There was a time not long ago when not everyone had to be good looking. This is not a rant about the cosmetics industry, not even the people who designed the moisturizer Anti Dryness System that sits in my medicine cabinet between the barbasol and the razor (Gillette Mach 3, which has become about as primitive as slamming your face against a rock if Gillette's new ad campaign for the electically charged Quadcut system is to be believed) and appears at first glance to be a lightweight RPG. No, friends, this is about beauty in the eye of the bullshitter.
Look back a few decades in English literature, especially the capital E stuff, and you'll find little discourse on peoples' appearances that conveys easy attractiveness. Rather, you find love affairs conducted between people who find things to value in one another aside from the good looks neither possesses, nor pretends to possess, nor pretends to be possessed by the other. When there was physical beauty to be found it was seldom of the type that would be considered beautiful by any convention we'd recognize as contemporary. Even parents could say, without any sense of tragedy, that their children are homely. I'll bet you right now that mine will be, and I'll be goddamned if I'm going to gush about how beautiful they are if they in fact look like they'd be happier swinging in trees.
I long for a time when it was alright to think that so and so is not pretty or handsome or "hot" and not feel like you've had some secret thought like raping your neighbour's mailbox that can never be spoken aloud. Saying people aren't attractive isn't evil if it's true, and if their feelings are hurt by that then their inflated vanity had it coming. Or they can just disagree. It doesn't fucking matter. Beauty has always been the exception but these days it seems like we tacitly agree that it's the rule and then deprive ourselves of the language to describe it when we see it.
This has been a report from the front of the war on mediocrity.
Look back a few decades in English literature, especially the capital E stuff, and you'll find little discourse on peoples' appearances that conveys easy attractiveness. Rather, you find love affairs conducted between people who find things to value in one another aside from the good looks neither possesses, nor pretends to possess, nor pretends to be possessed by the other. When there was physical beauty to be found it was seldom of the type that would be considered beautiful by any convention we'd recognize as contemporary. Even parents could say, without any sense of tragedy, that their children are homely. I'll bet you right now that mine will be, and I'll be goddamned if I'm going to gush about how beautiful they are if they in fact look like they'd be happier swinging in trees.
I long for a time when it was alright to think that so and so is not pretty or handsome or "hot" and not feel like you've had some secret thought like raping your neighbour's mailbox that can never be spoken aloud. Saying people aren't attractive isn't evil if it's true, and if their feelings are hurt by that then their inflated vanity had it coming. Or they can just disagree. It doesn't fucking matter. Beauty has always been the exception but these days it seems like we tacitly agree that it's the rule and then deprive ourselves of the language to describe it when we see it.
This has been a report from the front of the war on mediocrity.
Anyway, your kids are going to have that hybrid vigor thing, so I'm sure they're going to be extremely cute.