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• W2255706312 abstract "The Africa of 2015 will be more assertive and critical of certain orthodoxies as Africans seek to harness their distinctive creativity, adaptiveness, sociality and conviviality in relationships and encounters. This essay focuses on democracy, a domain in which, paradoxical as it may seem, Africa would have much to teach the rest of the world by 2015. The world is currently hostage to a very uncreative idea of democracy informed by a very narrow idea of what it is to be beautiful, healthy, successful and free. Nowhere is this narrowness better exemplified than in the colossal investment that consumer capitalism has made in slimness, the greatest icon of which is Barbie. This image is made and sold aggressively around the globe to be consumed as the ideal to which all must aspire, if they are to emerge from the vicissitudes and drawbacks to the good life. Barbie-like celebrities are recruited to endorse slimming diets, which more ordinary people are then persuaded to follow, and the results varying degrees of disappointment. Seen in terms of democracy, Barbie (slimness) is imbued with the mission of freeing the individual of relationships or the excess bulk (obesity) of responsibilities standing in the way of personal consumer success. Salvation is to be found in slimness, and the slimmer an individual’s burden of relationships and responsibilities the better his/her life chances. Instead of encouraging the rich to get fat with responsibilities and relationships of support to the hungry and searching poor, consumer capitalism systematically invests in the rich to be thin and unburdened, as it fattens the poor with unfathomable responsibilities, dependencies and a pounding sense of worthlessness and self-persecution. This Barbie model takes the form of a dictatorship that makes misery of ordinary lives, cultures, communities, solidarities and sociality across the globe. But Barbie-sation is at best a bazaar to which millions are drawn but few rewarded or given real choices. Just as obesity is considered an abnormality, so are relationships and sociality seen as dangerous if not watched at close range. A real or false sense of success means that people need not be obsessive about coping with deprivation. In the words of The Economist, ‘People are perfectly tuned to store energy in good years to see them through lean ones. But when bad times never come, they are stuck with that energy, stored around their expanding bellies.’ And persuading people to get thinner becomes an obsession to be supported with public-health warnings and media pressures. In America for example, the risks notwithstanding, obesity-related stomach strapling operations are on the increase, as people desperately seek to lose weight. According to Dr. Trisha Macnair, the despondency of many people who are overweight ‘means that they will go to extremes to reach their goal, try wacky diets which defy common sense, pay large amounts of money for dubious “quick fix” remedies and even turn to drugs from anonymous clinics, in the hope that somewhere there is an easy answer.’ It seems so easy: if only" @default.
• W2255706312 created "2016-06-24" @default.
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• W2255706312 date "2004-01-01" @default.
• W2255706312 modified "2023-09-27" @default.
• W2255706312 title "Africa in 2015; Interrogating Barbie Democracy, Seeking Alternatives" @default.
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