Opinion
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Wednesday, February 16,1994
The Battalion Editorial Board
JULI PHILLIPS, Editor in chief
ICHAEL PLUMER, Managing editor KYLE BURNETT, Aggielife editor
BELINDA BLANCARTE, Night news editor DENA DIZDAR, Aggielife editor
HEATHER WINCH, Night News editor SEAN FRERKING, Sports editor
TONI GARRARD CLAY, Opinion editor WILLIAM HARRISON, Photo editor
JENNIFER SMITH, City editor
EDITORIAL
ehavetc; •
= No more waffling
expects:
JJ.N. must uphold NATO deadline
1 They say the hand that rocks
the cradle is the hand that rules
■he world. But on today's glob
al political scene, it appears
that the hand that stays firm in
Bosnia will direct the course of
world events.
1 NATO is doing the right
thing by remaining firm on its
threat of airstrikes against
Bosnian Serbs around Sarajevo,
Bosnia-Herzegovina. But, in
now familiar style, U.N. offi
cials are painting a different,
less threatening picture than
NATO by telling Serbs that
some guns may be left in the
r7as7oIr ar by mounta i ns ar, d that the
Beadline is still up f(?r grabs.
I U.N. officials have been try-
ling to negotiate a peaceful end
to the bloodshed in Sarajevo,
and while this is a noble en-
Reavor, it is the NATO threat
■rat finally has brought about a
Herious cease-fire in the region.
KChildren played on streets pre-
. viously controlled by snipers
Monday as Serbs and Muslims
=—^ began to place their heavy
yc? msc weaponry under U.N. control.
» Serbs still have a large arsenal
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of howitzers, tanks and rocket
launchers which they must
hand over to prevent airstrikes
planned to begin next Monday.
This plan is working, but
NATO must stand by it even if
it takes airstrikes to implement
the policy. If the lack of harmo
ny between the U.N. and
NATO leads Serbs to view the
airstrikes as only a hollow
threat, then the U.N. will be
partly responsible for the
plan's failure.
History teaches that objec
tives must be set and deadlines
must be observed for military
operations to be successful.
NATO has enough airpower in
place to begin the strikes at any
moment, and both sides have
had long enough to remove
their guns.
To back down on this dead
line would be a huge mistake
and would drag out the suffer
ing even longer. NATO has
taken the necessary steps so
far, and by standing firm on
the threat, the Serbs and Mus
lims will finally be forced to
hear that message.
The Battalion
Page 7
You can never be too rich or too thin
Waif look in again as beauty standards reflect the y 60s
T wiggy of the '60s
is Kate Moss of
the '90s.
Three decades ago
young girls were eying
Twiggy's ribbon-thin
waist with envy. Today
it seems that young
men and women both
are eager to imitate the
hollow-faced look of
the waif models. Kate
Moss's 5-foot-7-inch,
98-pound figure has
gotten a big reaction —
everything from a
spoof advertisement in
"Esquire" magazine
that implores readers to "Feed Kate Moss" to a
new trend in plastic surgery that trades cheek
fat for a concave face.
Andrew P. Ordon, a Manhattan plastic sur
geon, offers a "waif procedure" that sucks fat
out of cheeks, allowing the deflated skin to em
phasize the facial bones. This procedure is nec
essary for the average person to achieve a waif
like appearance because, as Ordon stated in a
Houston Chronicle article, "This fat only goes
away on its own, literally, only if you're starv
ing/
Sometimes it is amazing to witness how
quickly society's philosophies can make a com
plete 180-degree turn. A few short years ago
we were singing "We Are The World" and cry
ing over the starving children in Africa, and to
day we want to look like we're starving our
selves.
It is an obvious fact that the waif models, in
their state of near starvation, are endorsing the
dangerous idea that thinness is equivalent to
beauty.
If the problems of anorexia and bulimia
weren't enough to question the glorification of
super thin models, there is also the problem of
amenia. When girls become too thin and lose
too much body fat, their menstrual cycle will
stop. Although this is a common occurrence
among women athletes, it is dangerous
nonetheless. When a girl does not menstruate
for an extended period of time, she can lose
calcium, bone mass and even the ability to be
come pregnant.
While many of these dangerous messages
are aimed at women, men are also questioning
the acceptability of their chubby cheeks. Ac
cording to the article in the Houston Chronicle,
Edward Park, 23, is paying $3,000 to Ordon to
have the fat removed from his cheeks.
