Queer eye for the Chinese guy (and girl)
The China Daily reports that more middle-class Chinese are concerned with image than ever before, giving birth to a small but growing corpus of image consultants:
For 2,600 yuan (325 dollars) -- at least three months' salary to most blue collar workers in Beijing -- the image center advises clients on what colors and style of clothes look good on them, how to apply makeup and what hair style suits their face.Style savants can also sort out well-matched outfits from a client's closet or accompany him or her on a shopping trip to get a whole new wardrobe if they buy the full package of services costing 10,000 yuan.
We're pretty sure that there is something similar in Shanghai, but on the other hand, since Shanghainese people are more fashion-conscious in the first place, we wonder if instead of paying 2,500 or 10,000 RMB if they just couldn't get someone they know to do it for them. Going back to the article:
"The biggest problem in China is people don't know how to make themselves look pretty, unlike in Japan where ideas about beauty are already very sophisticated," says Tina Qin, a self-employed consultant."Chinese people buy expensive clothes to emulate what they see on TV, but when they put it on themselves, they realize it doesn't look good on them."
A common problem is people don't know what suits their body and how to match clothes properly, consultants say.
Of course, what they ought to do is take this a step further and bring a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy or Extreme Makeover type show to Chinese TV. Minus the homos and suicides, of course, which are good for ratings but bad for society.
A world away from Beijing, in Chongqing, we have some people doing the exact opposite: Taking off their clothes and revelling in their birthday suits -- for Art, that is. A nude model drew a crowd of 200 people:
Hired model Xiao Yu (not her real name) disrobed and struck poses before the crowd, some just peacefully contemplating her and some sketching attentively on paper.
And some of whom were ...