Why Beauty Will Always Turn Heads - And Inner Worth Will Always Play Second Fiddle

Frances Laughton was a beautiful woman.  She had been a beautiful, adorable child, a stunning runway-ready adolescent, and a promising starlet in college.  She had been fawned over, admired, chased, and desired for as long as she could remember.  Such was her remarkable beauty that no one ever bothered to look past it and and inquire about her intelligence, moral code, perceptiveness, or creativity. She loved the attention as a little girl, but as she got older it rankled. She was nothing more than a gussied up doll, and that had to change.

 

For a while she flirted with a femme fatale persona. Her beauty, her sexual allure, and her feminine irresistibility had men wrapped around her little finger, and with that mystical power she knew she could really go places, do things, be somebody.  Beauty greased the wheels of power. 

Yet she was always bothered by the fact that if getting ahead in the world was nothing more than trading on genetics - she had done nothing to get or deserve her good fortune - then success was worthless as far as social justice, honor, or moral rectitude were concerned.  For true personal integrity and to be a model for right action, the irrelevancies of God-given gifts must be dismissed and removed. 

At Brown she had tried to become part of Students For Democratic Action, an influential campus group that took its inspiration from SDS, a radical student organization of the Sixties, strong enough to engineer the takeover of Columbia University, energize the civil rights movement, and influence the outcome of the war in Vietnam. SDS members were outspoken and never shy about the use of violent measures to promote progressive causes. 

 

Brown's SDA was a far cry from its militant forbears, but it still cause enough of a ruckus to force the administration to at least consider a quota of twenty-five percent gay, lesbian, and transgender faculty and to double the admission rate for minority students.  

Consider they did, but not much came of the hoopla.  Brown, not among the elite of the Ivy League but still an influential junior partner, had enough wealthy alumni to reject any such politically-driven, idealistic, and ultimately nonsensical moves which would further erode the academic integrity of the university and tarnish the reputation of its founder. 

Outcomes never matter to idealists who are in it for the ride, the identity, and the self-awareness; so campus activism was just as meaningful as if it actually produced results; and Frances tried to join in.  She not only thought that it would be a way for her to challenge those who underestimated her while promoting an important political agenda. 

Yet, such a wish was clearly impossible.  She was treated as someone special rather than an integral part of a group.  No woman on campus came anywhere near her stunning beauty.  She was truly one of a kind, a unique combination of classical physical perfection and a nubile, languorous sexual allure.  She was tall, naturally graceful, with an inbred, untutored elegance.  As such she was treated as the goddess that she was. 

 

Everyone knew that they were in the presence of a generational beauty - or even more, since her symmetry, litheness, and female presence hearkened back to ancient Greece and Rome.  She was Venus, Aphrodite, Helen every Roman copy, and the most beautiful women painted by Leonardo and Botticelli. 

No one was interested in her inner self, and why should they be?  They were in the presence of a miracle; and so it was that Frances, from the beginning a deeply serious, committed, and intelligent woman took the first step of redemption. She would changer her appearance and become indistinguishable from the women of The Movement as unappealing as they were. 

Progressivism in its embrace of serious things, rejects anything that smacks of the false, the superficial, the nonessential.  The use of cosmetics is tantamount to treason, both a disregard for the existential nature of the progressive cause and giving in to the predatory, misogynist male.  The more a woman can resemble her Paleolithic forbears and become a natural woman linked to nature and the environmental forces around her, the better. 

One woman, Frances thought, did look like the throwback so often limned as the progressive model - prognathous jaw, prominent forehead, narrow-set eyes - and indeed she was the leader of the campus activists, chosen to lead demonstrations, to speak at forums, and to be the image of university progressivism. 

'Brutal', Frances thought; but the woman had what Frances wanted - belonging to a group that mattered and being taken for the responsible, dedicated, committed woman that she was.  And so it was that she began her transformation from magnificently beautiful starlet to fiercely ugly partisan.  She would not - could not - go so far as to regress ten million years, but she would at least alter her looks enough to conform to those of the group. 

The transformation of course had to be gradual.  It couldn't be a sudden as a nose job, going away for the summer with a beak and coming back cute and pert. No, the change would have to be progressive - tweaking and coloring of her hair, tattoos, studs, and rings, a dismal look, bad posture, and a sobering, snarly attitude.  By the time she was finished, her classmates would have forgotten how she first came on campus, would anoint her as one of theirs, and her future of mission, identity, and political integrity would begin. 

As much as she felt at home now that her 'inner self' had been exposed, seen, and appreciated, she felt out of place and irritable.  These ugly women and skanky, brutally sexless men and the environment they enabled were miserable. She preferred the company of the best and the brightest, the most beautiful, charming, and desirable.  She loved being a starlet, a prima ballerina, a goddess. 

She graduated with honors, said goodbye to her classmates and fellows activists, and headed to Washington to take up a position and Scientists for Social Responsibility, a nonprofit which focused on the environment and climate change, but dabbled in black causes and lesbianism as well. 

