HIV-Positive Beauty Pageant in Russia
More for the “human inspiration” files (good to remember there are other things going on in the world during finals!).
Russia, which has one of the fastest growing HIV populations in the world, just held a beauty pageant for HIV-positive women to raise awareness.
I think it’s a great way to change societal attitudes and combat the stigma of the disease.
As the article notes, it “will take more than just a pretty face to change” the culture, but this is an important part of building more widespread support for addressing the issue.
(Much as in the US, where society wouldn’t put serious effort into combatting AIDS until there was recognition that it was a disease that affects “normal” people “too”, not just certain maligned social groups. Now even the anti-gay Christian right has largely come to see, as Bono has put it, “that AIDS is the Leprosy of our times”).
