Mannequins Give Shape to a Venezuelan Fantasy Meridith Kohut for The New York Times Venezuelas Inflated Vision of Beauty: In Venezuela, women are confronted with a culture of increasingly enhanced physiques fueled by beauty pageants and plastic surgery. By WILLIAM NEUMAN Published: November 6, 2013 311 Comments Facebook Twitter Google+ Save E-mail Share Print Single Page Reprints VALENCIA, Venezuela — Frustrated with the modest sales at his small mannequin factory, Eliezer Álvarez made a simple observation: Venezuelan women were increasingly using plastic surgery to transform their bodies, yet the mannequins in clothing stores did not reflect these new, often extreme proportions. Multimedia Slide Show In Venezuela, an Exaggerated Vision of the Female Form Meridith Kohut for The New York Times A mannequin factory in Valencia, Venezuela, where the voluptuous models are the standard. More Photos » It is silly to pretend that our anorexic looking mannequins or models are any better than the Venezuelan version. Charles, ConnecticutRead Full Comment » So he went back to his workshop and created the kind of woman he thought the public wanted — one with a bulging bosom and cantilevered buttocks, a wasp waist and long legs, a fiberglass fantasy, Venezuelan style. The shape was augmented, and so were sales. Now his mannequins, and others like them, have become the standard in stores across Venezuela, serving as an exaggerated, sometimes polarizing, vision of the female form that calls out from the doorways of tiny shops selling cheap clothes to working-class women and the display windows of fancy boutiques in multilevel shopping malls. Mr. Álvarez’s art may have been meant to imitate life. But in a culture saturated with such images, life is returning the compliment. “You see a woman like this and you say, ‘Wow, I want to look like her,’ ” said Reina Parada, as she sanded a mannequin torso in the workshop. Although she cannot afford it, she said, she would like to get implant surgery someday. “It gives you better self-esteem.” Cosmetic procedures are so fashionable here that a woman with implants is often casually referred to as “an operated woman.” Women freely talk about their surgeries, and mannequin makers jokingly refer to the creations as being “operated” as well. Mr. Álvarez’s wife and business partner, Nereida Corro, calls her best-selling mannequin, with its inflated proportions, the “normal” model. The embrace of plastic surgery clashes with the government’s socialist ideology and frequent talk of creating a society free of the taint of commercialism. Venezuela’s longtime leader, Hugo Chávez, who died in March after 14 years in office, railed against the procedures, saying it was “monstrous” that poor women were spending money on breast surgeries when they had trouble making ends meet. But the same resource that the government relies on — the world’s largest estimated petroleum reserves — has long fed a culture of easy money and consumerism here, along with a penchant for the quick fix and instant gratification. “Venezuela is known for its oil, and it’s known for its beauty,” said Lauren Gulbas, a feminist scholar and anthropologist at Dartmouth College, who has studied attitudes toward plastic surgery in Venezuela. “That ties into why it’s perceived as so important to Venezuelans.” Beauty took on a particularly important role in the late 1970s and ’80s when the country’s beauty queens, already a national obsession, were crowned Miss Universe three times. Their success on the international stage took on special resonance. It came as the country was grappling with the frustrated expectations of the 1970s oil boom and the deep economic downturn that followed, bringing with it a crisis of national confidence. And the beauty queens’ fame helped fuel a fascination with cosmetic surgery and procedures like breast implants, tummy tucks, nose jobs and injections to firm the buttocks. Osmel Sousa, the longtime head of the Miss Venezuela pageant, takes credit for the trend. He recommended a nose job for Venezuela’s first Miss Universe, which he says made her victory possible more than three decades ago. “When there is a defect, I correct it,” Mr. Sousa said. “If it can be easily fixed with surgery, then why not do it?” For Mr. Sousa, beauty really is skin deep: “I say that inner beauty doesn’t exist. That’s something that unpretty women invented to justify themselves.” Naturally, not everyone sees it that way. Several women’s groups protested against the Miss Venezuela beauty pageant last month, criticizing pressures on women to conform to the artificial aesthetic. María Eugenia Díaz, Paula Ramón and Jimmy Chalk contributed reporting from Caracas, Venezuela. A version of this article appears in print on November 7, 2013, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Mannequins Give Shape to Venezuelan Fantasy.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 19:50:21 +0000
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