"The world kissed me with pain, but I responded with songs." The world's dazzling top supermodel Wallis Dili interpreted the true meaning of this sentence with her life! 25 years ago, this famous supermodel resolutely gave up her brilliant career, made the humiliation of genital mutilation in her childhood public, launched an anti-circumcision campaign, and became the first anti-circumcision ambassador of United Nations , known as "African Feminist Fighter".
1. Endure, the pain of life
In 1965, a "desert flower" was born in Somalia in the northeastern corner of the African continent. She was Waris Diri. Like all girls in Africa, she learned to run in this long yellow sand, look for food, and bear the pain of life given by the backwardness and ignorance here.
htmlWhen she was 04 years old, Wallis a man came to her family. He was invited by her father to help herd sheep. The innocent child was not sensible, but he just thought it was good to have an adult in the family to accompany her to herd sheep.She didn't expect that this would be the beginning of her nightmare. Once when she was grazing and alone, she looked at the man who appeared next to her and said, "Uncle, do you know how to tell stories?" The man said, "Yes, sit down and I will tell you."
When Hualis sat down When she came down, what greeted her was a body as big as a mountain. Pain as if her lower body was being torn apart spread throughout her body. She cried loudly. In addition to being disgusted and disgusted, she didn't know what kind of encounter she would encounter in the future.
Covered in mud and blood, she ran home with tears in her eyes to ask for help. She did not receive any love from her parents. After listening to her story, the first thing her mother asked was: Where are the sheep? The father put all the blame on her: he thought it was because she was shameless and had not been circumcised.
At that time, Wallis was only 4 years old. From then on, she was accompanied by the ridicule of her friends. The boy she secretly had a crush on liked her sister Aman, who had been circumcised. He often laughed at her: The thing between her legs was... Dirty.
The next year, her father circumcised her in advance to prevent her from being violated again.
"Circumcision" is a distant and sacred ceremony on the African continent that every girl must go through. This is the education that Wallis has received since she was born on that land.
Wallis will never forget the day she was circumcised.
The mother hugged her, leaned against the big tree, put a piece of wood to her mouth, and said: "Bite it." In front of her was a serious Gypsy old woman, with a look in her eyes. Unclearly cold, the old woman rummaged through her worn cloth bag and found a broken razor blade with a little blood on it.
Just when Hua Lisi was trembling with fear, her mother put a piece of black cloth over her eyes. Then she felt a heart-breaking pain coming from her lower body. Her mother's hands tightened around her body, The pain made her cry and struggle constantly.
For other people, this process may only take ten minutes, but for Hua Lisi, it seems like half a century has passed. The blade peeled off a certain part of her body and then sewn it back on. The whole process No sterilization, no anesthesia.
Circumcision is an extremely dangerous ritual, and many girls do not survive. One of her two sisters died of infection in the circumcision wound; the other died of dystocia due to uterine malformation caused by circumcision.
But she was tenacious and survived after a few days of high fever. Just like her name "Hualisi", "Hualisi" means "Desert Flower" in Masok language, a strong and beautiful flower in the desert.
To survive in this barren land, you must learn to be as brave and tenacious as a cheetah looking for food. As Wallis grows up, she becomes more and more beautiful and rebellious. She dares to express what she needs and to grab what belongs to her.
The father was really troubled by this rebellious daughter. In the end, when a 60-year-old man came to propose marriage with five camels, the father agreed to the marriage and let Hua Lisi marry and become the old man's fourth wife.
2. Escape, the place of pain
As Wallis wrote in her autobiography: I was never the daughter my father wanted. I was stubborn, willful, and constantly questioned and doubted everything.
Similarly, the 13-year-old Wallis looked at the old man in front of her and had only one thought in her mind, I want to escape from this place. She did not believe that her fate would always stay with the dying old man.
On the eve of her wedding, Hua Lisi carried the water and food she had quietly saved in the past few days in her arms. Under the starlight in the sky, she ran towards the endless desert. She was going to the capital Mogadishu where her grandmother lived. place.
Along the way, Hua Lisi did not dare to stop for two days and one night because her father was chasing her. She was worried that as soon as she stopped, her father would take her back.
