Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

hosannas.

When I feel confused about something, I write about it until I turn into the person who shows up on paper: a person who is plausibly trustworthy, intuitive, and clear.

We have hardly tried to imagine what it might look like if our culture could do the opposite—de-escalate the situation, make beauty matter less.

Configured this way, success is a lottery—just as survival today can look like a lottery, too. If you’re super lucky, if everyone likes you, if you’ve got hustle, you might end up making millions. Similarly, if you’re super lucky, if everyone likes you, if you can get that GoFundMe to go viral, you might end up being able to pay for your insulin, o

Analyzing sexism through female celebrities is a catnip pedagogical method: it takes a beloved cultural pastime (calculating the exact worth of a woman) and lends it progressive political import.

Clinton’s loss, which I will mourn forever, might reiterate the importance of making space for the difficult woman. It might also point toward the way that valuing a woman for her difficulty can, in ways that are unexpectedly destructive, obscure her actual, particular self.

to stay on the ethical side, if there is one, of a blurry line between “woman who takes feminism seriously” and “woman selling her feminist personal brand.” I’ve avoided the merchandise, the cutesy illustrated books about “badass” historical women, the coworking spaces and corporate panels and empowerment conferences, but I am a part of that world—

each closing has been a reminder that an open-ended, affinity-based, generative online identity is hard to keep alive.

exegesis,”