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chatted with Sable Yong about scent-based fascism, embracing outer beauty, analyzing artifice, and her fav Bruce Willis flick for this week's newsletter. her new book of essays Die Hot with a Vengeance is quite good <3
Aug 22, 2024
Related Recs
I read Sable’s new book in preparation for our interview and I really loved it - she has such a great way of analyzing artifice and trends without making it feel academic. Gorg!
Aug 25, 2024
@mothersuperior post on latex and the yearndemic reminded me of this essay that I read a few years ago about the commodification and fetishization of the body and how it’s been paralleled with a lack of chemistry and sexuality that we used to see on screen. The title is your tldr: everyone is hot and no one is horny. The sterilization of sexuality and sex is everywhere, past even film. It’s a response to the acceleration of capitalism, war and colonial extraction of the earth. It has crept into the ways we view ourselves, our experience and our bodies.
One thing I took away from this essay is that to align yourself with traditional beauty standards will make you too tired to fuck. Similarly, the whole « working on yourself » grind that I heard on first dates all the time is this strange, individualistic perspective that makes you too exhausted and distracted for the holistic chemistry we desire. We flatten our lives to marketable lines that make us appear attractive - I’m working on myself, I’ve been going to therapy, I have a nice job and apartment. And while people are obviously horny, they don’t know for what - forming our bodies to be better, our minds fixed and correct, we can’t pinpoint what the purpose is cause we’re too fucking exhausted to investigate further than that. Love, desire, and chemistry feel more and more elusive.
For us to morph ourselves into the image of sexiness according to western beauty standards, there is sacrifice (nutrients, your current corporeal form, the ability to be perceived as more than an object, working long hours for your grind) that doesn’t align with sensuality (unless you’re into that). There is no room for the spectrum of sensations you body is capable of feeling. There is no room for desire when we’ve given it all up the capitalist war machine. :p
Mar 10, 2025
"Beauty privilege is very real. None of us are imagining it, and if we aren’t born genetic lottery winners, our only option is to compensate with style, grace, and charm. Of course, none of that shit comes cheap. That’s kind of the whole point. It’s all meant to be aspirational and exclusionary. We’re supposed to feel depressed by our skin, agitated by our bodies, and anxious about our invisibility. That’s the insidious subtlety of social control.
The worst part is that we know in our rational minds that it’s all bullshit, and yet we’re still plagued with self-loathing when we can’t live up to unattainable beauty standards. No matter how much self-acceptance we achieve, we can still look in the mirror and instantly catalog all the things about ourselves that we don’t think measure up. It’s maddening. It makes us feel like hypocrites even though it’s not our hypocrisy."
– The Coquette, Ugly-Sexy: Cool? | Adult Mag (2014)
Oct 2, 2024
Top Recs from @ethansawyer
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a brief moment of comfort in this cold corporate existence
Mar 7, 2025
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What happens behind the wheel is, frankly, none of my business. I'd rather spend my time picking songs/sipping coffee/taking in the scene.
Driving is so pedestrian.
Mar 21, 2024
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I swear to god this shit is too powerful. It doesn’t always work out the way I hoped but the win/loss ratio is definitely in my favour. We are social creatures. We like helping each other. Just do it. Ask me for something if you want. Who knows what I’ll say.
Jan 20, 2025