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You and me together, fighting for our love
My brain feels more and more like a blank screen every day—the kind belonging to an old cathode-ray television, where the program snaps off with a diminishing zap. I dreamed last night of reading and discussing a famous novel retelling Ariadne and Theseus in a historical context, rather like Mary Renault's The King Must Die (1958), except that Ariadne was a trans woman. It was nothing especially unusual in the archaeological record of Minoan civilization in my dream.
I am reading this article about the virility of fascism and all I can think is that the first time I saw a photograph of Richard Spencer—the one featured in the profile by Mother Jones, reproduced in the article—"dapper" was one of the very last words to come to my mind. He was not remarkably beautiful. He did not wear his suit and tie with a particular grace. Perhaps he has a magnetism in action that only comes out in voice and movement, but since his most famous public appearance to date involves some Hitler saluting (that he now desires to retcon as "fun and exuberance," as if it is somehow excusable to throw the most unmistakable gesture of Nazi allegiance since 1926 if you do it out of sheer buoyant enthusiasm, like spontaneously embracing a stranger in a crowd rather than telling a racist joke at a party to gauge what else the guests will let you get away with), I suspect I am already immune to it. I am used to disagreeing with both pop culture and people I know about the respective beauty of all kinds of public figures; I can't even remember how old I was the first time one of my peers thought it was weird and alien for me not to have a crush on an actor everyone else had unanimously declared hot. My interest in people's bodies follows as it always has from my interest in their selves, so if you are a neo-Nazi, everything below the waist is kaput. Nonetheless, it remains curious to me that even if I look at Spencer aesthetically, I can't see him as anything special. He does not even trip my "interesting face" meter. What are journalists seeing when they talk about his physical appeal? Is it literally just a combination of whiteness, maleness, and semi-symmetrical features? This is the kind of question that makes me feel alien to ask, but so does watching a lot of human behavior; this just more than most.
I finally got hold of the soundtrack for Pride (2014) and now I can't get several hits of the '80's out of my head. Michael Cisco enthusiastically recommended me Frankie Goes to Hollywood at Readercon this summer and he was right.
I am reading this article about the virility of fascism and all I can think is that the first time I saw a photograph of Richard Spencer—the one featured in the profile by Mother Jones, reproduced in the article—"dapper" was one of the very last words to come to my mind. He was not remarkably beautiful. He did not wear his suit and tie with a particular grace. Perhaps he has a magnetism in action that only comes out in voice and movement, but since his most famous public appearance to date involves some Hitler saluting (that he now desires to retcon as "fun and exuberance," as if it is somehow excusable to throw the most unmistakable gesture of Nazi allegiance since 1926 if you do it out of sheer buoyant enthusiasm, like spontaneously embracing a stranger in a crowd rather than telling a racist joke at a party to gauge what else the guests will let you get away with), I suspect I am already immune to it. I am used to disagreeing with both pop culture and people I know about the respective beauty of all kinds of public figures; I can't even remember how old I was the first time one of my peers thought it was weird and alien for me not to have a crush on an actor everyone else had unanimously declared hot. My interest in people's bodies follows as it always has from my interest in their selves, so if you are a neo-Nazi, everything below the waist is kaput. Nonetheless, it remains curious to me that even if I look at Spencer aesthetically, I can't see him as anything special. He does not even trip my "interesting face" meter. What are journalists seeing when they talk about his physical appeal? Is it literally just a combination of whiteness, maleness, and semi-symmetrical features? This is the kind of question that makes me feel alien to ask, but so does watching a lot of human behavior; this just more than most.
I finally got hold of the soundtrack for Pride (2014) and now I can't get several hits of the '80's out of my head. Michael Cisco enthusiastically recommended me Frankie Goes to Hollywood at Readercon this summer and he was right.
appearances
At the attractive end of the scale, I was disappointed that People didn't choose Lin Manuel Miranda as the world's most beautiful celebrity, but I do think I'd like him as a person, in addition to finding him pretty, so maybe I'm not objectifying him in that way.
Re: appearances
Affect matters. Microexpressions matter. I know narcissists and sociopaths are supposed to have supernatural powers of charm, but the few true examples I have ever met personally of people who used other people—who could not see other people as real, or whose definition of "real" depended on "like me" or "useful to me"—turned me off amazingly and immediately. Maybe I just got lucky and met clumsy examples of the species, but I think it's a real factor. Nothing to do with their faces, everything to do with a sudden feeling of off. (And it doesn't trip for people whose affect display is non-normative because of something like autism or depression or stress, so I trust it.) The way people responded positively to Donald Trump confused and disturbed me from the start, because even minus the content of his speeches, everything about his delivery and his public presentation—voice, gesture, expression, stance—connoted danger to me. He looked and sounded wildly unsafe.
dapper (which I associate with the late father of a friend of mine)
Cool. What was he like?
It isn't just their politics that are making me feel this way. I am disgusted by Paul Ryan, but can see that people might find him attractive. Most of the people Trump has proposed for cabinet posts are entirely inappropriate, but I don't mind how they look.
That makes sense to me.
At the attractive end of the scale, I was disappointed that People didn't choose Lin Manuel Miranda as the world's most beautiful celebrity, but I do think I'd like him as a person, in addition to finding him pretty, so maybe I'm not objectifying him in that way.
I'm pretty sure that doesn't invalidate your feeling that he's beautiful!
Re: appearances
Re: appearances
I like your theory and think it would produce quality film entertainment and less global hororr.