I'm watching an extraordinary programme on TV about identity (part of a
series on Channel 4 called "identity crisis"), and it's pretty mind-blowing.
There is a slot about "furries", people who dress up in animal costumes for a
lot of the time, a sort of fetish I guess. It's extremely poignant in that a
lot of the people who dress up like this, or who alter the persona they
present to the world, are very lonely and have been rejected when younger.
Thinking about it, this sort of ties in with some of the stuff about children
that we've had on the list of late; what rejecting children can lead to. The
saddest segment was about a woman called Cindy Jackson, who's in the Guinness
book of Records for having the most plastic surgery - 27 operations, just
about every part redone, some more than once. She explained that she'd
always felt invisible next to her very pretty older sister - even though she
was by no means ugly, she was unfavourably compared to the sister, and ended
up having all this stuff done to her. To my eyes, she now looks like a
ghastly caricature of femininity. She said that it had been painful, and it
wasn't what she really wanted to do - but that it was worth it because "this
is what it took for people to like me." Jeez, how tragic is that?
Azeem in London
NP: a Scotsman who has changed his name to Wild Bill Hickock and dresses as a
cowboy in black only...
