“The default assumption tends to be that it is politically important to designate everyone as beautiful, that it is a meaningful project to make sure that everyone can become, and feel, increasingly beautiful. We have hardly tried to imagine what it might look like if our culture could do the opposite—de-escalate the situation, make beauty matter less.”
―
Jia Tolentino,
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
“And here one of the most soul-crushing things about the Trump era reveals itself: to get through it with any psychological stability—to get through it without routinely descending into an emotional abyss—a person’s best strategy is to think mostly of himself, herself. As wealth continues to flow upward, as Americans are increasingly shut out of their own democracy, as political action is constrained into online spectacle, I have felt so many times that the choice of this era is to be destroyed or to morally compromise ourselves in order to be functional—to be wrecked, or to be functional for reasons that contribute to the wreck.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“how the internet is built to distend our sense of identity; second, how it encourages us to overvalue our opinions; third, how it maximizes our sense of opposition; fourth, how it cheapens our understanding of solidarity; and, finally, how it destroys our sense of scale.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“Beauty work is labeled “self-care” to make it sound progressive” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
“A woman is unruly if anyone has incorrectly decided that she’s too much of something, and if she, in turn, has chosen to believe that she’s just fine.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
“Writing is either a way to shed my self-delusions or a way to develop them. A well-practiced, conclusive narrative is usually a dubious one:” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“I’ve been thinking about five intersecting problems: first, how the internet is built to distend our sense of identity; second, how it encourages us to overvalue our opinions; third, how it maximizes our sense of opposition; fourth, how it cheapens our understanding of solidarity; and, finally, how it destroys our sense of scale.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“The freedom I want is located in a world where we wouldn't need to love women, or even monitor our feelings about women as meaningful—in which we wouldn't need to parse the contours of female worth and liberation by paying meticulous personal attention to any of this at all.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
“When you are a woman, the things you like get used against you. Or, alternatively, the things that get used against you have all been prefigured as things you should like. Sexual availability falls into this category. So does basic kindness, and generosity. Wanting to look good—taking pleasure in trying to look good—does, too.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“The fact that everything feels like God to me ensured that I would not remain a Christian.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
“striving to look carefree and happy can interfere with your ability to feel so.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“There is less time these days for anything other than economic survival. The internet has moved seamlessly into the interstices of this situation, redistributing our minimum of free time into unsatisfying micro-installments, spread throughout the day. In the absence of time to physically and politically engage with our community the way many of us want to, the internet provides a cheap substitute: it gives us brief moments of pleasure and connection, tied up in the opportunity to constantly listen and speak. Under these circumstances, opinion stops being a first step toward something and starts seeming like an end in itself.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“I cling to the Milan women's understanding of these literary heroines as mothers. I wish I had learned to read them in this way years ago--with the same complicated, ambivalent, essential freedom that a daughter feels when she looks at her mother, understanding her as a figure that she simultaneously resists and depends on; a figure that she uses, cruelly and lovingly and gratefully, as the base from which to become something more.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
“There is no good answer to being a woman; the art may instead lie in how we refuse the question.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“I have felt so many times that the choice of this era is to be destroyed or to morally compromise ourselves in order to be functional—to be wrecked, or to be functional for reasons that contribute to the wreck.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“The internet reminds us on a daily basis that it is not at all rewarding to become aware of problems that you have no reasonable hope of solving. And, more important, the internet already is what it is. It has already become the central organ of contemporary life. It has already rewired the brains of its users, returning us to a state of primitive hyperawareness and distraction while overloading us with much more sensory input than was ever possible in primitive times. It has already built an ecosystem that runs on exploiting attention and monetizing the self. Even if you avoid the internet completely—my partner does: he thought #tbt meant “truth be told” for ages—you still live in the world that this internet has created, a world in which selfhood has become capitalism’s last natural resource, a world whose terms are set by centralized platforms that have deliberately established themselves as near-impossible to regulate or control.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“It’s very easy, under conditions of artificial but continually escalating obligation, to find yourself organizing your life around practices you find ridiculous and possibly indefensible. Women have known this intimately for a long time.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“Has anyone ever written a great novel about a woman who is happy in her marriage? Of course, most protagonists are unhappy. But heroes are mostly unhappy for existential reasons; heroines suffer for social reasons, because of male power, because of men.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
“Women are genuinely trapped at the intersection of capitalism and patriarchy—two systems that, at their extremes, ensure that individual success comes at the expense of collective morality. And yet there is enormous pleasure in individual success. It can feel like license and agency to approach an ideal, to find yourself—in a good picture, on your wedding day, in a flash of identical movement—exemplifying a prototype. There are rewards for succeeding under capitalism and patriarchy; there are rewards even for being willing to work on its terms. There are nothing but rewards, at the surface level. The trap looks beautiful. It’s well-lit. It welcomes you in.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
