Local Columnists
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Our Life! editor muses on society's obsession with weight. Has skinniness become a status symbol, or is it now politically incorrect to want to be thin?
I DON'T know about you, but many things in my life now are taking a back seat to the World Cup. I promise myself that once this crazy, glorious month of June is over and names like Morientes, Santa Cruz and Metzelder no longer mean a thing to me, I'll get real. I'll stop watching so much TV, sleep more, pay attention to friends I've neglected, pour more energy into work and, yes, I'll start exercising again.
Exercise.
It's a word that has haunted me for the past 20 years.
Okay, there have been moments when I've genuinely enjoyed doing it - that hit-the-high rush that comes deep into a 5 km run; the deliciously hypnotic sensation that seeps upon one when doing endless, brainless laps in the pool. And, really, what can beat the satisfaction of feeling big, hot, salty drops of sweat drip from your body after a solid aerobics workout? Nine out of 10 times, though, exercising is a drag. I do it only because I want to lose weight. But of course, this isn't an admission I'd make readily when asked about it by others.
Ask me why I drag myself out of bed at 6.30 am on a Saturday to travel 30 minutes to the pool and I'll say, oh, it's because I love swimming. It keeps me healthy and the morning air is so fresh.
Would I dare admit that I swim only because I want to lose weight, because my aim in life is to be thin, thin, thin?
Of course not.
For one thing, I'll be shot down by many because, at 1.64 m and 47.5 kg, I'm regarded as already slim enough. For another, it's become almost politically incorrect to admit you want to be thin, especially in these worrying post-Slim 10 times.
EVER since I hit my late teens, I've never been really happy with my weight, even though I've never been fat. I'm sure pop psychology experts can come up with a host of reasons for this, from a lack of self confidence to being a victim of those invidious subliminal media messages of 'ideal' body shapes. Whatever the cause of my insecurity, it got to a ridiculous stage when I went through the gamut of being anorexic (39 kg) then bulimic (yes, the whole two-fingers-down-the-throat gagging routine). I've long recovered from those debilitating eating disorders, and I can safely say that I'm now 'normal'. I eat anything I like and exercise only when the mood, or guilt, hits me. But, yes, like most normal women, I'm always striving to lose a bit of weight.
There are two reasons for this.
One, I truly believe I'll look better and feel happier if I were slimmer, especially from the waist down.
The second reason is that slenderness has become a value - indeed, a status symbol - in societies where people have more than enough to eat.
Keeping slim in a world of plenty means you are able to practise restraint, discipline and self-control. Now, these can't be bad habits, right?
WHEN my colleagues and I were discussing how to approach this Sunday Plus slimming special, we were aware that weight - or, more accurately, being overweight - was a sensitive topic. We were worried that if we pushed the slim-is-good line too far, we may end up not being fair to our less-than-slender readers. As one colleague asked:
'What's wrong with being fat?'
To which I replied: 'Nothing at all. Just as there's nothing wrong with being thin.'
And, that, basically, is the bottomline of this special.
If you want to deny yourself the pleasures of food and be thin because it'll make you feel better, good luck to you.
If you want to tuck into all the delicious dishes around and are comfortable being a plus size, by all means go ahead.
To each his own. Whatever floats your boat.
But whichever body size makes you happy, do try to avoid food and lifestyles that make you unhealthy.
In my case, it's two more weeks to the end of the month, so excuse me while I sit back, switch on the TV set, and open another can of Pringles.
It's the World Cup. Exercise and diet can wait.
Sumiko Tan - Columnist of The Straits Stimes -
JAN 11 2003
A tale of sympathy and politics By Bertha Henson
What do you make of the collision between the RSS Courageous and the merchant vessel?
OVER the past week, the air in Bintan has been thick with urgency.
Helicopters hovered along the coastlines, while all manner of other craft - ferry, speed boat, jet ski, navy patrol ship - carried searchers scanning the seas and the beaches dotted with islanders.
Searchers combed the mangrove swamps, calling out to Second Sergeant Chua Bee Lian of the RSS Courageous. They were looking for her, they said, and she should 'return home'.
Even the native Orang Laut offered to invoke their gods to give up the 24-year-old to her family.
Straits Times journalists who were on the island returned to tell of the 'palpable sense' of sympathy the Indonesians, whether high-ranking navy and police officers, the village penghulu or the fishermen, displayed for the missing woman's family.
Never mind that she was a Singaporean, a citizen of that 'insensitive' country in South-east Asia. To them, a woman was missing. Period.
Pengudang village headman Syukur Hamidi said: 'We will do the best we can for her. We feel for the family. I am a father too, and I hope people will help me too if my own child is lost.'
