Adi Barkan’s BMI battle
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, design, education, Entertainment, General, health, Politics
Adi Barkan, a fashion photographer, has been working for years to get the Knesset to outlaw underweight models, following his own exposure to models suffering from anorexia and bulimia.
Back in 2007, after the death of former model Hila Elmalich who was 34 and weighed less than sixty pounds, he told me the following for Women’s Wear Daily:
“The problem is with society, and the low self-esteem of these girls,” says Barkan. “We need to put this out there, to make it a societal norm in Israel and the rest of the world. People need to see these anorexic bodies and move their butts and do something about this.”
Israel21c interviewed Barkan several times about the issue, and posted the following video:
In March, his perseverance paid off, as the Knesset passed what is being called the Photoshop law, for the aspect of the law that regulates the use of Photoshop to make women appear perfect in advertisements. That’s a huge accomplishment. The bulk — no pun intended — of the law focuses on banning underweight models based on their BMI, or Body Mass Index.
The law is making waves in Israel, and around the world. Can Israel set the precedent for changing the way the fashion industry views and uses models’ bodies?
Interestingly enough, it was on Israel’s new fashion channel, Fashion.net., that a panel of fashion professionals, including clothing designer Yosef and a local fashion magazine editor, agreed that despite the new law and its groundbreaking potential, the fashion world will still view impossibly thin model bodies as the ultimate in goal.
“No one wants to see a curvy, zaftig model,” said Naama Chaisin, who is the second generation in the Tovale designer line of clothing. “And I say that as someone who is curvy and has fought to lose weight my whole life.”
Here’s to hoping she’s wrong.
Cell phone at the supermarket? You can save big
YouPhone is one of the new cellular carriers hitting the Israeli market
Israelis won’t be saying “hallo” on their cell phones, but that doesn’t mean low prices aren’t coming.
A few weeks ago, a much-rumored new discount-priced Israeli cellular phone company called Hallo dropped its plans to launch after it emerged the company didn’t have the contacts in place it needed to operate . The company had promised an incredible deal – NIS 99 for unlimited talk time, unlimited messages and 2 GB of data surfing. A similar offer at one of the big three carriers – Orange, Cellcom and Pelephone, would cost at least double that.
But this week, three new operators hit the market with innovative pricing that will further shake up the cell phone market in Israel. It brings to five the number of “mobile virtual network operators” (or MVNO’s), a fancy way for saying that the new guys buy time from the existing carriers, piggybacking for a price on the antennas and infrastructure already built.
One of the new guys, Golan Telecom has the exact same attractive pricing that Hallo promised. Another, HOT Mobile, has a fee structure includes unlimited talk and text for just NIS 89 – NIS 10 less than Golan – but doesn’t include data in the price.
HOT Mobile also has a plan for “light users” – no monthly fee at all, then 10 agorot per minute and the same per text message and per megabyte of Internet access. Golan’s light user plan costs NIS 10 a month and includes 60 minutes of talk time, 60 text messages and 10 megabytes of Internet access. The third operator, YouPhone, will be charging NIS 18 a month, then 18 agorot per minute of talk time and 15 agorot for messages. Internet will also be 15 agorot per megabyte.
The different packages for each carrier sound confusing, but they’re actually a bit clearer (although not much) than the traditional cell phone deals which include x number of minutes free to other subscribers on the same network, another package of minutes to family and friends, discounts if you bought a phone via the carrier and speak at least 200 minutes a month…it got so confusing that Orange, one of the big three, came out with its own “clear” package that sets a base price of NIS 69 (and as a result, the cost of purchasing the phone through the company listed is listed separately).
If you’re a heavy mobile Internet user, HOT Mobile’s offer of 10 agorot per megabyte can add up. 2 GB = NIS 200, so the NIS 99 all you can eat package is a much better deal. If your Internet usage is less – say 250 MB a month like me, that’s only NIS 25. If you then talk 200 minutes a month and send, say, 100 text messages, that’s another NIS 30/month, making the combined price less than at the big carriers.
YouPhone’s doesn’t offer a more expensive package with a higher data level, so if you like to surf on-the-go, stick with Golan or HOT.
Perhaps the most intriguing element – at least for immigrants with strong ties to the “old country” – is Golan’s offer of free overseas calling to landlines in 29 countries. HOT’s overseas calling price is a shekel a minute.
On the other hand, YouPhone has a deal with the Mega chain of supermarkets and Alon gas stations (the same holding company owns all three) so that if you buy groceries or gas, you get free minutes. For every NIS 100 customers spend, they will receive 10 minutes of airtime at no charge, up to a maximum of 200 minutes per month per customer. The idea is that talking on the phone is as much a necessity as eating and traveling in your car, but that pricing brings us back to the familiar complexity the new companies seem to have been trying to avoid.
The other two MVNOs are associated with the Rami Levy supermarket chain and the Home Center DIY chain.
If you want a full service cellular carrier with a proper office and repair facility, you won’t get that with the newbies – YouPhone and Rami Levy are using their supermarkets and gas stations to sell their services and Golan has just a website – they’ll send you a SIM card in the mail.
