By: Amy
In fifth grade, I filled out a piece of paper for a dollar. It read:
To Brittany Love Amy
On the front was a generic smiley face that I happily filled in with crayon and colored pencil. Every morning the smile-grams would arrive and be passed out. Did I get one today? Was someone thinking of me?
Ironically, this feeling of ‘worthiness’ is applied to the core of this organization, by which standards of appearance are praised over performance. By which photo-ops are valued over opportunities for social change. An organization that thrives on: “Mobilizing a world of generous hearts to heal children’s smiles and transform lives across the globe.”
The fact that a multi-million dollar non-profit organization prides itself on aesthetically transforming deformed faces in Third World countries is problematic in many ways. However, the pros outweigh the cons, which is why many, well, ALL people put this particular organization on a global pedestal. The social implications of children being ridiculed for facial deformities are important in determining the actual nature of this NGO’s work. Why else would they spend this much time and money on correcting facial and bodily abnormalities… if they didn’t care about the social stigma associated with the child?
As a sociologist, I examine cultural factors such as societal norms and customs, socio-economic levels, educational opportunity, and my specific field of study—gender roles. All of the above and more are instrumental in the foundation and development of a human being. No matter who one may be, where they are from, or what economic level they find themselves, everyone is subject to mainstream ideals and pressures that determine how we live our lives, raise our children, and conduct relationships with others. This being said, I ask you all to read the following statement: “Sociologists just like to pick apart things, and create problems that aren’t really there. Especially when it comes to women’s studies.” --An unidentified person at Operation Smile.
Now I ask you, what exactly is this advertisement implying? It is implying a societal deviance called bullying… because of how someone looks. With your donation, this young girl can stop being picked on, heck, with your monetary contribution, she may be pretty enough to be sold into marriage at age 9! Better yet, maybe now her parents can sell her to that nice man that says he is going to take her to a fine school, then she will be trapped in a sex trade, being shipped from Cambodia to China or Vietnam or somewhere in Europe, heck, maybe she will stay in her native country and work the streets until she gets AIDS from an American businessman who sleeps with young girls for less than a dollar only to go back to the States with a clear conscious because THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS I’M JUST PICKING THINGS APART AND CREATING A PACK OF LIES.
When I began my internship at Operation Smile in January, I was so excited! My advisor and I brainstormed ways for me to somehow go abroad on a mission. This would add credibility to my resume when applying to grad schools and NGO jobs. When I told people that I was interning at Operation Smile, everyone was happy for me, what a great opportunity! I remembered the smile grams from elementary school, and the OpSmile club in high school. I was pretty sure ODU had one as well, but I always wondered, dealing with such a traumatic and serious aspect of life: deformities and abnormalities in poverty-stricken third world countries, I thought, how does this organization sugar-coat such a gruesome and tragic reality so that it’s suitable for children?—and most American adults for that matter.
It’s no surprise that the American media doesn’t tell us the whole truth when it comes to international issues. Just flip on Telemundo and watch the Noticias. But that’s beside the point. Americans are so complacent with a rose-colored-glasses-view, that it has infiltrated into the mindset of the organizations that are supposed to be helping others. In order to give assistance, one must understand the problem. Putting oil in your car when it keeps running out doesn’t solve the problem. It’s still going to keep running out. Unless you find out why, it’ll just keep happening. In this case, you would look under the hood and scientifically determine the cause of the leak, instead of coming back again and again and pouring more oil… your wallet would soon grow much lighter and spare time shorter.
We should apply this model to every problem in life. However, here is the fundamental difference between my example and an Operation Smile patient: one is a machine with mechanical gears and the answers to its problems are found in a manual, the other—is a person. Though we would like to think that our problems as human beings could be solved with a visit from the doctor, the answers are never black and white. Charts and numbers can only say so much. And that’s very difficult for some people to hear.
So difficult that they will do anything… I mean anything… to make sure they don’t have to hear it.
After a couple of weeks into it, I began to get an uncomfortable feeling walking through warehouse turned office building. As funny as it sounds, I felt like gym class in 10th grade when all the cheerleaders gossiped in the locker room and I was in the corner trying to be invisible. I thought, “geez Amy, come on, you’re 22 years old, stop acting like this and grow up”. I was told I could wear my I-pod because data-input was so boring. But, perhaps it’s the aspiring journalist in me, I chose to ease-drop on my neighbors in the cubicle behind me. As Operation Smile’s idea of an internship was to put me in front of a computer and make me input medical charts, I figured I should utilize any opportunity to learn and soak up information about the organization. All I got was conversations about weight-loss and facebook. Wait a minute; aren’t these people supposed to be interested in the welfare of the children their organization is helping? Why aren’t they talking about research they did on the GDP of Kenya or mortality rate of rural China? Wait a minute, why are there two gigantic big screen televisions the size of my living room on the wall playing CNN if no one is watching them?
After I increasingly began to feel uncomfortable around these people, I found myself questioning the actions and intentions of those working there. I began to talk to others outside of the organization that were familiar with it. From all of them I got this response, “Ooooh yeahhh Operation Smile didn’t except your proposal of a gender analysis of India…not surprising.” Not surprising? A former Operation Smile employee told me of a woman who was fired for being too old. She was filing suit when suddenly… the issue disappeared.
Three sources have confirmed that Kathy Magee and her husband, founders of Operation Smile, are close, personal friends with the McCains and Palins. In fact, they sat in the front row at the McCain rally in Hampton Roads. There’s nothing wrong being politically affiliated with whomever you choose, however, things became to be increasingly clear to me when I walked into the office one day and couldn’t find one African American. Was this a non-profit organization, or the Republican National Convention? Find the token black guy!
Then I came across a story brought to my attention that involved another cover-up but this time it happened to be a child’s life. 9-month-old babies Tendral, from Nepal, drown in the bathtub after receiving a cleft palette surgery from Operation Smile. She was recovering in Miami with some friends of the Magee’s. The manslaughter and child neglect charges against the caretaker have been mysteriously dropped, according to the Miami Herald.
What have I learned from my internship? I have learned that just because an organization is called a non-profit, doesn’t mean its golden. There is corruption in all aspects of society, even those that seem perfect. And sometimes, a smile isn’t genuine. Sometimes it’s hiding something. What’s hidden is the truth that problems in the Global South are caused by destructive cultural norms that exploit children, in particular young girls. The truth is that many Americans fund and participate in imperialistic “missions” that “save” children of developing countries by fixing their facial deformities so we can go home and sleep better at night. We can plop right down in these people’s worlds and cut around on their children’s faces and mold them into a more perfect looking human being. Plastic surgeons are then not only idolized in our own cultures by making breasts rounder and fuller and noses smaller and tummies flatter but now—NOW these “miracle workers” can go to fix these children’s cleft lips and drop them right back into the grotesque cycle of poverty that caused the malnutrition that caused the cleft in the first place. It’s wonderful that these children aren’t ridiculed, but it’s very typically American to superficially fix something ignoring the root problem.
When someone like me comes along and proposes to research cases in India, analyzing the gender of the child, if their surgery was completed, what region they came from, how far they traveled, the gender of the parent occupying the child, etc. in order to determine if there is any sort of unknown gender bias in the treatment and outreach of the program, I am told:
“We have very good relations with India and we don’t want anything published that will tarnish our image.”
Funny, you all seem to say that a lot.
ALL SMILES!
Jessica Simpson: “I believe in this charity and that’s why I’m here” (People Magazine)
