12 Beauty
12 Beauty January 2 2023 | World and Press Makeup-free Miss England finalist defies ‘unrealistic beauty standards’ BEAUTY Melisa Raouf became the first makeup-free participant in the Miss England competition’s 94-year history. Übungen|Sprechen By Samantha Chery 1 MELISA RAOUFused to spend three hours perfecting her makeup because she didn’t feel confident in her natural beauty. But as other contestants put on theirs in preparation for the Miss England pageant this week, Raouf faced the competition without it. 2 In doing so, Raouf, 20, became the first makeup-free participant in the Miss England competition’s 94-year history, making her a face of a bare-face movement that has resonated with women around the world. It was a challenge to herself, Raouf said, after years of feeling shy and insecure, discouraged by a social media ecosystem overrun by meticulously edited and filtered pictures. Melisa Raouf (right) started the #barefacetrendmovement. | Photo: Kam Murali 3 “Women are pressured to look a certain way because of society’s narrow perception of beauty and perfection, and they’re often scrutinized for not conforming to them,” she said in an interview. “I wanted to challenge these unrealistic beauty standards by taking that bare-face round to the next level.” 4 Skin-positivity activists have criticized the beauty industry’s role in marketing their products with photoshopped images and profiting off women’s insecurities. Raouf, a political science student at King’s College London, said she wanted to inspire girls who, like her, felt they couldn’t measure up. 5 Contestants qualified for the Miss England finals, held Sunday and Monday in Birmingham, in one of several ways, including by winning a special title (such as “publicity queen”) or a regional competition. Raouf made it after winning June’s Miss London Bare Face Top Model competition, an optional round added in 2019 that invites contestants to post a photo of themselves without makeup on their social media accounts, and then claiming the same title at the Miss England semifinals in August. 6 Leading up to the finals, Raouf picked up litter in London and ran a ten-kilometer event to raise money for the Miss Worldaffiliated nonprofit Beauty with a Purpose, which provides food, water, and education to those who need it. She also started #barefacetrendmovement, which buoyed her confidence – and connected her to a community of women seeking skin positivity. 7 “I’m very proud of her,” said Elle Seline, who last year became the first woman to compete makeup-free in the Ms Great Britain contest, a pageant for women ages 31 to 44. “It’s awesome that other women are waking up and using their platforms to make that conversation continue.” … 8 Now, more than 500,000 Instagram posts include #bareface, and nearly 250,000 more include #skinpositivity, signaling the growth of a once-niche group as real-skin activists and sans-makeup influencers resonate with the push to see unfiltered and unedited pictures as beautiful. © 2022 The Washington Post 0 – 2 TO DEFYtrotzen — participant Teilnehmer(in) — contestant Kandidat(in) — pageant (AE) Schönheitswettbewerb — bare-face ungeschminkt — to resonate with (fig) Anklang finden bei; s.w.u. in Einklang sein mit — ecosystem (fig) Umfeld — overrun (fig) überschwemmt — meticulously sorgfältig 3 – 4 to pressure (AE) unter Druck setzen — perception Vorstellung — to scrutinize kritisch beäugen — to conform to s.th. etw. entsprechen — …-positivity positive Einstellung gegenüber … — to measure up den Ansprüchen gerecht werden 5 – 8 to claim h.: gewinnen — leading up to im Vorfeld von — …-affiliated an … angegliedert — nonprofit gemeinnützige Organisation — purpose Ziel — to buoy (fig) stärken — conversation h.: öffentl. Austausch — once-niche group einstige Nischengruppe — sans ohne Continued from page 1 7 “By now, Xi Jinping should also understand that this virus can’t be controlled, and if it can’t be controlled, then opening up must happen sooner or later,” said Deng Yuwen, a former editor at a Communist Party newspaper, the ‘Study Times,’ who now lives in the United States and writes commentaries about Chinese politics. “But most fundamental of all, the economy can’t hold up any longer. If they try tightening up again, the ordinary people would really raise hell.” 8 For many in China, the relief was immediate. People flocked to Chinese social media and video sites to post thumbs-up emoji and comments like: “I’m crying, I’ve waited for three years.” One migrant worker who had protested against a lockdown last month at an iPhone manufacturing complex in central China said he was elated by the news. “Our voices are finally heard,” said the worker, who gave only his last name, Zhang, out of fear of retaliation by authorities. “We workers no longer have to be locked up, starved, and suppressed.” 9 Far from indicating defeat in the face of broad opposition, China’s state media has depicted Wednesday’s turn in policy as the latest in an unbroken succession of wise choices that have resulted in a hard-earned victory for China. “In the past three years, the virus has weakened, and we have become stronger,” the official Xinhua News Agency wrote in a commentary Wednesday titled “Winning the Strategic Initiative Through Persistence.” 