Conference about Botox and Beauty

CUNY Graduate Center (Nueva York), Uniandinos, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Universidad Nacional, Universidad de Antioquia – (2004 – 2006)

BOTOX OR THE GLOBALIZATION OF BEAUTY

Introduction

With this conference, I want to establish a metaphor on the way in which beauty is being understood and assimilated from a Third World perspective. I speak specifically from the Colombian context, but there is also the possibility of this metaphor being extended to other Latin American countries where the common denominator of cultural subordination from the First World countries (not to speak of other types of subordination) is always present.

At first, I will focus on Colombian historical aspects related to the 9^th of april 1948, almost 60 years ago. At that moment began one of the so many forms of violence that still accompany us nowadays. A person named Juan Roa Sierra killed, in downtown Bogotá, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán who represented the soul of the entire Colombian population and who was most surely going to become the first socialist president in Colombia. There is no information about Juan Roa Sierra. It was never possible to find a link between this murder and a political motive. Observing that episode thoroughly and making a comparison with the changes that have happened in the city of Bogotá in the last decade, we will be able to see how a "cleaning movement " begins, that includes erasing systematically the memory of Bogotá, the capital of Colombia. It is important to point out that when one speaks of the 9^th of April 1948, a moment of rupture in Colombia´s history is being mentioned.

From this episode of violence, I take a step towards a situation occurring in the First World (Paris - France). I will focus on the way in which a sense of exaggerated democracy is being implemented, forcing an erroneous interpretation between the citizen's rights and the rights of the State. The supremacy of the State stands out on that of the citizen, especially when the same state adapts some aesthetics that favor the principle of order on top of debate and disagreement. The important matter in this case, is how the form becomes more important than the issue itself, generating in the Third World an appropriation of foreign aesthetics that seek to eliminate differences.

To finish, I stop in the metaphor of Botox, a treatment that contains very dangerous toxins for the human body and that nevertheless is being used in Colombia and many other countries. This metaphor pretends to link the history of Colombia with the passage in France, in order to highlight a hypothesis based on the question of the way in which a kind of globalization of beauty is being established.

1. Roa Sierra’s case

2. Paris on Strike

3. The Botox

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