China Issues Ban on Naked Fish-Dish Girls

A naked sushi girl at work

China Bans Restaurants From Serving Sushi on Naked Young Women

Using women this way is going too far. Ever wonder how the women felt who had the job of being living dinner plates?

It's still going on in Seattle. And apparently also in NY and LA. And probably Las Vegas.

Here's a London magazine that features some polls on the topic. But online polls are self-selecting, so they're not worth much.

And here's something about a "raw" (but not raw foods) catering company that riffs on the idea. Anything for a buck, huh.

Standardizing Beauty Digitally

Hollywood is digitally reducing breast size on some actresses

I have two responses to this development (excuse the pun). The most glaring offense is that Hollywood is making well-endowed women feel there is something wrong with the way nature made them. As we know, the culture has been doing that to overweight women for a long time. But overweight is something a person can do something about, by exercising and choosing what to eat; and overweight is not good for one's health.

Unlike fat, bust size (for those women who are "born that way," without surgical enhancement) is a given. By digitally remaking a woman's chest, Hollywood is thus telling women that if they are more than an A or B cup, they are to be looked at as nothing more than a sex object. There is something seriously wrong with this picture.

How would men feel if their genitals were on display to be judged by the culture? (Since men are free to go topless, their penises are the part of their body most parallel to women's breasts.) I don't think men would like that! The author Eldridge Cleaver (Soul on Ice) once designed jeans for men that had a penis-shaped pocket that would display their organ the way a bra or bikini top displays the shape and size of breasts. Maybe we need to start sending these jeans to Hollywood moguls and insist that they wear them from now on.

My other response is that Hollywood's decision to digitally reduce starlets' breast sizes opens the door for actors of all sizes and shapes to play the coveted high-paying lead roles in films. So what if your face isn't symmetrical, you have double chins, you're a midget, you have a paunch or a big butt? Digital artists can make you, too look like a supermodel, or like the flavor of the month, whether that be big boobs or small ones. They can even make you into the other gender, if you really want a certain role.

The Birth of a Blog--Why and What

When I first created this blog, I thought it was going to be about the search for pure cosmetics and everything related to style in all realms--especially things designed with materials beneficial to ourselves and the environment. I created it because I don't see why there needs to be a gulf between design/fashion/architecture on the one hand, and health on the other. Unfortunately, the standard seems to be on the one hand, for designers to ignore healthful materials and on the other hand, for those makers who focus on health to ignore forward-thinking design.

I wanted to deal with topics like: "What constitutes a pure ingredient in a cosmetic?" and "Do raw foodists need to shun cosmetics and style?"

But then this blog developed a mind of its own, much like characters do when you write something creative. This blog wanted to include certain pop culture elements as well, whenever they touched upon raw food or healthful lifestyle. My other blog, sketchgrrl, which was born first, encompasses raw food, topical observations and humor. It would seem now that both of my blogs are veering in the same direction. Not a huge surprise, since are both coming from my imagination. But they already have their own links out there on the net, and to combine them would cut one of them off from from potential viewers. So as they develop, I imagine they will eventually have more distinct identities.

I refrained from creating any blogs for a long time, not seeing the point, as I've had an online magazine, Raw Foods News Magazine, since March 2001. I didn't understand why blogs were getting so much more media attention than online or print magazines. I still don't completely understand, although I can see three distinct advantages to blogs--it's easy to see what's new on them, it's easy to subscribe to their "feed", and it's easy to link them to other blogs. So--not wanting to be antediluvian--I jumped onboard. Feel free to post your comments or trackbacks any time.