bootstraps
"Sometimes I hate beauty because I don't have any choice about loving it. I must be wrong in this, but whether because I take freedom too seriously, or love, I cannot tell."
-James Richardson, "Interglacial"
"Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is always ready to revenge himself therefore [...] For the sight of the ugly makes men bad and gloomy."
-Nietzsche, "The Gay Science"
I hate beautiful people, ugly people, and mirrors. I think high heels are anachronistic and demeaning but have a weakness for boots. The struggle to avoid this hypocrisy sinks me in deeper. I feel like a prisoner of my own way of thought, though my crux is whether I take freedom or ugliness too seriously. I've tried appeasing myself by reading about sociology, but attractiveness just wins regardless. People like you more, pay you more, you meet others more easily, you are more relaxed. Nothing I read bothers to explain why beauty works, just the fact that it does.
"A girl learns that stories happen to 'beautiful' women, whether they are interesting or not. And, interesting or not, stories do not happen to women who are not 'beautiful.'"
-Naomi Wolf, "The Beauty Myth"
One can only think of the pageant queen Vice President. Stories do not happen to people who are not beautiful. Beauty intersects with class in my mind, taboos that we cannot for a moment deny. The cosmic/genetic beauty lottery should be reassuring. a head-start for a lucky few. It doesn't work that way in practice, though. The poor cannot be beautiful, who is beautiful never stays poor for long.
"It is the business of educated people to speak so that no-one may be able to tell in what county their childhood was passed."
-A. Burrell, "Recitation. A Handbook for Teachers in Public Elementary School",
Beauty must be conflated with wealth in our world. Listen to the beautiful speak, always the same words in the same way. There is a lexicon for it and I do not speak it. I do not steam my collars nor discuss my summer abroad. Wealth is consolidated, beauty is consolidated. It is just an extra asset in their accounts, a short-term investment but always enough to keep them solvent and in the company of the moneyed.
I can't afford to be ugly. I don't know people, not even by degrees. I have no trust fund coming my way, no inheritance, no legacies or my family name on a dorm somewhere. There is nothing I can do. The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time. The bitter and ugly have no enemies but everything, but me.
-James Richardson, "Interglacial"
"Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is always ready to revenge himself therefore [...] For the sight of the ugly makes men bad and gloomy."
-Nietzsche, "The Gay Science"
I hate beautiful people, ugly people, and mirrors. I think high heels are anachronistic and demeaning but have a weakness for boots. The struggle to avoid this hypocrisy sinks me in deeper. I feel like a prisoner of my own way of thought, though my crux is whether I take freedom or ugliness too seriously. I've tried appeasing myself by reading about sociology, but attractiveness just wins regardless. People like you more, pay you more, you meet others more easily, you are more relaxed. Nothing I read bothers to explain why beauty works, just the fact that it does.
"A girl learns that stories happen to 'beautiful' women, whether they are interesting or not. And, interesting or not, stories do not happen to women who are not 'beautiful.'"
-Naomi Wolf, "The Beauty Myth"
One can only think of the pageant queen Vice President. Stories do not happen to people who are not beautiful. Beauty intersects with class in my mind, taboos that we cannot for a moment deny. The cosmic/genetic beauty lottery should be reassuring. a head-start for a lucky few. It doesn't work that way in practice, though. The poor cannot be beautiful, who is beautiful never stays poor for long.
"It is the business of educated people to speak so that no-one may be able to tell in what county their childhood was passed."
-A. Burrell, "Recitation. A Handbook for Teachers in Public Elementary School",
Beauty must be conflated with wealth in our world. Listen to the beautiful speak, always the same words in the same way. There is a lexicon for it and I do not speak it. I do not steam my collars nor discuss my summer abroad. Wealth is consolidated, beauty is consolidated. It is just an extra asset in their accounts, a short-term investment but always enough to keep them solvent and in the company of the moneyed.
I can't afford to be ugly. I don't know people, not even by degrees. I have no trust fund coming my way, no inheritance, no legacies or my family name on a dorm somewhere. There is nothing I can do. The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time. The bitter and ugly have no enemies but everything, but me.