(No, the post is ABOUT it, not CONTAINING it.)
With regard to photographs, I am a sensitive person. A photo of a bound foot, sans wrappings, makes me cringe away from the computer screen and feel my breakfast rebelling. Ditto for harlequin babies, messy wounds, et cetera. But what really causes trauma for me is facial disfigurement.
This is not an uncommon way to feel. Most humans are frightened or bothered by a face that is Not Quite Right, because we spend so much of our lives reading the faces of others. If something is off, it immediately sets alarm bells ringing in our heads.
So, back in August, in the mail arrived the latest Time magazine. Those of you who subscribe to Time probably know where I'm going. For those of you who don't, the cover of this issue featured a young, Afghani woman whose face was seriously disfigured. Google Image search it if you want details. This cover, as you can imagine, really bothered my parents and I; we promptly disposed of the magazine. However, I couldn't get that girl out of my mind. I wondered who she was and what had happened to her.
In the next issue, there were reader letters reacting to the cover. A few expressed my view: that Time was out of line to use that photo, especially since many subscribers had young children in the house. Others, though, commended the editors for their choice of cover-girl, saying that the photograph brought to light the grievous injustices wrought by the Taliban.
From the more descriptive letters, I gleaned a bit of her story. Her name is Aisha, and her injuries are a result of somehow running afoul of the government. As I pondered this, it hit me that her photograph was not the real "disturbing content."
What's disturbing is that it happened. There are places in the world where the government can randomly mutilate or execute citizens for running contrary to their beliefs. Places where a young woman has virtually no rights, and her life is dictated by the whims of the men in power. Places where execution for "dishonoring one's family," homosexuality, or ascribing to a minority religion is de rigeur.
That is what we should be fighting for. Not oil or land, but the basic right of all people to live unmolested and without fear of government violence. We should fight so that cases like Aisha's become a thing of the past. But given the fact that the Taliban managed to come back after the army brought them down once, physical fighting doesn't seem to be the answer.
Whatever the solution, the real disturbing content in Time magazine was not the woman herself, but that her suffering happened.
