COLOMBIA

Cali

“The city of unbelievable girls…” This is how Alvaro Mutis described, while never naming, the city of Cali. He once said to me: “You go to the end of the bridge, you take a look, and you won’t believe your eyes!”

Abstracts

"Ever since this time, I dreamed of going and not believing my eyes in Cali. I’m no longer betraying a secret by naming the city of unbelievable girls today, for so much water has flowed under this bridge, it seems. (…) Cali has become the world capital of cosmetic surgery. Over here, we have to put aside our own canons of beauty: in Cali, gaunt-looking top models get called 'string beans'! If a girl wants men to look at her, she needs to show off voluptuous forms.

(…) Drug traffickers have invested stupendous masses of capital in crazy nightclubs or ultra well-equipped cosmetic-surgery clinics that have dethroned the ones in Rio de Janeiro, in Latin America. They love snazzy cars, sumptuous villas and showy eye-catching girls. At the age of 17 or 18, many young girls have already gone for silicone treatments more or less from head to toe."

Extract from Zoé Zoé, Femmes du mondes, 2007, Éditions Gallimard