The cost of image
I wrote a story years ago, broadcast by the BBC World Service, in which a man is driving to Limassol for the results of a cancer test, worried that his wife and daughters may have very little income when he dies. There’s an insurance policy covering his travel for work that will profit them if his death is accidental, so he contemplates finding a spot on the then old road where he can fatally crash.
An elderly man jumps out in front of him, Pavlos brakes and yells ‘Are you trying to kill yourself?’ The old man’s mule has collapsed on the trail and he’s desperate to get a vet to put it down humanely, can Pavlos take him? Pavlos’ kind heart can’t refuse.
Later he’s returning home, joyous to have had a benign diagnosis. He sees the old man on the road with a shovel, offers to help him bury his mule, saying, ‘You’ll get a younger one, a faster one.’ The old man, explaining the working bond over years between him and his mule, sighs, ‘Where would I want to go to faster?’
I was chatting with a chap on the street. He gazed at this dilapidated old wreck leaning on her equally decrepit mode of transport saying, ‘Why don’t you get a better bike, to go faster?’ I gave him the answer the old man gave Pavlos.
Image means more to some than reality. Influencers reign supreme on social media; some are genuinely knowledgeable; others draw in and exploit gullible people.
In the USA, women slavishly emulated the dress styles of the graceful woman by the side of the late, fondly remembered John F Kennedy Jnr, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, while many also imitated the fashion choices of his elegant mother, Jackie Bouvier-Kennedy.
It’s natural for young women and girls to want to be like someone they admire, or to keep up with the latest fashions until they outgrow hero worship and make their own choices as individuals not part of a herd momentum.
Well-off, older women unwilling to admit their age, seek treatments to make them look younger. And why not – up to a certain limit. A friend told me of an acquaintance she met at an art exhibition, in her mid-80s and remarked, ‘She looked weird, like a stuffed turkey, her face and lips so puffed up with Botox or whatever!’
When winning a beauty competition becomes a ruthless goal, children suffer from over ambitious mothers, pushing their own unattained desires, making children up to look like older, glamorous women.
And then, there’s the poisonous manosphere where women are reduced to their ‘useful’ sexual body parts. This jungle of toxicity lures in men and teens who want to feel superior, or obscure internal masculine weaknesses. In a peacock-display need to put strong women down, they blatantly deny that many women are very capable, intelligent people. It’s easier to control passive women telling them how to dress, do their hair and make-up, and obey their master’s whims.
In Cyprus there is a competitive spirit that makes some people want to appear to be as good as or better than their neighbours; to do so they will risk debt to keep up with the Cypriot Jones’, taking out loans that are hard or impossible to repay. Cars enter this race as well. I’m amazed at the number of high-end cars on my street. But then, it’s been statistically shown that our upper levels of wealth are on a par with the rest of the world’s wealthy, the smallest percentage owning the largest income statistic. And the poor neglected – as always.