Again with the magazine articles that drive me crazy.
There are so many wonderful websites out there where you can make informed decisions about making charitable gifts. You can become a microfinancier at kiva.org, you can give of your money or your time at the Network for Good or you can buy your Christmas presents and give a little to charity at the same time at igive. You can even go over to my organization's website and help provide amazing empowerment opportunities for youth in Lowell through your PayPal account.
In fact, I would encourage you to go do any of those things right now. Any one that makes you feel good. Any one that you think makes a clear, measured improvement on society in some way. Which is what a donation or gift is supposed to do.
I am more than pumped about foundations, giving, and fundraising for worthy causes.
Which is why www.myfreeimplants.com really pissed me off.
I read about this site in ELLE magazine (really, my favorite fashion mag) about a month ago. This site is sort of the match.com for poor women who want bigger breasts, and the men who would like to fulfill some really strange knight in shining armor fantasy by paying for them. A woman can start an account, and tell her sob story about why she can't live without Double Ds or whatever. A man can open his own account, and chat with as many ladies as he wants for $1.20 per email. The majority of the fee goes into an escrow account for the female. She in essence needs to hustle, keep mens interest and make them keep emailing her so she can earn her "goal amount." She can also do photos and videos (naked or not) for extra bucks from these fellas.
All the money in the woman's account is tallied by the site, and then given directly to her plastic surgeon of choice. She never actually sees a cent of the money she "earned." When she gets the implants, she gets to tell her "success story" to her many donors.
This is so messed up in so many ways I can't begin to count them.
What bothers me so much is that our society is so hell bent on the perfection of women's bodies (apparently big breasts = perfection....I, one of the "lucky" well-endowed, have some very different views on this) that poor women will hustle not to put food on the tables, but to attain the body of their dreams, with the assumption that this will make her life better. This seems very similar to the internal argument of the yo-yo dieter, and those with body dismorphia. That thought that, "I can have everything I want when I finally lose weight."
And men are somehow so taken with the idea of building the "perfect woman" that they're willing to empty their pockets to indulge in the fantasy of doing so for a woman they have little to no chance of ever meeting, seeing, or touching.
With all that non-profits go through to raise the cash to make the world a better place, it just burns me that someone has created a system where the haves can give to the have-nots for the sole purpose of adding fake body parts to women.
I guess, if I am being fair, I should take a step back and say, "to each his own." But why the hell do I need to be fair? This is absolutely asinine. There are so many problems in this world we could put our time, energy, and money into solving. I for one am embarrassed and ashamed that this type of thing is what happens in America when people have too much time to focus on themselves, and more money than they know what to do with.
When you look at this site and see the stories of the thousands of dollars put towards the inflation of a small number of body parts (bodies that are just going to age around the saline) that could have gone towards teaching children to read, protecting the women and children of Darfur, or cancer research....it just makes me sad.
But then, who am I kidding. That money wouldn't have gone to a charity. If it started in the pocket of some twisted individual with a God-complex, he probably would have spent it on a gas-guzzling SUV or porn, or some other self-indulgent toy. So, maybe this is the best thing he's done with his money in a long time. Hopefully, the ladies benefiting from this "charity" will put the donations to good use, make some of their own money with their new found assets, and think about giving their hard earned dollars to someone in need - except maybe they could give towards another young woman's education. So she can learn to take pride in and earn a living from her mind as opposed to her boobies. Ladies, it would be much appreciated.
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