On Beauty
I think a lot of us are aesthetes and just don't want to admit it. Well, a lot of us are aesthetes and do want to admit it: artists, designers and anyone who appreciates their work all qualify. Anyone who takes presentation of work and the beauty of something essentially functional into account loves beauty; anyone who spends time making themselves look better loves beauty. Our fucked-up attitude to attractiveness and the good doesn't help, either, since we assume that whatever is beautiful is good - or at least, that whatever is beautiful is more likely to be good. At least, that's my cynical opinion. I don't think we can really escape the societal fascination with beauty. This is where I run into the objections of people who like plainness, who say that they care more about the words on a page than whether they look pretty, who take a certain pride in not being vain and doing unnecessary things to themselves - and let's face it, a lot of things we do ...