Over the past few months, I have not produced any notes and that were actually for two very good reasons: this sarcastic bloke is busy and there was no interesting news to write about, apart from the movie "The Hurt Locker" which won the Academy Awards for the best picture of the year, which was rather surprising because its director was the ex-wife of James Cameron, who was the director of the highly anticipated science fiction movie "Avatar", which was also expected to go for the award. So, there you go, girl power. Yeah..!! Right, moving onto a rather grown-up discussion, this morning I have found rather distasteful news in the internet, the headline actually said: "Prada Sued For Firing Old, Fat, Ugly, or Disgusting Employees." To make it absolutely clear about how much I loathed what was going on, I will just point out my opinion straight forward: That was the chintziest and most dignity-degrading story I have ever heard in my entire life!
The story started in May 2009 as one of Prada CEOs was overlooking 500 staffs and 40 stores across Japan and told Rina Bovrisse, a senior retail manager in Japan, to fire all staff who were "old, fat, ugly, or not having the Prada look". The case then rolled until recently Bovrisse decided to file a lawsuit against Prada. She said that she did it to protect hard-working women and make sure their working environment is safe. And I am definitely agreed about that. Now though, I am very terribly sorry, but how could someone define other people as "having the Prada look" or maybe "having the Gucci look"? So in the name of doing express research for this note, later on in the afternoon I went to an upscale mall in South Jakarta, whose customers are some people who oddly don't want to step out of their chauffeur-driven car, unless the expensive car stops precisely in the front of the entrance lobby. Anyway, after glancing at some shopkeepers who are staff of these well-known designer house's stores, such as Versace, Burberry and even Prada, I just worked out that most of them are finely dressed, with well-trimmed hair and they look perfectly okay. The question is now, in this slightly stupid Prada CEO's perspective, how old is "old"? How fat is "fat"? How ugly is "ugly"?
"It seems to me that lacking of nutrition is the new definition of beauty today."
Truth be told, this story did not come to me as a surprise chiefly because I have always regarded it as a disease in our society, especially those who are directly involved in show business or fashion industry. I am not entirely into fashion, but just take a look at those skinny runway models who put on the glamorous fashion shows in Paris or Milan with pale face expression, it seems to me that lacking of nutrition is the new definition of beauty today. Presumably, this Prada CEO is attempting to bring his brand new idea of "beauty" right to the most basic level of the enterprise: stores. Why? It is simply because we are talking about the company's image and the tragic thing is, they did it without self-integrity anymore. As far as I am concerned, telling the staff to dress well so that a certain image of the company can be represented to the customers, is completely fine. But telling the staff to start a diet so that they don't look fat or ugly in front of their customers is totally unacceptable, such an unwanted interference is not even opened for further discussion. Unless you have prepared yourself to apply in a company whose job advertisement sounds like: "Vacancy, working as a staff of a fashion global brand, understands English oral/written, preferably not old, fat and ugly."
Of course, I would conceive that fashion is one of few industries which constantly evolving over the decades, even though some of the presented and so called haute couture is nothing but a reappearance of what had been shown several decades ago. Any major designer house presents annual fashion show where the designer clothing is targeted to be purchased firstly by people who were invited to visit the show. I reckon that some of their customers may as well be old, fat, ugly or not having Prada look, well how about seeing a skinny woman walking in a fourteen centimeters high heel? The simple answer is: painful to see the woman walking in pain. The thing is though; me and them don't share or live in a parallel universe. I don't become grouchy about finding out that my skin starts to wrinkle or my hair turns grey. Whereas for people who work in fashion industry, looks is everything and that is what actually sells, right until the point where the company might generate so much money that they have power to interfere into someone’s life. To sum up then, I do feel terrible for those staffs who work just to make a living and yet have to be controlled by irrelevant, vague rules about outer beauty. Meanwhile, some people are actually ignoring the importance of self-integrity, a value which is derived from inner beauty. It is such ashamed that the society has to be ruled by those who worship the fashion magazines. By the way, if you still don’t know what Prada, Gucci or Versace is after reading this entire not, you can search it on the Google and type: Because I have no friends. Until the next posting, enjoy.
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