10 For days, the propaganda apparatus has been pushing the idea – long understood elsewhere – that Omicron variants are less lethal than the coronavirus’s earlier iterations. Officials and state media reports have quietly dropped the use of “dynamic zero-COVID,” Beijing’s term for the strategy of lockdowns and quarantines to clear infections. … 11 Wednesday’s changes will free residents in many parts of the country from what had become a near-daily chore of getting tested just to travel across the country, move around their cities, or use public services. The new policy did not immediately change the rules for international arrivals, who are subject to at least five days in government-designated quarantine. 12 People who have mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 will be allowed to isolate at home and no longer be sent to hospitals, as had been the case since the virus emerged. The government appeared to retain the power to impose lockdowns but narrowed the scope of such measures to buildings, floors, or units rather than neighborhoods, districts, or cities – and said that such confinements should be lifted quickly. 13 At the same time, the policy shift will bring new challenges for the party. Experts have warned that China needs to step up sharply its pace of vaccinations, particularly for older adults, before taking big strides to reopen the country. People over 80, who are among the most vulnerable to serious illness or death during a COVID-19 infection, have the lowest rate of vaccination: only two-thirds have received the initial course of vaccination, usually two shots, and only two-fifths have had the initial course of vaccines plus a booster. … © 2022 The New York Times Company This article originally appeared in The New York Times. 7 – 8 editor Redakteur(in) — to tighten up schärfere Maßnahmen ergreifen — to raise hell auf die Barrikaden gehen — to flock strömen — migrant worker Wanderarbeiter(in) — manufacturing complex Fabrikationswerk — elated hocherfreut — retaliation Vergeltung; Strafmaßnahmen — authorities Behörden — to starve s.o. jdn. hungern lassen — to suppress unterdrücken 9 – 11 succession Abfolge — persistence Beharrlichkeit — lethal tödlich — iteration h.: Variante — chore lästige Pflicht — to be subject to s.th. zu etw. verpflichtet sein — government-designated staatl. festgelegt 12 – 13 to retain behalten — confinement Ausgangssperre — shift Wandel — to step up intensivieren — stride Schritt — vulnerable gefährdet
World and Press | January 2 2023 ‘Once I’m dead, no one will have heard of me’ BOOK REVIEW This lively biography of Agatha Christie, the Queen of Crime, shows why she’s as popular as ever. By Mark Sanderson Biography 13 1 DO WEreally need yet another book about the Queen of Crime? Lucy Worsley’s revisionist biography lists more than 90 printed sources. These include such seminal works as Janet Morgan’s ‘Agatha Christie: A Biography’ (1984) and Laura Thompson’s ‘Agatha Christie: An English Mystery’ (2007), but not Dawn B Sova’s indispensable ‘Agatha Christie A to Z’ (1996), with its introduction by Christie’s grandson, Mathew Prichard. He has allowed Worsley to quote from Christie’s unpublished letters and poems, so it is safe to say he has given his blessing to this fond and occasionally foolish work of woke devotion. Even so, every fan should read it. 2 Why woke and why foolish? Worsley, while claiming that Christie “spent her life pretending to be ordinary when in fact she was breaking boundaries”, insists on considering “the life of a woman whose story intertwines with that of the 20th century” in the light of 21st-century ethics. 3 There’s even a trigger warning: “Her work contains views on race and class that are unacceptable today.” Prepare to clutch your pearls. Everyone knows the original title of ‘And Then There Were None’ (1939) contained “a racial slur”: “The title wasn’t just lifted from a nursery rhyme: the ‘n-word’ was also the name of the island on which the story was set.” Furthermore, “the crime of killing one white person, in the book, is equated with the crime of killing 21 Africans.” The murderer simply says: “Natives don’t mind dying, you know.” 4 Such ignorant remarks are painful today, Worsley says, “because people think of her writing as somehow timeless”. The endless TV adaptations of the novels have, of course, cleaned up the Agatha Christie in 1970. | Photo: Picture Alliance/Photoshot ‘Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman’ by Lucy Worsley, 432 pages, is published by Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 978-1529303872. texts and ensured that Christie, after Shakespeare, remains the best-selling author of all. 5 Worsley wags her finger at Christie for treating servants as “music-hall turns, their irritating quirks laid out for the reader’s entertainment”. Far more serious is Christie’s inability “to see what was wrong with antisemitism”: examples from ‘The Secret of Chimneys’ (1925), ‘The Hollow’ (1946), and ‘A Murder is Announced’ (1950) demonstrate all too clearly that Christie was a woman who shared the prejudices of the age. 6 Worsley, heavily reliant on Christie’s unreliable ‘An Autobiography’ (1977), provides all the shilling facts that take the author from her birth on September 15, 1890, in Torquay, through a succession of ever grander properties in London and the home counties, before finally coming to a stop at Winterbrook