being beautiful won't solve all your problems

my advice? hunt bigger game.

in 1949, feminist french philosopher, simone de beauvoir, went on to tell the world, “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”¹ in the 75 years since its utterance, many have used this single line from de beauvoir’s seminal novel to champion their cause. others, have used it to reconstruct the definitions of who is, and who is not. as is their right. everything is a construct.

here, i’ll be using this single line to as the narrative arc of another working theory i have: the importance, if not life-saving necessity, to be self-referential as a young woman.

prologue: confidence is key, just don’t get carried away

to be self-referential is to be in the business of myth-making. myth-making is the process by which you create the fantasies that concern you, surround you, and with enough repetition, simply become you. fantasies both real and unreal. myths are illusions, but if enough people believe them, they can, and do, become real.

take anna sorkin, for example. when anna was myth-making she passed herself off as a wealthy german (or was it russian?) heiress. never mind that she never paid for a thing while she went out with her “friends”, who were themselves actually wealthy. nor did she have any underlying assets to qualify for the $22 million loan she wanted from fortress investment group to lease the church missions house building in gramercy pack. never mind any of that. her current myth being a lauren santo domingo-esque² socialite and businesswoman within the art space, and she wasn’t about to let a silly thing such as a lack of funds (or assets to use as collateral) or a lack of any meaningful, if actual, pedigree get in her way. so she scammed, and stole, and lied. and was later imprisoned for her crimes. because crime doesn’t pay.

crime = bad. but myth-making = good…

the takeaway from anna is to not let your present, or past, circumstances stop you for actualizing your dreams. even if they seem farfetched. fetch ‘em.

the curious, if not cosmic, thing about anna is that had she been able to successfully obtain that $22 million dollar loan and then immediately began work to lease, renovate and launch her private members’ club as she had intended and envisioned, the repayments to fortress from the revenue she made from her club would have been the initial fraud (she forged documents to qualify for the loan) legitimate. fortress would have gotten their millions back, with interest of course. new york city would be littered with yet another $15,000-a-member private clubs that a certain set of manhattanites seem to have accepted as a de-facto wealth tax just for the pleasure of living in the city. even the mayor is a fan. and the world would have been at peace.

but again, crime = bad. and it certainly does not pay.

i’m not advocating for you to beg, borrow, or steal. just to be audacious in your ambitions and then follow the letter of the law as you go about executing your vision. just remember to remain audacious.

however, caveat emptor: audacity should come from true, genuine confidence. if it stems from overconfidence, you run the risk of killing any luck in your life. so don’t get greedy, just remain confident that your vision isn’t as farfetched as some might believe.

for beauty, would you give your soul?

belief is indeed the operative word when it comes to myth-making. as written earlier, if enough people believe it, what is unreal becomes real. unreality turns into reality. it’s all a question of, do you believe in it? if no one else believes it, do you still believe in it? even if people cast doubt, would you continue to believe in it?

“it” can be anything. right now, i want to focus on beauty as the “it.” it seems that it’s in anything concerning beauty, its presence or lack thereof, that everyone seems to get stuck in their myth-making. people, especially young women, allow their dreams to fall to the level where they believe their beauty marks its zenith.

these young women are always questioning themselves. examining their sense of worth through the lens of beauty. that nagging, “am i good enough?” question. better put, “am i hot enough for a good life?”

if this is you, you’re asking the wrong question. that shouldn’t even be the question.³

concerning yourself with your physical looks and tethering that as both the cause and perquisite to your dreams coming true will leave you with a void in your heart and the inability to think clearly. you’ll forever be vulnerable to the whims of society and what is deemed beautiful within the present trend cycle. i urge you to reframe your sense of beauty not in the way you look similar, if not better, to those within your race, or outside of it. but the way in which you are able to express your soul. the way in which you are able to echo your essence.

focusing solely on our essence, the echo of our soul, means we do not concern ourselves with the reactions, or lack thereof, from others on our physical looks. we’re simply concerned with our metaphysical imprint. the lingering of our energy long after we’ve left the room. toni morrison said this beautifully in 1974 when discussing the black is beautiful movement in the new york times⁴:

“…it was precisely in that spirit of reacting to white values that later, when civil rights became black power, we came up with the slogan “black is beautiful” — an accurate but wholly irrelevant observation if ever there was one. aside from getting rid of the nagging problems of hair straighteners and nadinola bleaching cream, aside from offering some relief to the difficulties of puberty (during which looking good and being popular are seemingly the only preoccupations), the slogan provided a psychic crutch for the needy and a second (or first) glance from whites. regardless of those questionable comforts, the phrase was nevertheless a full confession that white definitions were important to us (having to counteract them meant they were significant) and that the quest for physical beauty was both a good and worthwhile pursuit. the implication was that once we had convinced everybody, including ourselves, of our beauty, then, then . . . what? things would change? we could assert ourselves? make demands? white people presumably had no objection to beautiful people.

