Sophie Chung is going to make several statements this coming spring. The first is straightforward. By shaving her head she wishes to raise money for UNICEF Canada, an organization committed to developing programs of long range benefit to children.
But why shave her head?
Certainly there are other, more socially acceptable methods of fundraising. According to Sophie, shaving her head is as much a personal endeavor as it is a public one. “It is part of an effort to remind myself and the people around me to put less emphasis on the way we look,” Sophie says. This is quite a statement considering the times, when so much pressure is put on people to look good, and be attractive. Many people in our society get caught up in things such as their appearance, and tend to forget how lucky they really are.
Miss Chung says with conviction, “There are 20 million people in Africa that are starving to death. Poverty kills one child every second. These are stats you hear all the time.” Miss Chung considers it a tragedy that we live in a North American society whose female population alone invests 8 billion dollars in cosmetics annually. The same amount of money, it is estimated, could provide basic health care for the entire Third World.But the cosmetics industry is not to blame. The statistics insinuate a much larger societal problem where the haves do not consider the have nots. As Miss Chung so elegantly states it, “Those ‘women’ in North America are one inane bunch of human beings. But what makes you and me, as individuals any different from that generalized category? What you also don’t think about is how much money is blown investing in luxuries. Like cars. Going lengths to buy that classy suit.”
Perhaps the real problem is that people, nowadays, attempt to use their money to buy happiness.
Some might say that extensive commercialism is at fault for our buy more, feel great attitude, which might be so, but Miss Chung cannot remonstrate the positive aspects that the media has played in exhibitioning the world’s problems. “If we didn’t have the media, we wouldn’t know anything about these wars that go on elsewhere, or that people are starving and dying from poverty. Our lives and theirs don’t cross.” Sophie states.
Her message is simple: once in a while we should look up from our lives and realize there is a multitude of people who are not as lucky as we are.
“What is unacceptable is that so many of us, including myself, live our lives competing in our own ways and forgetting that, in some places, people compete for food and water, to see tomorrow.”
Miss Chung hopes her actions will serve as a wake-up call for herself and the people around her.
So on March 31st, a first year science student has decided to go through with her plan to cut off her hair. And she fully realizes the social implications of her actions.
“Don’t blame me for laughing at you, because you’ll look ridiculous,” -a taste of the encouragement she has received from some of her acquaintances. But according to Miss Chung, “it is more ridiculous that appearances are what people are inclined to notice.”