House on the Thames near Wallingford, where she died on January 12, 1976. She was no clairvoyant: “Once I’ve been dead ten years, I’m sure nobody will ever have heard of me.” 7 What makes this biography so fascinating is the way Worsley demonstrates how “everything Agatha experienced became copy”. An irreverent historian, she sets in context the events of her subject’s life with great skill, then shows how Christie reflected them in her work. 8 For example, the private investigators Tommy and Tuppence Beresford – who appear in four novels – are said to be a former soldier and a hospital nurse, as were the “incredibly hot” Archibald Christie and the woman he married in 1914, “total man-magnet” Agatha Miller. The 1920s characters and their creator are epitomised as “bright young things on a budget”. History and story are blended seamlessly throughout. 9 Worsley seems to have read everything by Christie, not just the Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries, but her ropy thrillers and the romances written under the name of Mary Westmacott. She argues convincingly that ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’ (1921) – first serialised in ‘The Times’ – ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’ (1926), and ‘The Murder at the Vicarage’ (1930) are among her finest novels. She is ruthless in exposing what she calls “Christie tricks” – the hiding of an object in plain sight, disguising romantic attachments between characters – and highlighting errors: “Poirot, for example, lives at Whitehaven Mansions, except when he lives at Whitehouse Mansions.” 10 Madness and the fear of madness is a constant presence in the narrative. It manifested itself in the family trees of both Agatha and Archie. Worsley attributes her notorious disappearance and discovery in Harrogate in 1926 to a “dissociative disorder” and cites recent computer analysis of Christie’s syntax to suggest that in her twilight years the Duchess of Death was developing Alzheimer’s disease. 11 Christie may have been a single working mother after her divorce from Archie, yet she always had a private income. She may have gone surfing in South Africa, but she still wore her pearls. And she did make Poirot a refugee from Belgium and the only character in ‘The Clocks’ (1963) to take the blind woman Millicent Pebmarsh seriously – every box, including disability, is ticked – but is this sufficient to justify calling her a breaker of boundaries? Not really. 12 Christie hid her application and ambition behind the facade of an Edwardian gentlewoman; it was her way of avoiding the scrutiny that inevitably follows celebrity. Yet if she remains elusive, it is not the fault of the effusive Worsley. … 13 Christie lovers should read this biography for the same reason they read her novels: they “address dark, uncomfortable feelings. They address the darkness that can lurk within even normal, respectable people. People like your own spouse.” Worsley not only makes you want to reread them all over again, she actually makes you love the talented yet tormented woman who wrote them. © The Times, London/News Licensing This article originally appeared in The Times, London. 0 – 2 SEMINAL bedeutend — indispensable unverzichtbar — to quote zitieren — to give one’s blessing to s.th. (fig) etw. seinen Segen geben — devotion Verehrung — even so trotzdem — to intertwine with verflochten sein mit — ethics Moral 3 race Ethnie — to clutch one’s pearls (fig) schockiert sein — And Then There Were None dt. Titel: Und dann gab’s keines mehr — racial slur rassistische Beleidigung — to lift entnehmen — nursery rhyme Kinderreim — to equate gleichsetzen 4 – 5 adaptation Verfilmung — to wag one’s finger at s.o. (fig) jdn. rügen — music-hall turn Varietéfigur — quirk Eigenart — to lay out ausbreiten — The Secret of Chimneys dt. Titel: Das Geheimnis von Chimneys — The Hollow dt. Titel: Das Eulenhaus — A Murder is Announced dt. Titel: Ein Mord wird angekündigt — prejudice Vorurteil 6 – 8 to be reliant on s. stützen auf — shilling wesentlich — succession Reihe — home counties Grafschaften um London — clairvoyant Hellseher(in) — copy Vorlage — irreverent ehrfurchtslos — private investigator Privatdetektiv(in) — to epitomise darstellen — on a budget (fig) mit wenig Geld — seamlessly nahtlos 9 ropy schlecht — The Mysterious Affair at Styles dt. Titel: Das fehlende Glied in der Kette — to serialise in Fortsetzungen veröffentlichen — The Murder of Roger Ackroyd dt. Titel: Alibi — The Murder at the Vicarage dt. Titel: Mord im Pfarrhaus — ruthless schonungslos — in plain sight (fig) vor aller Augen — to disguise verschleiern — romantic attachment Liebesbeziehung 10 madness Wahnsinn — narrative Erzählung — to manifest o.s. s. zeigen — family tree Familienstammbaum — to attribute to zurückführen auf — notorious berüchtigt — dissociative disorder dissoziative Störung — to cite anführen — twilight years (fig) letzte Lebensjahre — duchess Herzogin 11 – 13 The Clocks dt. Titel: Auf doppelter Spur — to tick every box (fig) alle Kriterien erfüllen — application Eifer — Edwardian edwardianisch (Epoche von 1901–1914) — gentlewoman vornehme Dame — scrutiny prüfende Blicke — inevitably unweigerlich — elusive schwer fassbar — effusive überschwänglich — to address s. auseinandersetzen mit — to lurk lauern — spouse Ehepartner(in) — tormented gepeinigt