but the more disturbing aspect of “black [is] beautiful” was avoided: when the strength of people rests on its beauty, when the focus is on how one looks rather than what one is, we are in trouble. when we are urged to confuse dignity with prettiness, and presence with image, we are being distracted from what is worthy about us: for example, our intelligence, our resilience, our skill, our tenacity, irony or spiritual health. and in that absolute fit of reacting to white values, we may very well have removed the patient's heart in order to improve his complexion.”

removing the patient’s heart in order to improve her complexion is a damning sentence. what’s sad is that it still holds weight in 2024.

from time to time, i think about brown v. board of education. as one does, of course. and i think about that doll test that doctors kenneth and mamie clark conducted with those black school children to prove that segregation was anything but equal. in asking the black children to select which out of the four dolls, identical in everything but color, they preferred, the majority of the children pointed to the white doll. the children pointed to positive characteristics the white dolls had over the black dolls.

to our adult eyes, this is ludicrous, they’re just dolls. but to the eyes of children, growing up in an unjust society, they simply internalized what the felt. what they saw.

are you certain that in your analysis of your beauty, you have not internalized what others have said? that you’ve not internalized how others have made you feel?

“others” can be anyone, anything, and any place. it can even be a vogue magazine if you grew up with a subscription. or the kardashians if you remember when kim looked vaguely ethnic.⁵

my continued thinking about the clarks’ doll test came to me around 2014-2016 when i had a sneaky suspicion, after witnessing the rise of a racially-ambiguous-but-culturally-black-instagram-fueled beauty standard that took center stage in the 2010s (“instagram face”), that if we were to be presented with a doll test today, but with instagram models instead of plastic dolls, i don’t think the vast majority of us would pass. black or otherwise.

kylie jenner crying to her sister on national television that she cannot cope with the masses picking out that her filler has migrated, or that she looks “older” than she should, when she spent a decade deliberately undergoing surgery that made her look less and less like her original racial category but more like the pygmalion version of a fever dream imagined by a white girl who didn’t have lips, hips, or a butt but was embedded in a culture that valued those things would want⁶, means it affects everyone. not just the black community. kylie jenner had a chokehold on a good amount of young (white) girls in the 2010s. she was their main influencer. and now that the beauty pendulum has swung from the bbl-mania of the 2010s instagram model era to the clean girl, trad-wife cottagecore aesthetic of the 2020s, kylie’s out of her depths.⁷

kylie removed her “heart” (her own culture and heritage) to improve her “complexion”(sense of worth, enhanced beauty, prestige within a niche community, and profit).

another celebrity we should all take as a cautionary tale when it comes to lacking heart is drake. i’ll spear you the details of his complete evisceration at the hands of kendrick lamar, but this article in the new yorker sums up drake’s problem perfectly: he lacks soul. better put, he traded his in for fortune and fame. he’s the rap version of dorian grey and his albums post take care⁸ are his portrait. they showcase the unraveling of a man lost in paranoia and misogyny whose current cultural contribution is to use the cultures and heritage of others to promote whatever new project or album he’s peddling while downplaying, if not eliminating, his own. and only brining it up for profit, not retrospection.

it reminds me of that quote from matthew 16:26, “what does it benefit a man to win the world but lose his soul?”

our beauty should be a function of our soul. our beauty ought to be the physical echo of our essence.

in this way, we do not need to nip and tuck nor latch onto beauty standards that do not concern us. if you feel you’re ugly now, give it 6 more years. i’m sure a new trend will pop up and it’ll be your time to shine.

but jokes aside. we have to be willing, and able, to face ourselves as we are. to accept everything, physical and otherwise, about ourselves. once we’ve done this, we can go onto the actual task at hand: creating our lives’ work.

dial d for a diouana woman…

that’s what myth-making is, creating our lives’ work. let’s say you’re “no one” today, in 20 years you could be “some one.” in those 20 years, you shouldn’t let doubt, insecurity, not feeling good enough stop you from continuing to work on your craft. whatever your craft is. just pursue mastery and let the divine take care of the rest.

do not get fixated on beauty as either a prerequisite to or cause of your dreams coming true. it doesn't work like that. sure, people react to you in a positive way if your “beautiful” but who’s to say they’re not reacting to how you feel about your beauty, not your beauty itself. meaning, even in the “absence” of beauty, if you feel beautiful and clearly carry yourself as someone who holds a high opinion of yourself, people will follow suit in their assumptions. thereby unreality becomes reality.

