Sunday, July 7, 2013

What Is Beauty?

If you do a search on Google for images of beauty, you come back with the faces of models, not just models, but Caucasian models. Face after face appears all the way down the page, frequently enhanced with application of makeup. An occasional difference appears; there is even one which has various insects on it:
Is this beauty?

Then further down the page is this image:

Is this beauty?

Is beauty only faces or only people? How about this image:

Is this beauty?

Why even think this over? Filmmaker Joanna Rudnick has made a documentary movie,  On Beauty, about fashion photographer Rick Guidotti, who left behind this high-powered career, to focus on filming the beauty of people who have genetic and/or physical differences. This new pursuit is actually redefining what defines beauty and brightening the lives of those who look different, along with their family members. After you watch this video trailer for the film, look out for it at your neighborhood theater or coming to cable thereafter.
You, too, might change your idea of what beauty is, because beauty is truly in the mind of the beholder, a statement credited to Margaret Wolfe Hungerford., who wrote under the name "The Duchess."
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Saturday, July 6, 2013

Dr. Hawa Abdi

Dr. Hawa Abdi was born and grew up in Somalia. Now, from the location, one can surmise that this country was not an easy place to live, but that wasn't always true. Of course, in Dr. Abdi's life, there was hardship, but she managed to become a doctor. And then things became rather chaotic in Somalia and wars and killings became rather commonplace. That's when Dr. Abdi went into action. There were a large number of internally displaced people around the country. Some 90,000 benefited from the care of Dr. Abdi, joined by her daughters, at the refugee camps, where Hawa helped to save them. This was a life well-spent!

On another note, my brother spent time in Somalia during the 1990s during that period of chaos. It was so unsafe that US embassy personnel could not just trek into Mogadishu and meet up with citizens and the embassy was in a bullet-riddled fortress. Undoubtedly, he never met Dr. Abdi, but I bet he would have liked her if he did. My brother managed to get care for one Somalian who had been injured (he also worked with the US embassy) when care was not generally available. One can only imagine the magnitude of what was accomplished by Dr. Abdi and her daughters.

Here is a video about this remarkable woman: