A Different View on Beauty: Albinism

Yesterday evening I went to an electronic store to purchase camera stuff.  I'm so tired of lousy photos and using the web to find photos, so if it means shelling out $$$ for stuff and the try, fail, try again I'm having with cameras, great!
There was the most interesting fellow who helped me.  I hate the store, will never go again, and all the employees have a good chance of being wardens at San Quentin.  I digress.  This man was so pale, and had the deepest blue eyes and silver hair.  I had never seen anyone with Albinism who looked like this guy.  The one's I've encountered, have had "distinctive traits" such as their eyes not focusing or may move sporadically.  Often times, it appears they have an issue with eyesight or they find me rude to the eye.  *shrugs*  I told him his hair reminded me of Sting and he smiled and said his name was "Zeke" short for Ezekiel.  He wore a grey suit which really complimented his appearance perfectly.
I noticed people looking at me while speaking with him.  I wasn't flirting, stealing or dressed provocatively, so I got a bit nervous.  When Zeke went to check on the item number, a man approached me and asked if the sales man, Zeke, could see me?  "Why? I'm not black enough," I said with an inquisitive look. "No," the stubby little man laughed.  "I thought that dude was blind," he said and went back to his nosey family.  I found myself so curious I went and researched more on the subject.  I found some interesting pictures:

(ivory and ebony brothers)

(how cool!)

(flipper!)

In no way do I make light of anyone who feels they suffer from this affliction.  I guess my point is, we all have something unique about us.  I call it character.  Many will say it's dangerous to produce children with an Albino as the chance of passing the genetic mutation.  I don't find that an issue, but that could be due to selfishness and ignorance.  Not everyone thinks like me.  But we all have the chance of passing a gene for (insert illness here) to our kids.  My father has a trait for sickle cell and while I don't my brother's daughter (my niece) does.  Does this mean we try to only get involved with people with no genetic abnormalities?  What about Down Syndrome?  Or, the fact when I was young I didn't know what Asperger's let alone Autism Spectrum Disorder was.  We don't get to be perfect, but we should be able to live life to the best of our ability.  Or, like in some countries, do we ostracize people for their abnormalities (physical or mental) and consider them demonic? 

I can choose to consider myself blessed for not having the absent of pigment throughout my body.  Or, they may be a world (oh! slavery!) where having to much pigmentation is a CRIME!  Again, we all have things which make us "different" and may pose challenges, but that gives us no right to look down on another.  Everyone has the right to feel beautiful.  Just ask her.

• 
  
• 
  
• 
  

 

xoxo