again, anna sorkin had genuinely wealthy people believing she was wealthy herself because she understand the social dynamics of subconscious communication: body language and non-verbal boundaries (even though she’d regularly invade the boundaries of others in pursuit of her goals). anna had no social fear and it showed in her energy. she carried herself as a billionaire heiress so everyone just assumed that’s exactly what she was. it helped that she was able to get herself in the right places, in front of the right people. but in the words of bianca jagger, another woman worth learning from, “if you’re pretty and intelligent, you can meet anyone you want.”

so, myth-make!

become the cam girl of your dreams. create your fanstay as bold and as beautiful as you want it to be. do not concern yourself with what others view as beautiful. do not pay attention to beauty trends that are increasingly fueled by an algorithm you had no hand in coding.

our dreams materializing have more to do with us dedicating ourselves to the pleasure-pain of becoming than anything else. beauty is a tool. but so are your hands and brain.

i emphasis the importance of being self-referential as a young woman because i believe you are your best guide, mentor, teacher, and if need be, lover. you are the only one who can truly create the life, and work, you want for yourself. that’s why you must create a personal archive where you constantly pull inspiration of. with the input of others when it’s necessary of course.

for example, my current beauty mandate is to become something of a period piece. i like the moodiness of vamp-esque seduction of beauty from the 1930s, so i borrow heavily from that period when it comes to curling my hair as i like the cheekiness of a peek-a-boo curl pattern à la veronica lake. but do i want to be veronica lake? no. i just want to echo my essence as loudly as i can without even uttering a word. i want to look like sir hitchcock himself would write a starring role just for me. so my current beauty efforts are dedicated to just that. there’s nothing clean girl, trad-wife cottagecore about a woman looking to get away with murder…

i’ll leave you with this, in all that you do, aim to create yourself. if a version of you doesn’t work for the task at hand, recreate yourself, this time with the best pieces from your personal archive. do this as often as needed. until you’ve woken up and questions of beauty have become tertiary to the cosmic question of “cui bono?”

spoiler: you.

sweet dreams,

a diouana woman

p.s. truth or dare

this section is a curated list of ideas and items i’ve engaged with recently that i’ve loved. the truths were 10/10, so i must recommend. and the dares were not so great, so it’s me saying don’t do it. but only if you dare. get it? great. let’s begin:

truth: i’m quite particular about fabrics. my boyfriend likes to make fun of me because i refuse to wear, or purchase, anything that is composed of polyester. i believe it’s a real crime what these brands are charging for garments that are 100% polyester with no structure, no design, and no intrigue. that said, i came across this gorgeous silk skirt (the outer material is 100% viscose but the inner lining is 100% silk) from the row. now if only i had a spare $1,290 dollars…

dare: worshipping false idols (celebrities). worship yourself.

disclaimer: the views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any employer, past or current.

1. beauvoir, simone de. the second sex. translated by h.m. parshley, vintage books, 1989, p. 267.

2. this is lore that comes by way of passing comments: it’s been recounted that when lsd was on her way up, she would allow others to present her as the perrier heiress. which wasn’t wrong in spirit as her father was the ceo. he just wasn't the founder. but semantics.

3. there’s an essay to be written about how women who are fixated on how others perceive our looks are really (male) voyeurs within our own bodies. it’s just like that poem from margaret atwood. male fantasies, was it?

4. would it really be a diouana woman essay without a reference to, allusion of, or quote from toni morrison?

5. another side note: this reminds me of an analysis i read where someone wrote that kim’s coup has not been in becoming endlessly famous and wealthy. no, her real coup has been in others now perceiving her as a white woman when she’s armenian. kim travels this earth as a white woman and you can tell by the grievances people hurl against her. to transcend your original race as an interesting thing indeed.

6. to be fair to ky, her king kylie era was iconic. those lip kits made her a “billionaire”! that said, blac chyna did it first. and angela did it best.

7. as i wrote this, i thought about how scholars often say there’s a “white lash” that happens anything any signifiant political progress happens for people of color. obviously this wouldn’t be considered “progress” as “beauty” in the 2010s just became more and more restrictive in definition even if it become more “accessible” through plastic surgery. i just find it interesting that we went from the bbl-mania and rap culture inspired beauty culture of the 2010s to a skinnier than skinny, “milk maid,” cottagecore vibe in the 2020s. it’s not a white lash per say, but it’s something. i’ll think more and write if i have anything interesting to say on the matter.

8. there’s an argument to be made that this could be pushed to scorpion as drake’s last album where we can hear his soul, but i’d argue that the drake we all reminisce about was established in the take care era and never really came back. except, of course, as a marketing ploy (allusion).