Beauty in the ideology of the beholder
: I was going to ask whether it was wrong of me to note that this French libertarian is a babe. Well, that is the wrong way to ask it. But it turns out, it’s not wrong to ask at all. Glenn Reynolds linked to her and then another smart and, it so happens, beautiful political activist and he next links to Kimberly Swygert quoting P.J. O’Rourke saying that the beautiful women always link up with the cutting-edge social trends.
These two photos reminded me of a paragraph from an old essay by satirist and uber-Libertarian P.J. O’Rourke. The paragraph comes from Parliament of Whores; O’Rourke had attended a “Housing Now!” rally in which the primary cry of the attendees seemed to be, “Give us money now!” O’Rourke’s friend posited an interesting theory about the relationship of feminine beauty and the cultural zeitgeist:
“Best of all, there were hardly any beautiful women at the [Housing Now!] rally. I saw a journalist friend of mine in the Mall, and he and I purused this line of inquiry as assiduously as our happy private lives allow. Practically every female at the march was a bowser. “We’re not being sexist here,” my friend insisted. “It’s not that looks matter per se. It’s just that beautiful women are always on the cutting edge of social trends. Remember how many beautiful women were in the anti-war movement twenty years ago? In the yoga classes fifteen years ago? At the discos ten years ago? On Wall Street five years ago? Where the beautiful women are is where the country is headed,” said my friend. “And this,” he looked around him, “isn’t it.”
So I wasn’t being sexist. I was being sociological.
