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¶ by Rob FrieselIn the midst of Doctorow’s Eastern Standard Tribe at the moment and it is just as sickly mindblowing and insightful and genius as Down and Out…:
Beauty, too. Your local definition of attractive and ugly was conditioned by the people around you at puberty. There was a Pacific “look” that was indefinably off. Hard to say what it was, just that when he went out to a bar or got stuck on a crowded train, the girls just didn’t seem all that attractive to him. Objectively, he could recognize their prettiness, but it didn’t stir him the way the girls cruising the Chelsea Antiques Market or lounging around Harvard Square could.
This makes me think of something the P-unit was writing about recently w/r/t/ archetypes of beauty and/or success and/or fill-in-the-blank-node/aspect-of-life. I believe he cited “The Baroness” as an archetype for female beauty. The sultry, nerdy type.
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