It was more of the same - the tedium of good causes, serious and fractiously ugly people, and the depressing, burrowing environment of gloom.  Why progressives had to be ugly, think ugly, and worry ugly was beyond her; but she had cast her lot among them for personal reasons, flying her inner flag, and she was not ready to take it down. 

As chance and circumstance would have it, she happened to be walking on Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House and saw one attractive, young blonde woman and stage-handsome men after another walk up the drive to the West Wing.  They had nothing like the stunning beauty of her former incarnation but at least were a welcome change from the dour, misshapen lot she worked with.  

Not quite an epiphany but an eye-opener.  Conservatives take things on face value and easily fit them into a clearly defined, neatly organized policy matrix.  There is no need to probe and parse when it comes to small government, a muscular foreign policy and traditional social values.  One can be beautiful and still be taken seriously.  No dredging up of muck, no hand-wringing, no tears and flapdoodle necessary.   

Although it took a while to make the elision from stunningly beautiful woman to sloppy, bangingly unattractive progressive, it took only a morning to put back the pieces.  She emerged on Tuesday looking like what God had intended her to be. She flashed a smile at Scientists for Social Responsibility, said her goodbyes, and contacted her Republican Congressman in the hopes of moving quickly across the aisle into more congenial territory.  

The Congressman like all men was bowled over by her beauty, charm and sexual allure.  Anything she wanted was hers, and so she took it, and back in her element was adored, admired, and desired. 

Her inner self? Well, that wasn't much to write home about in the first place, so it mattered even less here, whatever it was.  She moved about as though she were born for the job, used her native skills and remarkable genetic gift to her advantage and that of the Party, and could never have been happier. 

Superficial? False promise? Ignorant idolatry?  Nonsense.  Beauty is as beauty does, beauty rules, and she was enjoying every minute. 

The Doors To The Insane Asylum Open - And A Former Inmate Finds A Political Home In Washington

Harlan Banks had been interned for nearly a decade at the State Psychiatric Hospital.  His case for release had come before the Board of Supervisors a number of times, but since the necessary unanimous decision was never reached, he remained in the hospital. 

Harlan's illness began early, but the symptoms were too generalized in the population of young boys to be noticed as anything special or warranting attention - dismembering insects until they died on a skewer, electrocuting frogs with the transformer of his Lionel train set, crushing robins' eggs and writing 'shit' on Mrs. Helander's front door. 

A matter of discipline was all it was, nothing more serious; and although his erratic behavior had been noticed by the nuns at St. Maurice, the teachers at his elementary school, the bus driver, and the local patrolman, Mr. and Mrs. Banks sought no counsel.  A behavioral issue, a matter of early adolescent rebellion, the sign of a curious mind, they agreed. 

When in a PTA meeting his parents were advised that their son's behavior went beyond a reasonable doubt, and they might consider professional guidance, they had to face facts.  Their son was not normal, a hard pill to swallow for a family which prided itself on right behavior, prudence, and sociability.  

Perhaps most importantly, neither Mr. or Mrs. Banks had any disturbing behavior in their family history - if you discounted Uncle Harry, as nutty as a fruitcake but genteel, telling off-color jokes at Christmas dinner, wearing fright wigs at the weddings of people he never cared for, and wandering around Corbin Square in the middle of the night. 

No, Harlan's parents agreed, old Uncle Harry might be batty, but genes don't travel that way.  He was his own, lovable fool who had nothing to do with their boy.  Yet, the mystery of their son's increasingly mental behavior was always on their mind, and they finally decided to seek professional advice. 

After the personal interview with Harlan, the child psychologist frowned, and told the nervous parents that there was nothing serious to worry about, just a mild 'dissociative dissonance'.  In layman's terms, the boy was having trouble 'processing' and was circling about in his own world, trying to make sense of things most people had already figured out.  Watch and see, he said, and come back in three months. 

This was in the days before overdiagnosis and over-prescription, so the Banks did not leave the office with any medical conclusion or drugs to address the problem. The situation only got worse.  The boy was given to strange out-of-body experiences, claiming astral projection, whirling like a dervish in the rose garden, and howling at the moon in the middle of the night. 

His schoolwork suffered and his parents were told that he was too disruptive to remain.  It was time, they realized, for serious professional care.  Fortunately they lived near a major teaching hospital, one renowned for its psychiatric service. Dr. Fein, the Chief Attending Physician in the Department of Child Psychiatry, agreed to take the case, and Harlan began intensive counselling almost immediately. 

Dr. Fein and his staff were able to corral and tether most of the boy's aberrant behavior, so much so that he was able to complete an online high school program and be admitted to the county's junior college.  

He managed reasonable well there except for the occasional fugues where he bolted loose of the emotional restraints which bound him, and go amok - not in any way dangerous to himself or to others, but still concerning.  He had read a book on the ancient Aztecs who incorporated the spirit of wild animals and fought as panthers, cheetahs, and wolves in their battles with enemy tribes, and felt that he too could become the animals of the wild.  Whooping and hollering, hopping and jumping, crawling on all fours, he was found by the County police on a number of occasions lapping water out of the catchment basin of the Patriots' Fountain. 

