Think you could pen a romantic short story in Malay in which the female protagonist undergoes a personal transformation in order to reach her goals and dreams?Fancy seeing your work published and on screen? Check out this competition sponsored by Unilever's Fair and Lovely which has some great prizes.
But sorry, it's only open to
Afterthought:
What am I doing indirectly plugging a skin whitening product when I actually deplore the desire for artificially fair skin????? Write the story ... but stay brown and lovely!
Here's a lovely Bollywoodish ad for the product to inspire you!
The picture above is from Malaysian artist Anurendra Jegadeva's "homage to real-life Indian heroines in the witty Fair and Lovely Portrait Album series".
19 comments:
Where does it say it's only open to female writers ? :)
in the email i recieved ... and it should say it in the rules too
but then why would they ask for "jantina"?????
odd odd
maybe drop them a line and find out if you are really anxious to enter
*scrawls 'discrimination' on the wall and leaves quietly*
(or should that be 'quietly leaves', eh che'gu?)
either can what.
Read about that contest and my kneejerk reaction is to wonder if the "personal transformation" will entail a change of skin colour.
An apt title for a short story for the competition: "Beauty Is Only Skin Deep" :-)
Nothing wrong with being fair and lovely in the right places. :-)
I checked the rules, the competition is not exclusively for female writers. Does not specify that the piece has to be written in Malay either.
And to think that 2000 words is a day's work for Sebastian Faulks between diving with glamourous women.
i checked the orig e-mail from the organisers
actually i'm wrong - it doesn't specify sex
but it does say:
"Each story in Malay should not be more than 2,000 words, with an
interesting title. A4, double spaced."
Bwahaha. The highlight of my morning, Sharon. Thanks for that - "stay brown and lovely!" Now if only that can be read by a million Ceylonese and Indian relatives who still wring their hands when a baby girl is born with a complexion that's "not fair..." (Er guys... we're Indian?!?! Not Nordic)
Bah to that ad on YouTube. It's probably a good thing I don't understand Hindi.
Can't everyone write 2,000 words in a day? We BFF* writers do that all the time. Back to work. Sigh.
*Big Fat Fantasy
NaNoWriters have to write at least 1,667 words a day in order to finish our 50,000-word NaNovels by 30 November. 2,000 words a day will let us finish by 25 November.
Here's an idea - a dark skinned young woman is discriminated against because of her skin colour. She is pressured by her family and society to become fairer. She decides to champion dark skin with the tag line - Black is Beautiful and becomes an icon for dark skinned women around the world, and gives confidence to millions of women that it is the inside that counts.
This is too disturbing... I wouldn't enter something like this no matter how tempting the prizes. I don't like competitions to begin with, but one sponsored by Fair and Lovely is too too much!
(Sharon, I have to confess I was shocked when I saw this. Good thing you added the afterthought. You saved yourself alot of folks' wrath today, I think -- well, at least, I hope there would have been outrage otherwise.)
i hate it when cosmetic promoters selling skin whitening products in the stores target me and my "pigmentation" (by which they mean my beautiful sexy freckles). arrrggggh!
actually i really don't get this fair skin thing! why do people think it makes a woman more lovely??
i guess it's like britain in the victorian period - fair skin was more valued because it showed a woman didn't labour in the fields.
If I remember correctly everyone who does SPM English/Malay would be required to write a 1,000 word essay in the exams in two hours. Everyone should be able to write 2000 words a day, it's the diving with glamourous women bit that's difficult :D
Love, transformation not enough. In order to meet the stringent standards of Harian Metro, the following elements are necessary:
a) Black Metal
b) Harussani
c) Jabatan Pengguna Islam
d) Malay people
e) Clueless, Confused and Angry Malay people
f) Brickfields OCPD
g) Strange deaths.
Read more at:
http://tinyurl.com/ywahcz
thanks - that's really funny!
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