The bottom line: if you’re willing to shop around, you can save a lot in the new cellular landscape. And that’s good news for competition. Now if only it would extend to cottage cheese.
Under Bar
Filed under: Business, design, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Pop Culture
Bar in her new underwear
According to blog SheFinds, Refaeli is following the success of her colleagues, Elle Macpherson and Gisele Bundchen, and recently launched her own underwear line, under.me, because “underneath my clothes lies the real me. Nothing else…”
The line includes Under Her (for women) and Under Him (for guys). And soon there will be underwear subscriptions, one would assume so that you never find yourself in holey, tatty underwear ever again, as well as underwear gift certificates.
Finally, to see what the underwear looks like, and what Bar looks like wearing it, watch this video, and women, know that this sports bra will not really work like that for most women.
Nostalgia Sunday – ViewMaster Israel
Filed under: Art, Blogging, Business, design, education, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Movies, Nostalgia Sunday, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Technology, tv
If you are a person of a certain age, then the ViewMaster holds a special charm. Like its predecessor, the Stereoscope, the View-Master was the virtual reality viewer of its day: a device designed to present 3-D photo images. And, like its predecessor, the Holy Land was a subject of great interest and popularity.
A bit of history: the ViewMaster (or View-Master) was first introduced at the New York World’s Fair in 1939 by the partnership of Wilhelm Gruber, an organ maker and amateur photographer, and Harold Graves, who was in charge of the postcard division at Oregon-based Sawyer’s Photo Services.
Their idea was to update the old-fashioned stereoscope to the new Kodachrome 16-mm color film, printing small-format photo transparencies and mounting them in pairs on a disk to be viewed with a simple hand-operated viewer. Initially, the photo subjects were travelogues, such as Carlsbad Caverns and the Grand Canyon, quickly followed by more far-flung locations such as Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
Collector and dealer Kip “Mr. ViewMaster” Brockman has several such travelogues on his site, as does the ViewMaster World blog. The disks were accompanied by a narrative booklet. For example, if you were to purchase Modern Israel, part of the Nations of the World series, as you viewed the stereoscopic image, you would read the following:
“Our El Al Israel Airlines plane lands at Lod Airport, near Tel Aviv. An attractive hostess welcomes us to Israel with a spoken greeting in Hebrew, from the Bible: “Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and when thou goest out.”
Tel Aviv, Israel’s No. 1 boom town, is the first all Jewish metropolis since Biblical times…The beach front is a Coney Island on the Mediterranean; booths sell corn on the cob, watermelon, or falaffel (“the Israeli hot dog”)…
Tel Aviv stands as a symbol of modern, energetic Israel. The country’s spirit is personified in its new generation. The native born Sabra— Hebrew word for cactus (tough outside, sweet inside) — is tall, healthy, suntanned, and confident, with the swagger of an adventurer.”
Oh my gosh! I would really like to visit that place where air-hostesses quote scripture, Israelis are tall and un-neurotic, and the notion of falafel as “the Israeli hot dog” doesn’t send me into paroxysms of laughter. But I digress.
After 1966, when Sawyer’s became a wholly owned subsidiary of the General Aniline & Film (GAF) Corporation, more child-friendly subjects like cartoons and TV series were introduced.
The full account of View-Master’s history of Mergers & Acquisitions is a long one; the short version is that the product is currently carried by Mattel subsidiary Fisher-Price, which in December 2008 announced that it would cease production of the scenic disks depicting tourist attractions. According to Wikipedia, “These disks of picturesque scenes and landscape scenery were descendants of the first View-Master disks sold in 1939.”
Fisher-Price continues to produce disks of animated characters, including Dora the Explorer who prefers to go places instead of just looking at them on-screen. Well, travel is easier nowadays. There was something magical, though, about looking at the tiny celluloid images through the ViewMaster lens. (It was, as my significant other says, “like having a tiny, personal TV” and if you squished the eyepiece sideways into your brow ridge just right, you could get the full 3D effect, however briefly). So you can still get a ViewMaster. As for getting hold of ViewMaster travelogues, there’s always eBay.
Made in Israel
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, design, education, Entertainment, Environment, General, health, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Medical Breakthroughs, Music, Science, Social Justice, Technology
It’s getting to be that time of year again – where the national holidays come fast and furious. Holocaust Remembrance Day just passed and this week we have Memorial Day and Independence Day right on top of each other as Israel prepares to celebrate its 64th birthday.
While there’s no shortage of subjects to be worried, fearful, skeptical or angry about, I would say that overall, the country’s in pretty good shape. But if the Iranian threat, the political situation, the social welfare crisis and the glut of TV reality shows are getting you down, take a couple minutes and check out this clip that ISRAEL21c’s Nicky Blackburn and Viva Sara Press have put together.
In addition to providing some surprising information about just what Israel has achieved in the past 63 years, it will undoubtedly raise your morale and have you whistling a happy tune going into the coming eventful week. Happy Independence Day Israel! We’re proud of you.
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