At first, she was just running, and her nervousness made her forget her fear. But when she stopped, she realized that there were dangers accompanying her along the way. Poisonous snakes and beasts could appear at any time. What was even more terrifying was that the direction of the opponent was unknown. fear.
The exhausted Hualisi rested under a lonely tree. Her body was scarred by running barefoot for a long time. Her disheveled hair and clothes hung in strips made her look like a female ghost.
Suddenly a fishy smell hit her nostrils, and a huge lion was right in front of her. Maybe the lion didn't like this skinny and skinny prey, but Hua Lisi was already there. When the thought of death occurred, the lion turned and left.
Wallis finally walked out of the desert and saw the highway. She learned to ask for help and take strangers' cars, but unfortunately she met a man who wanted to do something wrong. When the man said "open your dirty legs", After her struggling hand touched the stone on the ground, she threw it at the man without hesitation.
Perhaps God showed mercy to Wallis, and fate gave her a second life. She wisely got rid of one danger after another and finally came to her grandmother's house in Mogadishu. Her grandmother said that she could leave the desert alone and have a certain future. Will be blessed.
There, her hard-working and silent attitude gradually won the approval of her uncle, a diplomat .
Soon, my uncle was preparing to go to the UK as a Somali diplomat in the UK. At the same time, he decided to hire Wallis as a maid for the wife of the Somali Ambassador in London and take her out of Somalia.
Wallis finally had the opportunity to get out of the land that restricted her dignity.
3. Bloom, the flower of the desert
people, become stronger and stronger in the face of difficulties.
Hualis, who has gone through many hardships, cherishes this opportunity. She eagerly accepts new knowledge in this new world. She secretly studies English in the basement where she rests after work. She knows that only language can pass the test. Only then can we integrate into this strange society.
Unfortunately, four years later, due to the civil war in Somalia , the embassy was forced to recall all its overseas personnel.
Wallis didn't want to go back to the place that only brought her pain. She knew that as soon as she went back, she would be greeted by the fate of being forced to get married because of a few camels.
For this reason, before setting off, she secretly hid her passport and lied about losing it, so that she could stay in London, and she once again became a street vagabond.
Without identity documents, Hua Lisi can only work illegally, doing any dirty and tiring work, but she is still very happy. No matter how tiring the work is, it is more promising than the hopeless life in her hometown.
The 18-year-old Hualis has a tall figure and deep facial features. Most importantly, her young face, full of energy and wildness, shows a vicissitude that does not belong to her age group.
During a KFC food delivery job, Wallis, wearing work clothes, accidentally broke into the lens of photographer Terence Donovan. Terrence was instantly attracted by her unique appearance and temperament. He believed that the girl in the camera would be a rare "pearl" in the fashion industry in the future.
Terrence Donovan, Princess Diana 's royal photographer, is also a world-class photography master. Countless celebrities were proud to be photographed by him. Like meeting a diamond in the rough, he eagerly extended an olive branch to Wallis and invited her to audition in his studio.
That night, Hua Lisi thought about it for a long time and felt that this job was much better than delivering food and washing dishes.The next day, she plucked up the courage and came to Terrence's studio to audition.
Terrance didn't modify her too much, just let Wallis do as she pleased. In this way, Terrence Donovan captured works full of primitive and wild vitality.
From then on, with the help of Terence, she became more and more aware of how to show her beauty in front of the camera, and she gradually became famous in the fashion industry. Active on various fashion runways, she is full of wildness, stubbornness and nobility from a mysterious country, making her a goddess in the eyes of major designers.
In 1987, she became the cover of the " Pirelli Annual Calendar". People exclaimed that she was like a "black pearl" because she lamented that black people could be so beautiful.
Major brands began to look for her to be a model, such as Chanel jewelry, L'Oreal , Levi's, and Revlon. The company also customized advertising slogans for her: "The fragrance from the heart of Africa, every woman is fascinated by it." "
On the T stages of major fashion weeks in Paris, London, Milan and New York, her figure has become the object of people's attention, and she has occupied the spotlight.
She is the first black model to appear on the cover of "VOGUE" since its inception.
In 1987, at the age of 20, Wallis played the Bond girl in "007: Dead by Daylight" and began to move from the catwalk to the silver screen, and was recognized and understood by more people in the world.
