Posts Tagged ‘Faisal Karami’
Topless skier: Not during the Olympics. And Jackie Chamoun is the least of Lebanon’s problems
Posted on: February 15, 2014
Topless skier Jackie Chamoun: the least of Lebanon’s problems?
Name: Jackie Chamoun.
Age: 22.
Appearance: Cold.
Who is Jackie Chamoun? She’s a Lebanese Olympic skier.
Lebanon has a ski team? Lebanon is a mountainous country with many ski resorts and a history of skiing dating to 1913. But no, not really. They are just two of them.
So why’s she cold then? Does she not have the right gear?
Several photos have emerged showing Chamoun nearly naked in the snow, apart from mittens, goggles and ski poles.
I’m not familiar with that event. The pictures are from a 3-year-old calendar shoot, but they still caused consternation in Lebanon.
For fear that Jackie would catch her death? No.
The minister for sports and youth, Faisal Karami, ordered the country’s Olympic committee to investigate, and to “take the required steps so that Lebanon’s reputation is not harmed”.
An “I Am Not Naked” campaigner on Facebook. Photograph: Facebook
Their reputation for what? Dressing appropriately for the weather?
His criticism is a bit rich, especially in a country where most athletes have to sponsor themselves because the government’s sports budget is miniscule.
I expect there was some sort of backlash. There was.
The minister’s comment was labelled “backward” and “patriarchal”, and dozens of Lebanese people posted topless photos of themselves on Twitter in sympathy, using the hashtag #stripforJackie.
Literally dozens? Well, more than a dozen.
But many more were upset that the minister was seeking to stir up a scandal while the country’s very real problems went unaddressed. In light of a recent spate of bombings, the government was accused of focusing on “boobs not bombs”.
I follow you. But then others accused the campaigners of being frivolous and immodest. “#StripforJackie is just an excuse to get naked on social media,” tweeted one objector. “This is getting very disgusting!”
How does Chamoun feel about spearheading such a strange campaign? She’s not really part of it.
She immediately apologised for the leaked pictures on Facebook. “I know that Lebanon is a conservative country and this is not the image that reflects our culture,” she wrote.
Do say: “It’s all got a bit complicated. Why don’t we put the controversy behind us, and allow Jackie to concentrate on her skiing?”
Don’t say: “The secret is lots of layers.”
Viva in the nude ski Lebanon. Jackie Chamoun photo shoot: Before heading to Sochi Olympics
Posted on: February 12, 2014
Viva ski Lebanon. Jackie Chamoun photos: Before heading to Sochi Olympics
Lebanon is very excited and exciting these days: Olympic ski champion Jackie Chamoun claimed that her photo shoot 3 years ago were not meant to be published.
Mind you that the Olympic Lebanese did it on their own: Effort, dedication, finances… The government didn’t give a hoot: Just “investigating” the semi-nude photo shoot.
(I copied these semi-nude photos from http://www.mulhak.com mulhak.com)
There is far more support for Jackie than this stupid government. Posters are being mounted saying: “We are worried about Bombs, Not Boobs”
patrickgaley posted this February 11, 2014
Jackie Chamoun photos: Lebanon outdumbs itself
Two things:
1. Lebanon’s Ministry of Tourism has repeatedly produced promotional videos essentially centred on the bodies of Lebanese women. I’ve covered this before, too.
As I wrote a few years back:
There is an argument to say there is little wrong with a country using its natural assets (Lebanon is still poor in resources, and will remain so until the government can agree on what to do with natural gas and oil reserves in the east Mediterranean) to boost its economic draw.
As long as the women in the commercial are consensual, what is wrong with flashing their flesh to promote Lebanon? After all, plenty of countries flaunt their female beauty stocks in a bid to draw beach-dwelling binocular users to their shores.
Not plenty of countries, however, display the same level of hypocrisy by encouraging grabby men to come and ogle their women while denying those same women basic rights enjoyed by men.
Here’s one of those videos for your perusal:
Lebanon has even before taken to the pages of Playboy to flog its women.
It’s transparently hypocritical to promote women as physical specimens while simultaneously denying them equal treatment in every facet of professional and familial society, just as people without boobs shouldn’t get to tell people with boobs what to do with them.
2. I urge everyone to read this report about the Lebanese ski team and how it has had to overcome unimaginable managerial incompetence, corruption and fecklessness to even make it to the Olympics. Any Olympics.
One might think the media might be, I dunno, proud of a young professional who – like many, many citizens of Lebanon – has had to struggle and fight in the face of downright ineptitude and obstructiveness to achieve their ambition. But as you know by now, that’s not how Lebanon – least of all the politicised media – does things.
It’s waspish, petty, self-righteous and stupid. Put that in a tourism video.
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