It helped that Singapore has a presence on the island, in the form of Singapore-owned Bintan Resorts, which sent staff from its nine hotels to help in the search.
Their managers, like Mr Daniel Ong and Mr Wilson Tay, were Singaporean ex-army officers, whose training must have contributed to the efficiency with which they dispatched their staff to comb the island.
It helped too that the country's two navies have close ties, in the form of the Indonesia-Singapore Coordinated Patrol agreement signed in July 1992 to coordinate the pursuit of sea robbers across their respective boundaries. It was one of those links which made coordination of the search effort easier.
Contrast this with the noises that have been coming from the northern neighbour, where politicians seem more intent on scoring political points on the back of the worst accident in Singapore Navy's history.
Plenty of people probably heaved a sigh of relief last Saturday morning on news that the collision was not between a Singapore Navy ship and any craft which belonged to Malaysia - especially in the light of its recent war-like noises.
Instead, it was a Dutch-registered container vessel that was involved.
That it was just 1.5 km north-west of Pedra Branca, an island which Singapore owns but Malaysia claims, and which Malaysians have attempted to land on just two weeks before, could not have escaped the notice of many.
Malaysia, like Indonesia, did the neighbourly thing by having three of its patrol ships search the Johor coastline for the missing crew.
But the gesture was overshadowed by the rumbles that did not take long in coming.
Even before the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore's investigations got under way, Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar seemed to have decided that the mere presence of the Singapore naval patrol ship was the cause of the accident.
It was nice that he said this: 'We send our condolences to the victim's family and the Singapore Government on the loss of life.'
But he also said this: 'This shows the possibility of such accidents happening if we are not careful in carrying out patrols.'
He suggested joint patrols, although it escapes many how joint patrols crowding the Singapore Straits could have helped prevent an accident.
In any case, why joint patrols in what is Singapore's territorial waters? Unless Malaysia owns the waters around Pedra Branca, it just seems like a churlish attempt to gain some territory.
Malaysia's Berita Harian, in an editorial, also made the same call for joint patrols, describing the tragedy near Pedra Branca as 'an accident waiting to happen'.
Singapore, it added, should learn from the tragedy by accepting Malaysia's proposal.
Malaysia's Umno Youth movement did not want joint patrols. Instead, it wanted Singapore to remove its patrol boats from the waters around Pedra Branca. Their presence, it said early in the week, posed navigational problems to ships and was the likely cause of the mishap last Friday night.
'Umno Youth wants to express regret that the Singapore Government is still defiant and refusing to withdraw its forces from the waters off Pulau Batu Putih and this has caused the accident,' said its deputy chief Abdul Aziz Sheikh Fadzir, referring to Pedra Branca by the Malay name given by the Malaysians.
He added: 'This time, it only involves the death of one Navy specialist while three others are still missing. Should another tragedy strike after this, it may even be worse.'
Evidence of another effort at point scoring: Malaysian Defence Minister Najib Tun Razak was reported saying that Malaysia had allowed Singapore to launch search and rescue operations for the three missing crew members.
In what seemed like a magnanimous gesture, Malaysia, he said, had granted permission.
'Singapore also asked permission to use helicopters and ships of the Malaysian Armed Forces yesterday morning and last night for the search and rescue operations. We have given permission,' he told Bernama on Sunday.
The report was carried around the world by the wire agency.
Defence Ministry officials here set the record straight the next day, Monday. No need for Singapore to seek permission from any country to conduct search operations since the collision took place in Singapore waters, they said.
But in accordance with international search and rescue operations, it had sought prior diplomatic clearance from neighbouring countries in case search operations had to go outside Singapore's airspace.
'For this particular operation, both Indonesia and Malaysia have granted Singapore prior diplomatic clearance to enter their airspace to conduct operations should the need arise.'
Well, perhaps, the Malaysian Defence Minister mis-spoke.
The Malaysians should realise by now that Singapore is not ceding one inch of land or sea space to them, and their lacing of comments on the tragedy with a 'you-deserve-it' tone and unsought for 'advice' is unlikely to change things.
In fact, to use an oft-heard Malaysian term, it is downright 'insensitive'.
Over at Bintan, the Indonesians were kind enough to facilitate Singapore helicopters and Mindef staff landing and leaving with the bodies of Singapore servicewomen with nary a bureaucratic hurdle. It was no hassle. They were just keen to help.
Should the last remaining servicewoman turn up on Johor shores, one wonders what sort of political mileage Malaysian politicians would try to gain out of it.
The writer is the News Editor of The Straits Times. -
I'm always trying to eat whatever food i have, trying to look for titbits at home when i have nothing to do, always trying to gain some weight from all these chocolates, tidbits and sweets. But i couldn't.
