Chalked Venn Diagram Trilogy
I walked by a chalk drawing on Telegraph Avenue this morning. It was a Venn diagram with three circles. The periphery circles were labeled “1984”, “Fahrenheit 451”, and “Brave New World”. The one in the middle said “You Are Here.”
Sometimes I’m in a bad mood and I know exactly why, but I would never tell you why. It’s when I’m a bit off, and you notice, but it’s not enough to point out. No, it’s not because I’m a cunt and wouldn’t tell you if you did something that bothered me. It’s not because of anything going on in the world, either. I would never tell you why I’m in a bad mood because it’s stupid and it’s embarrassing. All day in between my classes and meetings and writing my political economy paper, and eating and walking to the different buildings that my classes and meetings and paper-writing are in (the “important” tasks and unimportant ones eat up minutes just the same), there is an underlying thought that persists. It keeps blinking red in my head:
I shouldn’t have put makeup on this morning because now my lips are too pink and it looks unnatural and there is a layer of shitty drugstore concealer over my face which my mom always tells me will ruin my skin in twenty years and it’s really stressing me out.
But I wanted to look pretty today. Now all I can imagine is my concealer melting into the pores of my face until it completely pervades them. Microscopic vats of an oily beige-colored substance.
And now I sit and I’m upset, because of this today and because of how many days I’ve worn shitty chemical products on my face, because it all adds up, and because I want to be pretty in twenty years too. I’m sick of having to go to the bathroom to brush my hair and fix my lip color and blot my shiny face and retie my belt that’s not actually a belt but a scarf that is holding up the maxi skirt I just bought. Besides, it’s not like you put on concealer and suddenly you’re [insert beautiful celebrity].
On the days I don’t wear makeup I spend more time worrying about something real or sometimes about being ugly.
I think we’ve said the phrase “first-world problems” so much that we forget it inherently implies the simultaneous existence of “third-world” ones.
So I keep wearing makeup and I get stuck in my own individualized future’s market of fear. What will my skin look like in twenty years? In forty? When will I stop being pretty? What will happen then?
I’m running to the next class or meeting or paper to write, I’m trying to look good doing it. I think less about genocide and fascist Presidents and being a good person. How much better of a human being would I be if I never thought about anything trivial at all? How much of a sadder one?
We are bombarded with triviality. In “1984” fear-mongering was through Big Brother’s screens, in 2024 it is through our own. We wake up to the screen, we go to sleep with the screen, we stare at it in class and at work and at home to pass the time. We watch politicians stand by one group on Tuesday and with its enemy on Thursday. We wonder if the videos are AI-generated. Some are and some are not.
The government isn’t the one controlling us, though, L’Oreal is! Joking, of course, kind of. To be girly is considered unserious but I am girly and I am serious, and at times I am all three at once or not girly at all, so just please pay attention to understand when and where I am what.
On November 5th I was talking to my friend on the phone (dearest Max), and he said to me “The working class does not have the privilege of worrying about identity politics.” The working class is working, but we are all worrying just the same. My friends are all on Huxley’s soma to overcome the fact that the government isn’t controlling us, our lack of time is, and the never-ending pressure to work harder and buy newer and be prettier. To put output out. To be the most innovative country in the world.
I’m in a bad mood because right now with a layer of concealer my skin looks flawless, but in twenty years it may not. I wasn’t put through hypnopaedia, with someone whispering “buy makeup to be pretty to be happy” in my ear every night while I was sleeping, but I’ve loved pink and Barbies and boys since I was three. I do wonder where my subliminal messaging started. To this I will never know the answer, neither to where the line between nature and nurture and social validation lies.
I’m starting to read Fahrenheit 451 now. It’s the last of the chalked Venn diagram trilogy left for me. I read it last in sixth grade but I found it boring because at the time I preferred going to the mall with my friends instead. I didn’t get it when my mom told me that that’s the whole point.
I’m preoccupied with trivialities. I miss all the big things.
I don’t know who’s controlling us, but did they get you too?
