Vanity and the nation's economy
Last week in this column I enumerated the advantages of indexes and rankings as a means of synthesizing today’s overabundance of information. I also mentioned that it would be good to have access to an index ranking compliance with commercial treaties, especially those pertaining to agriculture. The reason for this is that in my opinion Venezuela, in this area as well as in others, is much more compliant than the world that surrounds it. This should not be forgotten by our international negotiating teams that usually are more interested in the applause of the outside world than in ours.
A few days later, I received an e-mail saying: “You and your indexes. Take this one. Attached you will find one published by ABCNews.com which states that without a doubt, Venezuelans are by a long shot the vainest people in the world.” The index reveals that 65% of Venezuelan women and 47% of Venezuelan men say they “think about what they look like all the time”. In Germany, for example, virtually no one confesses to this.
From the tone of the e-mail, I suppose that the sender considered the high ranking achieved by Venezuela in this index as being unfavorable, and I also suppose that he would like me to share to some degree a feeling of guilt for having raised the matter of indexes in the first place. Well, I DON'T!
Intuitively, I am pleased to be part of a country in which my compatriots are worried about their appearance. The study, which places Russian women and Mexicans of both sexes a somewhat distant second, establishes the global average at 23% for women and 18% for men. It also mentions those places where the people “never thinks about how they look”. In India, 33% of the population never worry about looks, followed by Malaysia (25%) and Spain (22%).
I think we can come to certain conclusions from this index which could be of great importance, even for the development of the country. The fact that our society holds dear to the heart a feeling of vanity over and above levels in other countries, certainly differentiates us from the rest. It should be analyzed within the context of comparative advantages.
The dedication of someone like Osmel Sousa to events like the Miss Venezuela beauty contest has elevated our country to the apex of world perception of the beauty of Venezuelan women. By using the word “perception”, I do not intend to question the objective beauty of our women (God forbid, I have four of them at home!). I wish to make a point of the importance of the general perception per se. This, by the way, renders even the less pretty Venezuelans beautiful.
With the ranking of vanity and the results of the Miss Venezuela pageant we can put together an input-output matrix which could shed light on interesting economic possibilities in the area of care and improvement of appearance. Let us see how this would work.
Any country culturally geared towards taking care of physical appearance for centuries, that has managed to develop methods and formulas that have been time tested and proven and have been transmitted live to the rest of the world, has in its hands a tool to attract tourism that other countries would give one arm and half the other to have.
Venezuela, being an oil exporting nation, has its hard currency requirements covered as far as it commercial balance of payments is concerned. On the other side of the coin we find that our oil income keeps the Bolivar overvalued and therefore makes it increasingly difficult to develop activities that generate employment and are competitive enough so as to not require subsidies or protection.
I have frequently explained this using the simile that there is no place in Venezuela for textile industry that produces cheap clothing but that there is plenty of room for activities that imply more value added. When we stimulate micro-businesses with financial assistance to purchase sewing machines, we must remember that what we really wish to promote is the development of designers and not necessarily seamstresses.
Within this line of reasoning, there is no doubt that the area of personal care is one that conforms to the basic requirements. It is a service area that can generate a great deal of employment and which allows for high value added.
I promptly pushed the “reply” icon on my computer and sent off the following message:
"Thanks for having sent me the Vanity Index. I think there must be certain mistakes in the Index since I believe that the figures for Venezuela are too low. In Venezuela, I would say that 100% of the population worries about how they look."
"While we talk about appearances, you should see the results we have achieved with a treatment supervised by the stylist school of Caracas which includes massages in the turbulent waters of the Caroní river and scrubbing with powerful and mystic Orinoco algae, while listening to the sensual rhythm of the beating of the herons' wings and drinking a skin reconstituent, malt based beverage.
And all this under the indiscrete tropical moon, for only US$ 1,680 per day!
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