"Asian people have a lot of buccal (cheek
area) fat in their face," said Park, who is a Ko-
rean-American. "It sounds really shallow
doesn't it? A really shallow thing to do."
Park's personal struggle with shallowness is
really irrelevant, except that it supports a dan
gerous idea voiced by Dr. Ordon.
"My point is that I don't think a full-cheek
look will ever be in," he said. "A high cheek
has always been a classic sign of beauty, and I
don't think that will change."
If this is the case, everybody with cheeks
fuller than Meryl Streep's — including Nicole
Kidman and Andie MacDowell ~ better toss
in the towel. Despite the fact that it is prepos
terous to gage beauty by cheek size, this idea
takes on an even more derogatory undertone
when considered along with a statement from
Ordon's publicity packet.
"This is an excellent (procedure) for those
ethnicities such as Latinos and Asians who
have an especially large amount of buccal fat."
It is understandable that people want to be
happy with their appearance. We live in a visu
al world. Fair or not, oftentimes one's appear
ance is a determining factor in getting hired
and in getting promotions in the business
world. However, there is a huge difference be
tween having plastic surgery to achieve a pro
fessional, clean-cut appearance and undergo
ing plastic surgery to look like a waif model,
the "chic fashion" of the moment.
Kathy Winters, medical secretary at Scott
and White Clinic in Temple, said that patients
who request plastic surgery are thoroughly
evaluated before the procedure is done.
"The whole picture is taken into considera
tion," she said. "The physician totally evalu
ates the candidates from a cosmetic, medical
and health standpoint."
Obviously, not all plastic surgeons are as
concerned about their patients' well-being.
But, regardless of anything else, it is our own
responsibility to find peace with our personal
appearance.
Each person in this world is a unique and
beautiful creation. Maybe we do not all have
blue eyes, clear skin and a paper thin waist.
Just because a person does not fit into category
of media-defined beauty, does not mean they
are not beautiful. Actually, the whole concept
of modeling is rather stupid to begin with.
Since approximately 95 percent of the popula
tion will never look like magazine models,
what exactly are they a model of?
]enny Magee is a sophomore journalism and
English major
JENNY
MAGEE
Columnist
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Editorials appearing in The
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Contact the opinion eoitor for
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Address letters to:
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Supreme Court's RICO decision paves way for abuses
the mu®
"one l^ipwid you hear
this op® I lit? That huge
r Americii ^ smacking
sound resonating
through Washing
ton on Jan. 24 came
yj from the lips of the
nine Supreme
Court justices as
■ud*i J ( Lthev spat out their
^unanimous deci
sion which applied
America's 24-year-
old Racketeer Influ
enced and Corrupt
Organizations Act
(RICO) to the delib
erate, malicious ac
tions of anti-abor
tion groups.
WILLIAM
HARRISON
Guest columnist
Put simply, the highest court in the land
equated protest groups' radical actions to
II the same level of criminality as "The
Mob."
p. The RICO decision sounds like plain
right-and-wrong justice.
Originally, racketeering — the orga-
;nized forcing of action through an unlaw
ful scheme to conduct the affairs of some
"enterprise" — was judged to be a crimi
nal action.
Organizations planning crimes such as
murder, arson, gambling, extortion or em
bezzlement constitute racketeering.
Crimes such as unlawful protest and tres
passing supposedly are not considered
"racketeering," although they are certainly
unlawful by the first definition.
The key word is "enterprise." Through
its decision, the courts re-defined an enter
prise as an organization not necessarily
driven solely by base, profiteering mo
tives. Racketeering now takes into account
criminal measures taken to command the
commodities of morality and religion.
By this act, anyone who helps or aids in
the activities of a convicted group is now
essentially an accomplice, and a target for
damages in this country's "deep-pock
ets"/"shoot for the head" liability system.
Unfamiliar?
Here's an example. Any individual or
group who has supported these anti-abor
tion groups, including its fringe members
and the churches and meeting halls these
groups use may now be held liable under
the law.
Big deal, right? Why should one ques
tion a little judicial heavy-handedness in
tent on punishing blatantly criminal ac
tions? Because the damages awarded from
convicted groups will be, oh, arbitrarily
TRIPLED.
It is curious that a court stocked with
conservative justices sown from the Rea
gan and Bush administrations made a sur
prisingly liberal decision, overturning a
lower court ruling. But not so when ap
preciating where this decision really came
from — a bench of basically conservative
"Have you been injured in
an abortion or any non-prof
it organization protest? Call
Joe Shyster at 1-800-LITL
GATE (not a member of the
Texas Bar Association) ..."
lawyers, who somewhere beneath their
impartial demeanor must have appreciat
ed a lawyer's cut from an award of this
magnitude. Surely, they thought the deci
sion would "Triple-the-Fun."
