Felon Freakout: Meeks' Mugshot Monopolised

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Today I decided to share the living room space with my family and relatives. Usually I am rather hesitant because of their horrible choice in television shows, and tonight was a prime example, though Facebook did not provide me with my usual cyber escape route because it led me again to a sense of utter detestment of society. 

Before I delve into why Facebook and its many citizens have betrayed my hope in society, I will touch on why I do not condone what my parents watch. Lebanese television is soiled with faces pumped with Botox and facial features that have been sliced into, never to be the same again. It leads the Lebanese people to believe that artificial beauty is worth more than natural beauty. It leads them to devalue the mind and to value the image, an appalling prioritising of human characteristics. Each time I view a Lebanese show, I internally thank my circumstances for having been born in a country where varied views are accepted and where critical thinking is becoming valued more and more. Having said that, though, Australia outside of the educative sphere mimics that of Lebanon's visual values.

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What I witnessed last night, though, having taken refuge into the cyber space away from Lebanese image constraints, is something far more disgusting than the dire need for physical change and the awful result of Donatella Versace's face shown in the image below - I witnessed the public glorification of a criminal due to his physical appearance. I witnessed the lustrous yearnings of many women and men alike, upon viewing the mugshot of Jeremy Meeks, a criminal who was, previous to this incarceration, locked up for nine years for grand theft. This criminal is now being venerated because he has the desired appearance that Calvin Klein photographers are seeking.

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And it disgusts me. It disgusts me how most of the world's attention goes to people who perform against the greater good, who ethically and morally destroy, who indulge themselves in materialisation and physical exploitation and the exploitation of others and their material objects. It disgusts me how significant role models like Maya Angelou receive less attention from the media than people like this infamous criminal who have performed more bad than good in the world - why do we adulate the wrong people?

'Sexy Felon' and 'Hot Mugshot Guy' are amongst the many headlines the media is using to portray this man. Seek the hashtag '#FelonCrushFriday' and find thousands of posts about how allegedly good looking this man is. His mother has even started her own GoFundMe page in hopes of raising enough money to bust him out of prison, claiming that "he has old tattoos which cause him to be stereotyped". Fools have already contributed to this raising of money, having taken 113 fools and one day to raise $1,825. 

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Here are some comments left behind by some fools along with the amount donated. Please attempt to stop your anger from building up at these comments:

This is utterly ridiculous. Please note that there were three other people caught with him, why are they not glorified? Why are they not receiving money or telephone numbers or marriage proposals or advice to sign up for acting? Why are there no complaints for them being racially targeted? Oh, because they're not "hot"; look at these faces in society and ask yourself, why is the first one preferred?:

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This society disgusts me. In the time that it took for this man's mugshot, his mugshot to become famous, hundreds of more people have died on the street from drive-bys, from criminal intent and from gang violence. Meeks was arrested as part of Operation Ceasefire, a violence-reduction strategy aiming to reduce the amount of firearms within different gang units. 

He was arrested with seven charges:

I wonder - if Elliot Rodger had been this good-looking, and had be been alive after the multiple murders he committed, how would the public react to his situation? Would they attempt to bring racial profiling into the scenario? Would they try to bring mother-and-son or father-and-son based arguments into the scenario? Ted Bundy's mother claimed that he was a "precious boy" and she was in denial about his crimes - but the law proved otherwise. Ted Bundy was good looking too, does that make his sentencing unfair? Society needs to wake up and take a look at what really is important. Our looks are a temporary facade that will wither away.

The Stereotypical Amorality of Tattooed People

For years, tattoos have stereotypically been associated with bikers, gangs and criminals. Those imprisoned would receive tattoos and tattoo other prisoners to convey gang membership, and those who killed would tattoo tear-drops underneath their eyes - one tear-drop for each victim. Other forms of tattoos are tribal tattoos, and identification tattoos which Jewish people were forcibly given to permanently remind them that they were a part of the Holocaust. The stereotype, though, has since died down, as tattoos have become more common with youth. It is now recognised as a legitimate art form, and accepted in varied cultures.

