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Model Spokesperson
by
Jaron Summers
Supermodel Niki
Bassett divides her hectic life between New York runways and faraway
Ethiopia.
Ms. Bassett, who earns $100,000 a day posing for clients such
as Victoria's Secret, returned via private jet from Ethiopia
where she had addressed indigenous groups in an effort to raise the
consciousness of women, not only in Africa, but worldwide.
Ms. Bassett, known for her sculptured Barbie Doll body, said that she
was appalled by the way social pressures force young Ethiopian women to
disfigure themselves.
“I’m talking about the dreadful lip plate,” she said. “The tribes in the
Omo
River basin are in the Middle Ages. Absolutely barbaric. Teenage girls
whack out their front teeth so they can stretch their lower lips.
Grotesque.”
It’s all about economics....
“Brides with the largest lip plates get the most cows for their
families.”
Ms. Bassett explained that a hole is bored through the lower lips of the
unfortunate women, and then the lips are stretched repeatedly until they
can accommodate a plate the size of a laptop computer.
“Even if the lip plate could hold a PowerBook, it would make no sense as there
is little electricity among the tribes,” she said.
Ms. Bassett originally visited the land of Haile Selassie to discover
how that country’s citizens were able to maintain their extreme low weight and pencil-thin physiques.
(Answer: mass
starvation.)
“When I heard that, it was a like duh moment for me,” she
confided.
Ms. Basset, who plans to tattoo bloodshot eyeballs on her eyelids for
her 18th Birthday, declined to discuss her upcoming liposuction,
additional tummy stapling, bumblebee lips and larger silicon breast
implants.
While in hospital dental surgeons will extract Ms. Bassett’s remaining
molars to maintain and enhance her
Niki-Dimples™.


copyright
2003 Jaron Summers
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