Tacky Beyond Messure.
First off, thanks goes out to tewfic el-sawy for highlighting this story. You may know, if you have read this blog for any amount of time, that I lived in India for 13 years. That is a long time, and in that time I saw a lot of unfair and tacky things. Like foreigners unknowingly teaching street kids vulgar phrases at the INA market in New Delhi. These little coolies, most under 8 years old, would know only one or two expressions in English; “f*** off!” or “OK, maybe later.” These phrases were taught to them by frustrated expats, bugged by the never ending poor children, while trying to shop for high end groceries. Not so much tacky as unfair.
Yesterday a story came out of The New York Times that highlights something I think is much more unfair and just plain tacky. Vogue India in their August issue has used common everyday people to model their high end apparel. What makes this tacky is they didn’t use people from the 250 million population middle class, they used people from the 450 million, $1.25 a day income class! They used the poor to model their $200 umbrellas and $100 baby bibs.
The good that is coming out of this is the India media seems to be all over this. Mail Today columnist Kanika Gahlaut says its, “not just tacky but downright distasteful”. Here, here! Vogue India’s editor Priya Tanna’s message to critics of the August issue: “Lighten up!” I’ll tell you what, lets cut Priya’s salary down to $1.25 a day and see if she still sees the light side in all this.
This is truly sad, yet another example of people losing touch with their humanity. A $1000 handbag in the US, carried by people who can afford it, is troubling enough, but to exploit the poor like this is, as you say, beyond measure. I like to think that one day Priya Tanna, and people like her, will come to their senses and reconnect with their humanity. In the meantime, they will continue to exploit people in the interest of profits. Let’s hope the reported backlash against Vogue will catch their attention; maybe then they will “Lighten up” on their exploitation of people.
Well said!