Tattooing started out in Asia and Europe, and was adopted by Samoans as 'Tatau'. Female Samoans would receive a 'Malu', a tattoo to signify their progression into puberty, and males would receive a 'Pe'a' so signify male-hood, and respect for their courage. It was not until Captain Cook's Botanist, Sir Joseph Banks, in the 1700s, had returned to England with a tattoo, thus sailing, so to speak, the concept of tattooing across the globe. Sailors soon adopted this, and by 1870 it was popular amongst upper-class individuals, including royalty, due to the pricing. When the 1970s came along, tattooing became a fashionable thing in the Western side of the world, and has been redefined as an art form, and has pulled away from being merely a statement of individuality and rebellion, although most teenagers wait until they are seventeen to get their first tattoo because it is deemed utterly awesome to have ink in one's skin before the age of legality.

In this day and age, it would be difficult to understand why someone would not stray from the stereotypes associated with drugs and tattoos, unless of course they belong to the older generations of humans. A certain someone, though, has recently caught my attention as I was reading their article which attempted to describe Ian Watkins' appearance before diving into the gnarly details of his pedophilic state of being. I did not believe what I was reading - no, I did believe the pedophile part, because it has been blown out of proportions by the media and for once, for the right reasons, however I did not believe the portrayal of Watkins which was provided. I had mistaken the description for a Mexican Drug Ring leader or something of the sort. Here is a screen shot of the basis of my disbelief, located in the article:

I read it again to make sure that my mind has read it the way it was written. I thought that, perhaps my mind was playing some sort of trick on me, to agitate me and cause alarm for no apparent reason. But no, my mind was correct. What I read was right. The journalist was attempting to shun Watkins as a stereotypical rapist because of his "heavily tattooed" appearance, and associate this appearance with the use of drugs, in an attempt to justify his actions. I searched for a photograph of Watkins to make sure that my image of him had not changed since I had a poster of his face on my bedroom wall ten years ago, and I found his mugshot:

I observed this photograph for a mere twenty seconds and burst into laughter. From the description above, one would imagine Watkins to look something like this:

Honestly, whoever this 'AFP' character is that wrote this article is, needs a serious visit to Specsavers. They are seeing the world in the eyes of my hardened ancestors who attacked homosexuals or tattooed people on sight back in Lebanon. Listen to me, AFP: the insertion of lead-free ink into one's skin does not turn them into pedophiles. I have a tattoo close to my skull, and I do not seem to have been influenced to inappropriately touch children, nor sexually abuse them. Whoever you are, you need to go back to University and learn better adjectives to assist you to help describe the criminal at hand to the public. The way you have written this description implies that tattooed people are amoral, and the fact that you have written this so-called descriptor in the same sentence as the word 'meth' and 'desire' disgusts me even more - so all those who "desire" methamphetamine are "heavily tattooed" and run a risk of sexually antagonising and raping premature children? How is this man, as such, in any way heavily tattooed?

And in the mug-shot, which is the predominant photograph of Watkins at this point in time, all I can see is a hint of a tattoo on the left side on his neck. That description is downright misleading. As well as misleading, it is also inappropriate. Tattooed people are people too, there are more pedophiles and sadistic criminals and rapists out there who are not tattooed. Take Jeffrey Dahmer. Charles Manson. Aileen Wournos. Gilles de Rais. Richard Trenton Chase. Albert Fish. Andrei Chickatilo. Joachim Kroll. Dennis Rader. John Haigh. Adolf Hitler. Javed Iqbal. Ted Bundy. None of these sadists were "heavily tattooed". It is not scientifically proven that tattooed individuals are secretly sadistic pedophiles. That claim is just as unbelievable as claiming that people with fingernails which fall short of three-centimetres long will, in their lifetimes, consume more beer than people who regularly attend pubs. Or people born with a monobrow will be more likely to fall off a verandah due to the excessive weight on their face than people born with two eyebrows. Ridiculous!

What AFP should have written, is something along the lines of this: The fetish-fueled sadistic rockstar with an addiction to drugs and the sexual domination of fans and their children due to his fame who happens to have a few tattoos scattered around his body which have absolutely nothing to do with the case at hand, spoke of his desire to intoxicate one of his victims by blowing crystal meth smoke into the child's face. Judging by AFP's claim, though, I suppose Mike Tyson probably is a pedophile too.



                                                                                                                                                                                         
References:
Wikipedia [en.wikipedia.org]
AFP's news article: [http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/lostprophets-lead-singer-ian-watkins-pleads-guilty-to-attempted-baby-rape/story-e6frg6so-1226769281856]