from the official site.

 

 

The building on the far side is the Church Hall which is used for school purposes and other community reasons, such as birthday parties. A lovely little path, very quiet and peaceful leads up to it. Even though it has been recently constructed, it blends well into this 12th century church.

 

This is the view of the churchyard on the north side.

 

This is a Calvary garden. The memorial plate on the wall gives some more details about the person who funded this garden. This word, Calvary, threw me a bit. Never heard of it before and after researching it, am still not very clear that I understood why this is called as a Calvary garden. It is because of the memorial plaque? Or because it was built by devotees? or what? Not sure.

 

On the left hand side, you can see a long narrow sign, just underneath the tree. It is a memorial to somebody who died 2 centuries ago and the reason why it is interesting is that Wm Skenelsb, the person whose name is on the memorial plaque, was more than 100 years old when he died.

 

But this is also quite interesting, most of the gravestones in the churchyard are for people who have lived on for amazingly long periods of time, 60, 70 years of age. And considering the time period involved where the life expectancy was hardly 25-30 years, this is amazing. Something in the water perhaps?



The north side of the bell tower, the tops are lost in a misty low cloud, it was quite snowy that day. But you can see where the repairs and restoration have taken place. See here for details of the construction.

 

This grave was interesting. There was no legible inscription left, but the base was all jutting out of the ground and it is obviously extremely old. The earth has settled down around the grave and bits are exposed. And to top it all, somebody has stuck a sign, Please Keep off the Grass. A bit late to say that to the old chap now, no? And that white bits on the bottom of the sign is snow. It was a very cold and crisp afternoon.

 

See the building in the background, this is the kind of architecture you would find around the village, just shows that the history of this village goes back to 900AD and beyond.



The west tower. The large window was beautiful, even from outside and so were the top smaller window but the clock was a disappointment. For such a lovely church tower and church yard, that manky looking clock with that faded blue paint does not fit at all. And then to put it in that frame was criminal. The only way they could have ruined it more would have been if they had put in a flashing neon digital clock.

 

Then you keep on walking around to the south side, lots of very old graves line the path. The foremost grave had an interesting shape, a tapered cone shaped grave. But if you walk down that list of gravestones, you find some very graves and of people who lived on for a long period of time.

 

This is a grave of a gentleman (and some more people) who lived on till he was 72 years of age! it was encased in a spiky iron cage which looked like it was put up some time after the grave was up up. Curiously, many graves showed signs of multiple occupancy. So if you had a wife buried there, you will also have the husband who would be buried there afterwards. I suppose it is because of saving costs and land.

 

This was a very curious monument. Read the background here. And yes, that is indeed a coffin in the middle of that A shaped monument which contains two bodies.

The main entrance. The statue in the alcove just above the main doors is of St. John the Baptist. But look on the roof, the windows are beautiful. I would never have expected to see windows like that on a church, house yes, church no. I wondered what purpose they would serve? And then looking at a picture here, it became clear. Usually churches are dim and dingy because of the long narrow windows. But this church is light, airy, bright, wonderful, really can get close to God in this place. The door was also very intricately carved.



The next two photographs are of the lych gate. Very curious structure, only found in Britain. This is the gate where the corpse is first rested and the burial starts from this point onwards. In this particular case, it is a very well constructed gate. Inside, there are two notice boards with various church and community notices stuck up on it.

A close up of the arch, which states, "1914 - In the honour of those who served in the Great War - 1918"  notice the intricate carving.

A centenarian, quiet if dignified gravestone tucked away in the corner.

 

The garden was very well maintained, if a bit cold and snowy.




As before, here is the full slideshow link with some more photographs of this lovely little parish church. Perhaps one day, I will be able to go inside and take some more photographs.

 

Technorati Tags: London,Church

Strange Sentinels at Spitalfields

While off to have a bite to eat at Spitalfields, I saw that the construction had shifted thereby giving a good view of the street market,

then my eyes shifted to the left and up and I gaped...

All nicely lined up to go do battle, eh? Given that I am a Sci-Fi nut, this immediately reminded of me of the following photographs as well.

Or how about this line of robots?

It is not that far fledged, check these babies out: