I look at this and wonder whether there’s something wrong with the Maltese gene pool
I know that probably sounds really bad, but come on – I’m sure it’s not just my imagination. The only person who looks like he belongs anywhere else and is halfway presentable is Konrad Mizzi, which shows how desperate the situation is in that room.
It’s not just the fact that everyone there is ugly, ugly, ugly – people can’t be blamed for what they look like physically. It goes beyond that, something I can’t quite put my finger on. A certain shabbiness, greyness, dull complexions, everybody blending in together in one greige mess and nobody standing out.
The men all look so unhealthy, with yellow-grey faces, and the women either look like they haven’t washed their faces for a week or are so thickly plastered with foundation make-up that it forces you to wonder just how bad their skin is even though they are quite young. Tal-biza.
What gets me most is the ABOMINABLE posture of both the men and the women. It’s quite obvious that almost nobody in Malta grew up (or grows up) to the refrain: ‘Shoulders back, chin up, back straight’. Looking at a room full of Maltese adults is like looking at room full of sacks of cement or bags of potatoes. Slump, slump, slump and slouch. The few individuals who do carry themselves properly stand out a mile. The eye zooms straight in onto them. There is nobody like that in the room.
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It’s the centuries of inbreeding.
[Daphne – Not really. Icelandic people, with a smaller and far more isolated population than Malta’s, are possibly Europe’s most inbred, but you don’t look at a room full of Icelandic people and shudder. Rather the opposite, I would say. Inbreeding is only a problem when you’re working with predominantly ugly genes to begin with. Many of the people native to the hamlet where I live are notably good-looking; now that was really a case of the same tiny gene pool going round because the hamlet was pretty cut off and the same families married each other. But then the dominant genes were probably good ones.]
Great video too. It was nice to see the erstwhile Joanne Vella Cuschieri among the ranks. Then a fierce Laburista, but now thank heavens, an utterly unbiased and apolitical magistrate.
Why is he speaking about bidla fid-direzzjoni? Hasn’t he been leading us in the direction he chose for the past two (interminable) years?
And how can his own people take him seriously anymore? If I rolled my eyes any harder when he mentions “kampanja posittiva” they’d fall right out of their sockets.
At least he admits there is going to be another bidla fid-direzzjoni.
I assume he means change from the direzzjoni post March 2013 to date.
I hope he is not referring to the same bidla he hankered about during the pre election campaign in 2012.
That bidla has proved to be an unmitigated disaster.
We look forward to the next bidla.
It certainly cannot be worse than the previous one.
It’s not just your imagination. We have a nationwide problem with posture. The men look like a sack of spuds. Not a single tense muscle. It’s all hanging: jaws, jowls, tits, arms, bellies, legs, right down to brains.
You think “right, maybe that’s just the over 50s”. Then you look at a gathering of MZPN or Pulse and realise it’s not. They need someone to whip them into shape. I’d have them drilling on a square until they die of exhaustion.
As for the women, it would be invidious to draw comparisons, but Beirut’s at least have more oomph.
[Daphne – Age might be a barrier to getting into your skinny jeans, H. P., but it is certainly no barrier to standing straight. The main reason people think I’m a lot taller than I am in reality is because I don’t slouch. I’m of the generation made to walk around in childhood with books on their head. Maltese women wear crippling shoes to look taller. They’d be better off improving their posture. Better to be short and with beautiful carriage than to be (artificially) taller and tottering or stomping.]
Hence that saying about leaders being forged on the playing fields of Eton.
I know you’re not a big fan of boxing but it does teach posture. Perhaps it should be made compulsory.
And there’s far too much gormless smiling. A man’s smile should be used sparingly and kept under control.
“Wipe that silly smile off your face, boy.” Public school again.
As for the general drab greyness, my guess is it’s all about the lack of competition for the women. There’s no need to stand out from the crowd because you’re already sorted. Or maybe it’s about the lack of competition for careers.
[Daphne – I disagree that boxing teaches posture. Look at our boxers. They’re just as bad. The only thing that teaches you to stand straight is somebody chasing round after you telling you to stand straight. That said, most athletes have good posture and so do most dancers.]
MZPN and Pulse? That’s oddly specific, Baxxter. How about FZL and SDM?
All of them.
No, the problem is not only the gene pool but mummies’ boys who have been pushed towards ‘success’ mercilessly.
The success being measured in financial gain at anyone’s cost, even the real fulfillment of one’s life. And there is still that dreaded word ‘jahasra’ in the air.
[Daphne – How does being a mummy’s boy affect a man’s physical appearance, bearing, grooming and sartorial choices, Wilson? It doesn’t.]
Ironically it does, because mummy’s wardrobe choice was always questionable.
Probably most of them never chose their own clothes, but mummy did, and given that mummy probably had no style either…
Then the task passed onto the acquired wife, so unless she has a good idea of what men are supposed to wear, it remains the same or gets worse.
I detest seeing men in brown or green suits. Why do they even stock them in the shops? What I cannot fathom is how men can’t just look across at Italy’s shores to get some dress sense.
[Daphne – Northern Italy, but then the physique and carriage are totally different, and so are the people. The men in Sicily are just as bad as they are in Malta, unless they’re from the best families of Palermo, who look like a completely different ethnic group because, largely, they are (sounds bad but it’s a fact). The people at your run-of-the-mill Sicilian wedding are indistinguishable from Maltese. They cross the Atlantic and stay the same, hence Jersey Shore.]
It does, Daphne – and how!
The patina of mediocrity.
Somewhere at the back of my mind was a quote by Baudelaire I’d read years earlier. Thanks to t’internet, here it is:
“The idea of Beauty which man creates for himself imprints itself on his whole attire, crumples or stiffens his dress, rounds off or squares his gesture, and in the long run even ends by subtly penetrating the very features of his face. Man ends up by looking like his ideal self.”
The ideal Maltese self is, alas, Homo Mediocris.
and hardly Erectus.
Genes are not the problem. They’re dumb and devoid of energy, and it shows on their faces. When I used to visit Malta, that used to be the first thing that screamed out at me when I walked down Valletta’s main street.