Beautifully written, Laura, my first subscription in substack, I can't get enough of your writing. Your description of our efforts to fit in...wow. You are a fantastic writer, can't wait for the book. XO
I’m 71 years old on Saturday. I worked as a copywriter most of my life and felt old at 35. Now I’m arthritic and lame and look for descriptors like ‘balm’ and ‘repair’ in products I buy. I’m convinced there’s a market for a facial cream blended from equal parts formaldehyde and petroleum jelly… Getting old and the arthritis means I have to actually occupy my body, which is a mixed blessing. I’ve been reading you for a long time now and think your writing is great.
Finally, an intelligent philosophic reflection on beauty. It's been a long time since Naomi Wolf revealed the world as it is in The Beauty Myth. It may not be fair, but it's the world we live in. We need to understand this world, and we need concepts and language for navigating it. That's why I like the subtitle "Beauty is a Weapon." It levels the playing field. As a beauty opt-outer, it helps me think about my own alternative weapons as a female in this world. Paradoxically, being invisible can also get you into rooms.
The paragraph about rooms gives us a helpful metaphor for figuring out when to sacrifice and when to deploy other strategies in order to get along in a micro-culture. Laura, the sentence "A system is primarily concerned with its own longevity" put us in the same overlooked camp. Seeing the world in terms of systems (or attempting to) raises investigation to more challenging plane. At the same time it gets us away from futilely blaming individuals and groups for "what's wrong with the world." To a great extent, systems just happen. Nevertheless, we can still attempt to nudge them into better directions.
Thank you. I have such mixed feelings reading this. On one hand, not looking well-groomed and attractive is liberating - I enjoy my invisibility to male eye as a middle-aged women in unpretentious clothes. It is also budget-friendly and saves a lot of time. On another hand, I am probably missing out on some status benefits and shortcuts that well-dressed and well-groomed women enjoy, and it is too late for me to master the martial art of beauty.
Thank you for this thoughtful walk through the layers of what external appearance means—and does not mean—in our society. I had never really considered how the use of intentional or enhanced beauty can, used selectively, be a tool of agency for women, much like "power dressing," because of the overwhelming gaslighting of the culture and media which gang up on women and girls to convince us we are never good enough in men's gaze nor in our own souls.
Beautifully written, Laura, my first subscription in substack, I can't get enough of your writing. Your description of our efforts to fit in...wow. You are a fantastic writer, can't wait for the book. XO
I’m 71 years old on Saturday. I worked as a copywriter most of my life and felt old at 35. Now I’m arthritic and lame and look for descriptors like ‘balm’ and ‘repair’ in products I buy. I’m convinced there’s a market for a facial cream blended from equal parts formaldehyde and petroleum jelly… Getting old and the arthritis means I have to actually occupy my body, which is a mixed blessing. I’ve been reading you for a long time now and think your writing is great.
Finally, an intelligent philosophic reflection on beauty. It's been a long time since Naomi Wolf revealed the world as it is in The Beauty Myth. It may not be fair, but it's the world we live in. We need to understand this world, and we need concepts and language for navigating it. That's why I like the subtitle "Beauty is a Weapon." It levels the playing field. As a beauty opt-outer, it helps me think about my own alternative weapons as a female in this world. Paradoxically, being invisible can also get you into rooms.
The paragraph about rooms gives us a helpful metaphor for figuring out when to sacrifice and when to deploy other strategies in order to get along in a micro-culture. Laura, the sentence "A system is primarily concerned with its own longevity" put us in the same overlooked camp. Seeing the world in terms of systems (or attempting to) raises investigation to more challenging plane. At the same time it gets us away from futilely blaming individuals and groups for "what's wrong with the world." To a great extent, systems just happen. Nevertheless, we can still attempt to nudge them into better directions.
Thank you. I have such mixed feelings reading this. On one hand, not looking well-groomed and attractive is liberating - I enjoy my invisibility to male eye as a middle-aged women in unpretentious clothes. It is also budget-friendly and saves a lot of time. On another hand, I am probably missing out on some status benefits and shortcuts that well-dressed and well-groomed women enjoy, and it is too late for me to master the martial art of beauty.
Thank you for this thoughtful walk through the layers of what external appearance means—and does not mean—in our society. I had never really considered how the use of intentional or enhanced beauty can, used selectively, be a tool of agency for women, much like "power dressing," because of the overwhelming gaslighting of the culture and media which gang up on women and girls to convince us we are never good enough in men's gaze nor in our own souls.