PEREIRA, Colombia - Every weeknight millions of Colombians tune in to
watch a smash television series about the indignities suffered by a teen-age
girl willing to do anything to get her breasts enlarged.
Tired of being poor and going to school with no good jobs in sight after
graduation, Catalina decides to do what her friends have done and get breast
implants in order to snag a gangster boyfriend who can take care of her.
Actresses (L-R)
Margarita Rosa Arias, Maria Adelaida Puerta, Marylin Parino, Sandra
Beltran and Jenny Osorio, cast members of the Colombian television series
"Without Tits There Is No Paradise" pose for a photo in Bogota, Colombia
in this August 15, 2006 file photo. Every weeknight millions of Colombians
tune in to watch a smash television series about the indignities suffered
by a teenage girl willing to do anything to get her breasts enlarged.
[Reuters] |
She tries to prostitute herself to
get money for the operation but, in a kind of Colombian Catch 22, has trouble
winning clients due to her small cup size.
The show, based on a true story, is both loved and hated for displaying the
culture of easy money here in the world's biggest cocaine-exporting country.
Convinced that an overflowing bosom will be her "passport to heaven,"
Catalina continues her quest, which instead leads to episode after episode of
treachery and violence.
Some call the series an insult to Colombia, which is trying to end four
decades of guerrilla war driven by the drug trade. Others, who enjoy the show's
black humor, say it is helping the country confront its demons.
Gangsters, called "traquetos" after the "traqua traqua traqua"-like sound
made by their automatic weapons, are known to send their girlfriends for all
kinds of aesthetic surgery.
Younger and younger women are getting operated on in the hope of landing a
traqueto of their own.
"Vanity is pushing the girls of Colombia to do crazy things. We are
addressing this in the show, not celebrating it," said actress Margarita Rosa
Arias, who plays Vanessa, one of the big-breasted characters Catalina tries to
emulate.
'TELE-TRASH'
In real life, Arias points to herself as an example of responsible
augmentation, having had her breasts done by a well-qualified doctor when she
was 28, at the behest of her husband.
The show's main character is based on last year's novel by Gustavo Bolivar
about a 14-year-old girl played by Maria Adelaida Puerta, a long-necked,
flat-chested beauty from Medellin.
When the book was released, people in the city of Pereira where the story is
set were offended. The television show it inspired is like salt in the wounds to
local business leaders who were already struggling to improve Pereira's image.
"We will not be defined by this tele-trash!" city spokesman Luis Garcia told
Reuters. "All the guys in the story are assassins and the girls sell themselves
in order to augment their breasts. It is the stereotype we object to."
For years Pereira, in the heart of Colombia's coffee-growing region, was
known as one of the country's top party towns, where drug smugglers, coffee
workers and truck drivers could blow money on famously beautiful prostitutes.
Defenders of the show say it reflects the conflicts that girls face in places
like Pereira, a short drive from the home base of the still-powerful Norte del
Valle cocaine cartel.
While Colombia has become safer thanks to a U.S.-backed crackdown on the drug
trade, Pereira's murder rate remains above the national average and many young
people still turn to the drug-trafficking world as a way of escaping poverty.
"People are angry about "Sin Tetas" ("Without Tits") but I think it's OK
because it shows the reality of a lot of girls," said a woman in Pereira's town
square, declining to give her name.
