Hi there,
Today I want to talk about something that seems very important to me: personal care.
I remember that when I worked at the Embassy of Spain in Caracas, the guys who were interns were amazed at the hygiene of the Venezuelan. For me it is also something admirable, the Venezuelan are always clean and presentable.
And the level of presence of Venezuelan women is also amazing. In Caracas at least, where you can see, there are always all the beautiful women with their hair done, their nails done, impeccably dressed, and perfumed. I don’t wear makeup because it seems to me that with makeup, I look worse (or at least with the makeup that I do), but I have always admired the presence of Venezuelan women.
In high school I got braces and it was a terrible suffering that I had to go through. But I got them fixed and then had a whitening done so my teeth would be perfect. At school, almost all of us had braces, it was rare to find someone without them. Because it is something basic and obvious, that if you have crooked teeth, you must fix them. In fact, when the braces boom in Venezuela, everyone began to fix their teeth; even people in their 40s and 50s started getting braces.
When you put on braces and fix your teeth, you get a kind of fixation of seeing the teeth of others and it bothers you to see someone with crooked teeth (those who wore braces surely identify with me).
When I went to live in Spain, the first shock was seeing too many people (or almost all) with unfixed teeth and their mouths full of tartar in industrial quantities. Another thing that horrified me was that there were a lot of young people who were missing many teeth. They laughed and you would see all the holes on the sides, terrible. But it has its explanation, as the dentist is not included in the “public health”, people simply do not go to the dentist; and if you have a cavity, in public health they remove your tooth, they don’t even fix it. Also, there is no culture of dental hygiene.
Another thing that shocked me was seeing the girls with disgusting nails with worn nail polish. Those nails you see on girls in horror movies when they’ve been dragged, hit, and rolled down the mountain; Those are the nails that I saw. If you can’t take care of your polish, don’t paint your nails, simple. No?
Also, the overweight. Atalanta was the first gym I got into when I went to Spain. In Venezuela, if you go to the gym, the instructors are all fit and hot, which is logical, your body is your marketing, so to speak. You go to the gym to get fit like the instructor. In Spain the instructors were either skinny or had impressive bellies. In fact, at another gym, there was a spinning instructor who was about 100 pounds overweight. Really? If that’s what the instructors are, what’s left for the others.
Then there is a part of the population that criticizes and despises people who take care of themselves and do sports. It’s like a sort of bullying that people who don’t take care of themselves do to people who do. One thing that I had not seen until I lived in Spain. In other words, eating healthy, taking care of your physical appearance and being in shape is something that was wrong. How?
I remember that when I was doing the master’s degree, one of the professors said with a disgusted face that “How was it possible for a personal trainer to have a profile on Linked-In? Yes, Linked-In is a professional network and does not exclude fitness professionals. Why does a person who has never done sports allow himself to despise and minimize a person who lives from it?
My ex’s friends, who didn’t even remotely go to the gym, spent their time talking badly about those who went to the gym and started using the term “vigorexic“. Just by eating healthy and doing sports, it already seems that you were going to the extreme of vigorexia.
The friends of my boyfriend are a bit the same. He is on a triathlon team and usually does a lot of sports. Of the friends, there is not one who leads a healthy life, not one. They live drinking, always eating junkfood and already at thirty years old, with overweight. There, Diego is the “superficial weirdo” who absurdly eats healthy and does sports. Whenever there is talk of any competition or sports or what we eat, there are always those looks like we are the abnormal ones.
And we no longer talk only about the physical aspect, which for me is quite important, but also about health. A person with a giant belly is not healthy. In fact, they are people who, if they walk 15 minutes, are already tired, or who climb a few steps and can no longer breathe.
I believe in and fully support self-care. I think that if we have crooked teeth, we must fix them; that if we are fat, we should get in shape; that, if we have warts, we go to the dermatologist to remove them, etc.
It is also a matter of being happy with ourselves, with what we see in the mirror. If a man goes bald and feels bad about it and can afford to have a hair transplant, why can’t he? If that way he will feel better and regain self-esteem, let him do it. Although some call it “superficial”.
I support personal care for quality of life because, if I eat healthy and do sports, I will always be in good health and always in good physical condition to do what I like. Also, I will age gracefully.