Waris, a girl who walked barefoot from the desert, is Somalia's most beautiful gift to the world's fashion industry.
4. Precipitation, the beauty of public welfare
was actually rooted in the ashes of pain.
Hua Lisi looks bright and beautiful, but there is always a wound that she is unwilling to face in no one's place. The trauma left on her body in the past still makes her miserable.
Due to the small opening left by circumcision, urine can only be excreted from the small opening in a trickle, causing her to spend more than ten minutes every time she urinates. Sometimes, in order not to delay her work, she can only drink less water.
The worst thing was that every menstrual period made her feel so painful that she wanted to die. As she continued to grow and transform, she discovered that girls did not need to be circumcised, and the so-called sanctity was nothing but a shackles imposed on women by the secular world.
With the encouragement of her friends, Wallis decided to undergo vaginal repair surgery to break the "shackles" that had been "blocked" for 20 years. As she lay on the operating table, she spread her legs again, under anesthesia, this time to escape the pain of her childhood.
At this time, what she was thinking was: I want more people to know that women's health is inalienable.
In 1997, one day before Wallis announced her retirement from the peak of her career, she was interviewed by a reporter from " Marie Claire " magazine. She revealed her "scars" to the media for the first time and told the world about the suffering she had endured.
Reporter Laura covered her mouth and cried and said: "I really can't believe there is such an immoral thing in this world."
Wallis is one of thousands of victims of circumcision, but she is the first Someone who dares to stand up and publicly expose the evil practice of circumcision.
Later, "The Tragedy of Female Circumcision" was published in a magazine, and the world was shocked. It turned out that behind her beauty, she carried the pain caused by ancient bad habits. There are still so many despicable things in the world.
This article also attracted the attention of United Nations Population Fund. In 1997, the United Nations Population Fund invited Wallis to join the fight against female genital mutilation.
Hua Liwen readily agreed to the invitation of the United Nations and began to devote herself to the anti-circumcision movement, becoming the first anti-circumcision ambassador of the United Nations.
According to United Nations data, nearly 200 million women around the world have suffered from genital mutilation. Today, genital mutilation is still prevalent in more than 30 countries, and at least 6,000 children suffer from it every day.
She began to travel around the world, and her battlefield changed from the T stage to the lecture platform. She used her personal deeds as an example to impassionedly tell the world about this ancient evil habit in Africa. She preached about the harm of circumcision to women and told more people. of women talk about women’s hygiene and safety awareness.
She vowed to take back those rights to life that had been brutally deprived of them.She became a spokesperson for African women who were bullied and a flower of hope for female friends who were going through hardship.
During this period, Wallis published her autobiography "Desert Flower", exposing this bloody ancient bad habit from a first-person perspective. She also made it into a movie and tried her best to use her influence to save women who were being harmed or about to be harmed by bad habits.
In 2009, the film adaptation of "Desert Flower" was officially released, instantly attracting world attention and has been introduced and broadcast in more than 20 countries. More and more people are joining the anti-circumcision movement.
She also established a foundation with the help of friends, dedicated to rescuing women who are suffering from pain and improving women's awareness of physical health.
Thanks to her efforts, 28 countries including Tanzania, Togo, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Gambia, have abolished this ancient tradition.
It is difficult to abolish old customs that have existed for thousands of years. Even if the country promulgates the abolition law, it is difficult for people's consciousness to change at once. This is a very long process.
But she will never be discouraged. In her own words: When I survived from the lion's mouth, I knew that my fate was destined to require me to do one thing to survive. Now I know what it is. .
Waris Dirie was selected as one of Forbes' 30 global female role models and was hailed as an "African feminist fighter" because of her commitment to public welfare projects calling for the abolition of circumcision and her huge contributions.
This girl who came out of the dry desert changed her destiny with her bravery and tenacity, and truly blossomed into a desert flower;
At the same time, she never dwelled on or held grudges about the past. Although her hometown gave her unbearable suffering, But he still loves this barren and backward homeland and people, and strives to return beauty and kindness to the world.
I really appreciate what Hua Lisi said in her autobiography, "Let's go on, girl."
I hope that every girl can be like Hua Lisi and bravely say to herself when encountering setbacks and hardships: "Go on, girl."