Those nine justices should have
summed up their decision with that profit-
at-all-costs. Gilded Age phrase, "What's
good for business is good for America."
Financially speaking, our judicial sys
tem has one more tool in thousands to bog
down our courts and stock the coffers of
all those lawyers listed in the Yellow Pages
and shmoozing on late night television.
Triple damages is just a new, exciting
square in our courts' Wheel of Fortune.
Picture this, if it's not slightly familiar:
"Have you been injured in an abortion
or any non-profit organization protest?
Call Joe Shyster at 1-800-LITIGATE ... (not
a member of the Texas Bar Association) ..."
As for the First Amendment, Justice
David Souter noted that the RICO decision
could endanger courts' protections for ad
vocacy groups and their rights to protect
themselves.
He wrote that the courts should ".. .bear
in mind the First Amendment interests
that could be at stake."
Believe that, or consider what this deci
sion prompted Randall Terry, founder of
Operation Rescue, to say: "the Supreme
Court has told civil protest to go to hell."
The RICO decision was made to bridge
a gap, to make groups pay for their radical
actions. But look back 30 years to what this
country viewed as "radical." As far as civ
il protest is concerned, our generation's
equivalent to the "radical" sit-ins of the
'60s could be judged by courts as "racke
teering."
The National Organization of Women
may gloat over its victory against the anti
abortionists. However, unless Congress
steps in to amend and narrow the RICO
definition, the bridge built to hold these
groups accountable — including groups
such as NOW — will be taken advantage
of unfairly.
Somewhere, in some court, litigious op
portunism could freely interpret this deci
sion, yielding possibly crippling blows to
these groups, as well as their members'
First Amendment rights. As the axiom
says, power corrupts, and absolute power
corrupts absolutely. Put simply, if Con
gress does not act, then RICO's can of
worms will be in dangerous company
with our courts' pit of snakes.
As a last resort, someone might sue the
Supreme Court. The case has all the ingre
dients of a RICO case: a malicious, profi
teering scheme unlawfully infringing on
the country's First Amendment laws.
Sounds like racketeering to me.
William Harrison is a senior journalism major
orning-after pill
not "abortion pill"
The morning-after pill that Beutel re
uses to prescribe is actually a set of pills
containing strong doses of oral contra
ceptives. When taken within 72 hours of
|fsex, they prevent the egg from implanti-
ghg in the uterus. This is not the same as
RU-486, which is also called the "abor
tion pill" and is not available in the Unit
ed States.
Morning after pills have been pre
scribed for over 15 years, though they
are not widely known. They are consid
ered emergency contraception, not a rou
tine birth-control device. Roughly half of
the 3.5 million unwanted pregnancies
each year are the result of contraceptive
failure. Is it endorsing "risky behavior"
to give women another choice if they
should need it?
Why would BeuteTs director. Dr.
Dirks, assume that morning-after pills
would become the birth control method
of choice? The University of Houston's
nurse manager reports never having
seen the same patient twice.
Plus, these pills are not the best
choice. While they are effective, they are
not as effective as other types of birth
control, and their side effects can include
nausea, headaches and dizziness. Worst
of all, one might have to deal with peo
ple who would assume that trying to
prevent an unwanted pregnancy is irre
sponsible.
Catherine Nuccio
Class of '95
Strive to understand
religious practices
From this week until the beginning
of Spring Break, if you ask one of your
Muslim friends to go to lunch, he or she
may refuse.
Why? Muslims all over the world are
celebrating a full month of fasting in
Ramadan.
One day, I said to my friend, "We
are fasting from dawn until sunset, ab
staining from food, drinks and legiti
mate sexual relations."
That's crazy!" he replied.
Fasting is not as crazy as some peo
ple may think. Understanding the
virtues of it can clarify this misconcep
tion.
The main purpose of fasting is to at
tain righteousness. However, I person
ally learn many lessons from my fast
ing. I learn how to appreciate food so
that I just eat enough and do not waste
any. I also train myself to control my
thoughts and feelings from getting an
gry and saying bad words. Further, I
can feel the difficulties of poor people
to get their food.
Let's learn and understand the vari
ous ways people believe in their reli
gions so that we do not misunderstand
each other.
You can contact the Muslim Stu
dents' Association on campus to learn
more about Islam.
Gatot Pramono
Class of'94