Anorexy in China
China 2001: the sacrifice by the beauty.

Martha Satne

There are countless resistances that show the changes that come suffering Chinese in these last 20 years, one of them is the one who concern the woman. While during the Cultural Revolution, the woman hid her body and its forms within the Mao trousers, the daughters of those women today are desperate to have greater chests. I have had opportunity to talk with some Chinese young people, students outposts, as much of the capital as of cities of the interior, one of them, 1,72 of stature, very by on the average of the place, with 52kg of weight, thinks to if same because she is very great in some parts of his body but too small in others. Its mother, worried, disappointed, she comments that her daughter has become surgery plastic stops to increase its chests, their well centered illusion this but in the studies that her daughter can make to prevail in a society that becomes each more competitive day. Who is this mother: she is not a Chinese woman of those to those who bandaged the feet to him to conserve them small, so the signal of beauty during the Empire, she is one of the hundreds of million women who never used other clothes that are not trousers, nor knew of maquillajes or at least one cream to improve their hands. Today, her daughter, is her opposite one. In those days in which Mao set the standards to follow, to be little attractive and even ordinary but healthful, it was the good thing, the approved thing by the society. Today, this girl dreams about being high, esbelta, her professional success and the possibility of making money, is tie with their aesthetic aspect.

Not she is only, most of his companions and friends want to have his busts more great, to reduce his thighs (small if we compared them with the western ones), to straighten and to enlarge its noses or to modify its flickers. These young people say: " a beautiful body is a passport. It allows us to cross the doors but forbidden to reach the dream of our life ".

At the moment the aesthetic surgery is a business in ample growth, one of the specialties of the medical young people. Those that manage to have recognition in the specialty, have long waiting lists, taking ahead several daily operations.

While their daughters take these ways, the parents are surprised, worried but by mainly there are lost the capacity of understanding of the phenomenon that crosses this young generation. They are asked because most of these children they are not satisfied with which the Mother Nature has given when being born.

Some studies done by professionals worried about these phenomena, say that the young Chinese women want to be more feminine than their mothers, who were forced to pocket in the Mao suits, without option, blue for the civilians, green for the military. Today, with miniskirts, shorts, small blouses in shining colors, with spangles and mostacillas take a walk showing their bodies instead of to hide them. If they consider his bodies attractive, or do not obtain little that the dreamed image agrees with the obtained one, do not doubt in changing them although for it they must be put under surgeries of all type. Everything presses in this line, the street propagandas, warnings, the actresses and models with supposedly perfect bodies highly they are demanded to cover the covers of magazine, Chinese or foreign, their income are much more high that the secretaries although they speak to other languages and models no. As opposed to this: How to also fight the desire of the young people of being they figurines triunfadores? How to avoid that the women aspire to be and to see themselves sexys more? The great marks of cosmetic promise you cure miraculous, borramiento of wrinkles, skin peach tree instead of skin orange, skin white, without spots, to transform into certain voluptuosos parts of the body while they thin others, assuring in addition that the changes are natural, without negative results; and if still we have left some young person who resists to the bistoury, " the natural " options took the forms from the Chinese medicine: magical potions to lose fat, suitable underclothes to each necessity, manual or electrical soaps and creams, massages...

In the last years innumerable places have been opened so that women can accede to processings of beauty, loss of weight, modeling of its bodies, etc.

But, porqué these women, professional young people in their majority, put as much accent in their external image, one of the factors to perhaps consider is that the culture of the masculine thing still reigns, the young people continue thinking that the happiness found it in some man and that to conquer and to satisfy to the " Superman " they they must be perfect, to be " Supermujer ".

Parallel to these women who lose weight to maintain a related image the aesthetic thing, the obesity, disease unknown until recently time in China, begins to reach alarming numbers, the saturated candy ingestion and fats, is increased with the entrance of the food of the West, McDonalds, Pizza Hut happen to be the favourites, specially in the childhood. Serious contradictions face the society today: by a side the obesity, the statistics of the Ministry of Health speak of 70 million people with overload; by another companies looking for a staff of employees of " good presence ", it is to say thin, elegant, that they cause impact. Like acceding: Making diet; Diets that like in the West, they take too much far: the anorexy and bulimia begin to pronounce themselves, the objective is to enter within the dress several smaller figures. Everything is little for this challenge: young people and not as much put in risk their lives stops to obtain the menstrual objective, loss of hair, disorders, faints, problems cardiac are some of the symptoms with which they face, the fanaticism guides the passages of which they suppose beauty. Beauty, that does not stop being an ephemeral good, the cult of the external beauty has the risk of the forgetfulness of it commits, beauty that let shine if we did not cultivate the glance, smile, its light is not eternal and happens without we realize. Let us be beautiful, beautiful women on the inside.