“And here one of the most soul-crushing things about the Trump era reveals itself: to get through it with any psychological stability—to get through it without routinely descending into an emotional abyss—a person’s best strategy is to think mostly of himself, herself. As wealth continues to flow upward, as Americans are increasingly shut out of their own democracy, as political action is constrained into online spectacle, I have felt so many times that the choice of this era is to be destroyed or to morally compromise ourselves in order to be functional—to be wrecked, or to be functional for reasons that contribute to the wreck.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“how the internet is built to distend our sense of identity; second, how it encourages us to overvalue our opinions; third, how it maximizes our sense of opposition; fourth, how it cheapens our understanding of solidarity; and, finally, how it destroys our sense of scale.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“Beauty work is labeled “self-care” to make it sound progressive” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
“A woman is unruly if anyone has incorrectly decided that she’s too much of something, and if she, in turn, has chosen to believe that she’s just fine.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
“Writing is either a way to shed my self-delusions or a way to develop them. A well-practiced, conclusive narrative is usually a dubious one:” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“I’ve been thinking about five intersecting problems: first, how the internet is built to distend our sense of identity; second, how it encourages us to overvalue our opinions; third, how it maximizes our sense of opposition; fourth, how it cheapens our understanding of solidarity; and, finally, how it destroys our sense of scale.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“The freedom I want is located in a world where we wouldn't need to love women, or even monitor our feelings about women as meaningful—in which we wouldn't need to parse the contours of female worth and liberation by paying meticulous personal attention to any of this at all.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
“When you are a woman, the things you like get used against you. Or, alternatively, the things that get used against you have all been prefigured as things you should like. Sexual availability falls into this category. So does basic kindness, and generosity. Wanting to look good—taking pleasure in trying to look good—does, too.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“The fact that everything feels like God to me ensured that I would not remain a Christian.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
“striving to look carefree and happy can interfere with your ability to feel so.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“There is less time these days for anything other than economic survival. The internet has moved seamlessly into the interstices of this situation, redistributing our minimum of free time into unsatisfying micro-installments, spread throughout the day. In the absence of time to physically and politically engage with our community the way many of us want to, the internet provides a cheap substitute: it gives us brief moments of pleasure and connection, tied up in the opportunity to constantly listen and speak. Under these circumstances, opinion stops being a first step toward something and starts seeming like an end in itself.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“I cling to the Milan women's understanding of these literary heroines as mothers. I wish I had learned to read them in this way years ago--with the same complicated, ambivalent, essential freedom that a daughter feels when she looks at her mother, understanding her as a figure that she simultaneously resists and depends on; a figure that she uses, cruelly and lovingly and gratefully, as the base from which to become something more.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
“There is no good answer to being a woman; the art may instead lie in how we refuse the question.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“I have felt so many times that the choice of this era is to be destroyed or to morally compromise ourselves in order to be functional—to be wrecked, or to be functional for reasons that contribute to the wreck.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“The internet reminds us on a daily basis that it is not at all rewarding to become aware of problems that you have no reasonable hope of solving. And, more important, the internet already is what it is. It has already become the central organ of contemporary life. It has already rewired the brains of its users, returning us to a state of primitive hyperawareness and distraction while overloading us with much more sensory input than was ever possible in primitive times. It has already built an ecosystem that runs on exploiting attention and monetizing the self. Even if you avoid the internet completely—my partner does: he thought #tbt meant “truth be told” for ages—you still live in the world that this internet has created, a world in which selfhood has become capitalism’s last natural resource, a world whose terms are set by centralized platforms that have deliberately established themselves as near-impossible to regulate or control.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“It’s very easy, under conditions of artificial but continually escalating obligation, to find yourself organizing your life around practices you find ridiculous and possibly indefensible. Women have known this intimately for a long time.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror
“Has anyone ever written a great novel about a woman who is happy in her marriage? Of course, most protagonists are unhappy. But heroes are mostly unhappy for existential reasons; heroines suffer for social reasons, because of male power, because of men.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
“Women are genuinely trapped at the intersection of capitalism and patriarchy—two systems that, at their extremes, ensure that individual success comes at the expense of collective morality. And yet there is enormous pleasure in individual success. It can feel like license and agency to approach an ideal, to find yourself—in a good picture, on your wedding day, in a flash of identical movement—exemplifying a prototype. There are rewards for succeeding under capitalism and patriarchy; there are rewards even for being willing to work on its terms. There are nothing but rewards, at the surface level. The trap looks beautiful. It’s well-lit. It welcomes you in.” ― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
