05:55 pm
Controlympics: Swifter, Higher, Stronger. . .Wetter?
Turns out that there was a higher human cost to the opening ceremonies than the Chinese would have us believe. From The Bangkok Post:
Thousands of young Chinese women applicants for the 200 jobs to lead each country’s athletes into the National Stadium for last week’s opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games had to be at least 1.66 metres tall, have a pretty face - and strip naked for the job recruiters.
The Beijing News, in a story detailing the latest opening-ceremony outrage, said stripping naked for measurements was a requirement merely to apply for the position.
Thousands of young women from colleges and dance academies in Beijing competed for the chance to appear before a huge worldwide audience.
During the selection process, the women were required to strip so teachers judging whether they were qualified could measure their body proportions, The Beijing News said.
But that’s not all. Remember the girls in the go-go boots? Those were the rejects from the placard holder gig. And they got the privilege of standing, jumping up and down, smiling, and waving for four freaking hours:
Zhang did not qualify [as a placard holder] but she was later selected to be one of the 400 cheerleaders on the stadium who were the longest performers during the three-and-a-half-hour long extravaganza on August 8. Dressed in short white dresses, boots and caps, the women had to constantly dance and cheer, to create a good atmosphere and rouse the audience of 91,000 people at the stadium.
The 400 women also performed the smiling programme - in which they danced and opened umbrellas each with a smiling face on them. For that three-minute performance, the women had to undergo half a year of training, rising every day at 5 am to get to the practice site by 6 am and returning to their school dormitory as late as 8 or 9 pm, Zhang said. Sometimes when the training starts at noon, the women would practice till 1 am or 2 am.
They practiced standing in a row at different positions on the stadium, and also rehearsed dance movements and the opening and closing of umbrellas - a simple task which each women had to practise doing for more than 1,000 times, the report said. Zhang said she smiled so much during practice that her facial muscles stiffened, but she was glad to have been selected.
But it’s not just the women who were subject to abuse:
[O]n Friday, state media said the nearly 900 soldiers operating the huge scroll that formed the centrepiece of last week’s show had to stay hidden under the structure for up to seven hours, wearing nappies because they were not allowed toilet breaks.
I think the Chinese missed a marketing opportunity here:
Depends: the Official Adult Diaper of the 2008 Olympics!
To be serious for the moment, where the hell was the IOC? How does any of this garbage fit into the so-called Olympic spirit? Oh, that’s right, I’m sorry. The IOC can’t speak to human rights abuses. Even when they were done in the name of the Olympic Spirit.
Hat tip: China Digital Times
Photos: AndyinBeijing via Flickr, using a Creative Commons license
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