Yovana Mendoza, Fashion Poppycock, Brain Differences

                               Vegans and Social Media

Still Life with Fish, Benjamin Blake (1757-1830) 
Photo Credit: Royal Institute of Cornwall [CC BY-NC]

Nobody was supposed to see Yovana Mendoza eating the fish. The 28-year-old influencer, also known as Rawvana has amassed more than 3 million followers across YouTube and Instagram by extolling the life-changing properties of a raw vegan diet. She has built a lucrative brand around veganism. But a couple of weeks ago Mendoza was recorded eating seafood in a video posted by another vlogger.

…Mendoza posted a 33 minute video titled This Is What Is Happening, where she admitted she had stopped being a vegan for health reasons. Her periods had become irregular and she had been having digestive problems, so she had started eating animal products to see if that helped. In a perfect universe Mendoza’s digestion would have been of no interest to anybody except herself. But we live in hell; her video has been watched more than 850,000 times.

…Fishgate [this is what it has become known as] is also a worrying reminder that people are getting health advice from unqualified online influencers. The registered nutritionist Rhiannon Lambert told the Telegraph that she had seen a rise in clients coming to her clinic with symptoms resulting from poor nutrition and, in severe cases, with eating disorders, having taken the advice of social media stars.

(Arwa Mahdawi, The Guardian, 2019)

Of what interest is it to anybody that a woman called Mendoza extolls the life changing properties of a raw vegan diet? What are her three million “followers”? Sheep? Automatons?

                   Aren’t those taking health advice from social media stars to be pitied?


Fashion

Judith with the Head of Holofernes, Cristofano Allori (1577-1621) (after)

Photo Credit: Tabley House Collection [CC BY-NC]

…Anyone who has been watching the second series of Killing Eve cannot fail to have noticed the bold, stylish and often bizarre outfits worn by Jodie Comer’s Russian assassin character, Villanelle. Many of the items she wears, from her velvet jumpsuits to satin coats to silk dressing gowns, are selling out despite the designer price tags.

…The fashion psychologist Shakaila Forbes-Bell understands the lure of a fictional character’s look. She identified with one of the central characters, Molly, on Issa Rae’s American comedy drama series Insecure – “a very powerful woman, very true to her culture and roots – as a black woman I really identify with that”.

Forbes-Bell soon found herself on a “what a character wore” website. When, in line with the character, she on occasion dressed in a more tailored way, it worked: “I definitely felt like I embodied that confidence.”

Even when characters seem a far cry from anyone we know, borrowing an aesthetic becomes an attempt to borrow some of their traits.

Comer’s character may enjoy killing people, but she also has something many women more typically aspire to. “We don’t want to fade into the background anymore,” says Forbes-Bell. With her clothes, Villanelle is making the point that she refuses to go unheard.

When we identify with someone on TV, “they are more easily absorbed into our sense of self because they are animated and have lives and characters we can aspire to,” says Carolyn Mair, author of The Psychology of Fashion…”We buy into telly characters’ clothes because we buy into them as “people”.

…“TV characters will become a fashion icon if they represent something we can become,” says Aurore Bardey, a lecturer in consumer psychology at London College of Fashion. “If we want to be happy, our ideal self needs to fit with our real self.”

(Ellie Violet Bramley, The Observer, 2019)

Well Ellie, I hope you have not become convinced by the great deal of poppycock emanating from the mouths of fashion psychologists. Or am I the only one who thinks much of what they say here is nonsense?

Brain Differences

 …brain differences between the sexes begin in the womb.  The research…suggests that some of the divergence in male and female neurology is innate, rather than due solely to culture.

Moriah Thomason, from New York University Langone, conducted the research…She said that she was not surprised to find differences in the wiring of the brains but was still impressed by how clear it was. “There were many differences in the organisation of male and female foetal brains.”

(The Times, 2019)

Research confirming what we already knew?