I seldom exercise coz i'm lazy, i do cycle on weekends last time but not now.. I'm always at home playing Computer games, chatting on IRC, icq, sgforums...
Maybe there's some worms inside my stomach eating up all my food.. -
OCT 19 2002
The thirty-year itch By Ong Soh Chin - A Straits Times Columnist
Two TV series from the 1970s now available on DVD are much more relevant to what's happening today than what you get on the idiot box these days.
THANKS to advances in home entertainment, I no longer have to be enslaved to what TV stations or cinemas think I should watch. In fact, I think a lot of stuff on English-language TV these days is mind-numbing drivel, but I never knew how bad it was until I chanced upon a DVD set of the first season episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Now, my memories of that 1970s hit series are fuzzy and vague at best. I remember the bit in the opening credits where Mary twirls around the street and tosses her cap into the air, and I remember the catchy chorus of the show's theme song - 'You might just make it after aalllll.' But nothing more registered in my little child-like brain at the time.
Today, I am single and in my 30s, just like Mary in the show, so there is definitely more than a little resonance beyond the funky retro clothes. Mary has dating mishaps and struggles at making a career for herself. She has quirky friends and colleagues. In short, she is the 1970s version of Ally McBeal.
What a difference three decades have made to the single woman on American TV.
At the start of the show, Mary has just left her boyfriend of two years - because he refused to marry her - moved to a new town, found a job and an apartment. When her self-serving ex returns to try and patch things up, she turns him down, realising, in her new-found independence, that she would never be happy with him. As he leaves, he says gently: 'Take care of yourself.' Her bittersweet reply: 'I think I just did.'
That, in a nutshell, sums up the spirit of the show, which is probably why it became such a hit, running from 1970 to 1977. Here was a single woman who was independent, funny and sexy, who had great friends, an endearing relationship with her bristly boss and who wasn't neurotic. Plus, she also looked good in a mini skirt. She was certainly someone to aspire to.
On the other hand, Ally McBeal, today's 30-something female role model, spends her entire existence whining and fretting about men and visualising dancing babies. She is really nothing more than the sum of her mini skirts and her bargain-basement Hallmark musings.
Her colleagues and friends are equally annoying. Made up of a clutch of quirks and tics, they are merely strange and wacky ciphers written in to pad up a show that is already as shallow as Ally's push-up bra.
To prove my point, try to imagine any of the other characters in Ally McBeal with their own series. Quite impossible, simply because they have no depth and no history!
In contrast, the characters in The Mary Tyler Moore Show were so well-developed they spun off three series of their own - Lou Grant, Rhoda and Phyllis. While Phyllis bombed, Rhoda and Lou Grant were hits. The latter, especially, became a critics' favourite with its hard-hitting look at journalism.
What's the modern day equivalent? Just Shoot Me.
Another 1970s TV series I also picked up recently on DVD was the second season of Mash.
Set during the Korean War, it tells of the exploits of the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (Mash) situated near the front. In Season Two alone, the series addressed issues like homosexuality, racism and the psychological stresses of war. All this while being a comedy.
Indeed, as the series progressed, it would take on more and more serious issues - all championing humanity and a pacifist point of view - even as it continued to provide sterling prime-time entertainment that had its fans all over the world glued to their TV sets.
Mash lasted a whopping 11 years based on this winning formula of goodwill, humour and damn good writing. It made a huge star of Alan Alda, who played Hawkeye Pierce, and it also went on to spawn another successful series, Trapper John, MD.
Today, apart from some programmes on cable networks, I can't think of a free-access primetime American TV series that addresses all these topics, let alone address them well.
Watching Mash now, as the prospect of an impending strike on Iraq hangs over the world, I can't help but feel how urgently relevant it is today, and how irrelevant today's primetime shows are to our lives.
We are not vampire slayers or secret agents, and surely we are more than a ragtag bunch of nobodies fighting one another for fame, fortune and survival on an island in Thailand.
And while this may sound like heresy to people who call the television the 'idiot box', we no longer have mass appeal TV shows that require us to think, question and strive for something - anything - good, fair and meaningful.
We are living in a perilous world where sanity and the sanctity of life are being questioned, where we look suspiciously upon those who are different from us and where the personal realm is in danger of being subsumed by the political.
And our forms of mass entertainment, sadly, seem to be doing nothing to address this creeping ignorance, paranoia and inertia.
Hawkeye said it best in an episode of Mash:
'I just don't know why they're shooting at us. All we want to do is bring them democracy and white bread. Transplant the American dream. Freedom, achievement, hyperacidity, affluence, flatulence, technology, tension, the inalienable right to an early coronary sitting at your desk while plotting to stab your boss in the back.
'That's entertainment.'
How true.