commentary by Patrick H. Moore
In the Elizabethan poet Christopher Marlowe’s version of the Faust legend, “The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus”, Faust, the scholar and tragic malcontent, says at the sight of the legendary and undeniably beautiful Helen of Troy:
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Ain’t it the truth? There’s just something about a pretty face…and it doesn’t have to be a female pretty face…
Sadly, there are those among us who, instead of feeling delight at the sight of such loveliness, are convulsed with rage and want nothing than to lash out and destroy…
Yeah! Envy can be a son-of-a-bitch as we all know… The Cinderella story is a good example of this. The shabby manner in which Cinderella’s two ordinary-looking sisters treated her, however, was nothing compared to what two vicious teenage girls did to two neighborhood beauties in Argentina last Friday. Bryan Llenas of Fox News Latino writes:
Two teenage girls in Argentina have been viciously slashed in the face – badly scarred – in separate attacks by other teenage girls, reportedly for being too pretty.
Last Friday, in the northern city of Formosa, 15-year-old Julia Alvarez was attacked by her two neighbors – sisters aged 16 and 18. The two girls hit and punched Alvarez, pulled out knives and slashed her multiple times along her face and her back.
“We are going to leave your face like Chucky, we’ll see who calls you pretty now,” the girls said to Alvarez, according to Alvarez’s sister Yeni, in reference to the horror movie character.
Poor Julia’s sister Yeni told the Clarín newspaper that as the two older teenagers insulted and beat her sister, they made it very obvious exactly why they were meting out the horrific punishment — because Julia was “too pretty” and “too preppy.”
Based on the available images depicting the neighborhood where this took place, it’s very clear that the local families are distinctly working class and that the “too preppy” accusations mean that in the eyes of the assailants, Julia was trying to look wealthier than her neighbors, which was apparently an unforgivable sin. Thus, she was assaulted not only for being good-looking but for, in the eyes of the attackers, “putting on airs”.
Yeni posted more than a dozen photos of her sister bandaged and stitched up on her Facebook page.
“She looks in the mirror and cries all of the time,” said Yeni.
Although the fact that Yeni posted these pictures may seem a bit odd, according to several reports it was absolutely necessary to nudge the local police into action, who apparently were going to do nothing about the attack prior to it being publicized on Facebook.
The police have detained the 18-year-old. At her home, they found a switch blade, another knife and bloody clothes, according to the Clarín newspaper. The 16-year-old sister has not detained, because of her age. (As we all know, if this had occurred in the U.S., the 16-year-old would not only face serious charges — which she probably should considering the vicious nature of the attack — but would very possibly be tried as an adult.)
But wait! There’s more to this and it ain’t pretty. The mother of the two alleged attackers is trying to turn the tables claiming that a week before the incident, Julia had attacked her younger daughter who was then a month pregnant, which caused her to lose the child.
Someone please wake me up from this nightmare…
“Not so fast,” says Yeni, who claims that the mother of the alleged knife-wielding teens has threatened to kill Julia and burn down their home. Yeni says her family is afraid to even leave the house.
If nothing else, this nasty tale demonstrates that the U.S. is not the only country plagued by teen bullies.
Julia’s family has reached out to specialists in Buenos Aires in the hope of developing a reconstructive surgery plan to restore her beauty to whatever degree possible and brave Yeni has vowed:
“I promised my sister that her face would not stay that way and I’m going to follow through.”
* * * * *
Disfiguring lovely faces for kicks is apparently all the rage in Argentina. On the same night that Julia was attacked, something very similar happened 500 miles south of Formosa at a nightclub in Villa Constitución, where a 16-year-old girl named Pilar was slashed in the face with broken glass by a 17-year-old girl named Karen.
The attack at the Empalme club left a 5-inch gash from her right eye to her ear. The victim’s mother says her daughter could have lost her eye and that Karen, the alleged attacker, had menaced her daughter two months earlier.
“She threatened her that she was going to disfigure her for acting like she’s pretty and preppy at Empalme,” the mom told Clarín newspaper.
Karen, bless her wicked little heart, was taken into custody and, but not before she posted on Facebook that she carried out the attack.
I don’t understand what all this flak about acting “preppy” is all about. First of all, I seem to recall that the “preppy” era peaked in the early 1980s, right around the time I had finally dragged my lazy ass up to Foothill Community College and was just starting to accrue some college credits. Second, while scoffing at preppies back then was kind of a popular pastime in some circles, it was hardly grounds for face-cutting. So maybe in this particular area, we Americans are not such Neanderthals.