Psychiatry and drugs having no effect on the young man, his parents had no choice but to agree to commit him to the state hospital where, as mentioned, he spent a number of years.  Thanks to progressive policies which had their birth in Washington, but were adopted statewide, most patients of the hospital were released, ready or not, and the community at large was asked to welcome them. 

Now, Harlan's 'aberrations' had quieted during his stay at the hospital - his animal ravings were few and far between, he ate from a plate with knife and fork, and could make sense like a normal human being; and so his elision into society was easier than for others.  The hospital out-patient services helped find him employment, and he managed to make a go of a normal life. 

It was then that he was contacted by a member of his Congressman's social welfare committee.  The Congressman was one of a group of progressives who insisted that the mentally 'other-abled' were as worthy of inclusion in the party's DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity) policy as black men or transgenders, and he needed a poster boy for his efforts.  The hospital recommended Harlan - a young man of reasonable intelligence who was still significantly disturbed but quite manageable.  He might do the trick. 

And so it was that Harlan was invited to Washington to serve as an intern in the Congressman's office, to help translate his mental experiences into legislative terms, and even to speak on certain occasions.  He would be an advocate for inclusion into the mainstream, an example of how the mentally ill should not be pariahs but members in good standing of society. 

Now, despite Harlan's outward composure, he was still as batty as could be.  He had visions, often fantastical ones of harpies and ghouls and others of Turkish harems in which he was a pasha in a sultan's palace, and he often painted himself with great mustaches and beards and marched around his room holding an elm branch as a royal scepter.  He was no more competent to serve in any official capacity as the man in the moon but such was the ethos of the progressive party - anything goes in a world of infinite diversity. 

At first his female colleagues kept him at arms length, fearful that he might lose his marbles and go after them in some fantasy of the Rape of the Sabine Women, but then he became not only accepted but a valued partner. His observations were regarded as unique, particularly insightful, and relevant - something that 'normal' people were incapable of.  There was something about the untethered mind that allowed for special perception and understanding. 

His ramblings about the natural world - the law of tooth and claw in particular - were considered metaphorically accurate.  Conservatives in their eagerness for battle had reverted to the law of the jungle and were no better than wolves.  His vivid descriptions of the savagery of the plains, the evisceration of the kill, the aggressiveness of the beasts were clearly about Israel's own inhumanity in Gaza and Donald Trump's massacre of thousands in Iran. 

Somehow Harlan's peculiar mental disability gave him unusual clarity - not logic by any means, but a sharp vision.  He could actually see lions ripping organs out of wildebeests or eagles ripping the hearts out of their prey.

When he looked out over an audience gathered to hear the Congressman talk about diversity, the superior, natural, tribal energy of the black man, the new age of sexuality ushered in by the transgender, he could see a primeval scene of flying pterodactyls, thundering triceratops, and hundred foot long snakes. 

When the Congressman addressed a group of black people he could only see them naked whooping and hollering around a fire, shaking their spears and raising their arms to an animist god.  If it was to a group of gay men and lesbian women, he saw an orgy of sucking, buggering, scissoring, and muff-diving as vivid as scenes from a Fellini movie. 

He didn't just imagine these scenes, they became real. The audience had been transformed by his power. 

Again, who is to say what mechanisms control the addled brain, and as soon as the Congressman ended his plea, the audience in Harlan's eyes returned to normal, and in the few words that he was expected to say, he offered encouragement, counsel, and good will. 

He was welcomed by all divergent groups as one of their own, and for that the Congressman received warm praise.  He had done his job and then some. 

When the mechanisms that were keeping his insanity in check began to falter, and he was given to tics, shakes, and Tourette's outbursts, nothing was thought of it.  If they, good progressives, had included him in their community, then it was unconscionable to criticize him for his diversity. Even when his meanderings became incomprehensible - no intimation of metaphor was possible - and his behavior became side show erratic, they said nothing.  This deranged, unhinged, wild man was just as welcome as a ghetto queen, pimp, or San Francisco bathhouse male whore.  

When word got around the Congressman's constituency that he had a wacko on his staff who had become one of his closest advisors, and this word got back to him, he realized that perhaps he had gone too far, and Harlan was progressively deleted from the program and finally cashiered.  Progressivism is one thing, but electoral victory is another. 

Harlan hardly knew the difference, so completely around the bend that he was after leaving Washington.  He couldn't tell heads from tails, shit from Shinola and the world was just one jumble of outlandish visions.  He finally was scooped up by the mental dog catchers - the nasty name for the outreach service of the state hospital - and interned once again.  There really was no other place for him, but for him it was no different than Congress, so he was as happy as a clam. 

A White Woman Marries An African Man - And Finds That Diversity Is Not All It's Cracked Up To Be

Vicki was not old, but not young either.  She was moderately attractive and intelligent, reasonably successful, but unlucky in love.  Time was passing and no good man had come her way.

Vicki was also a committed progressive and for years had fought for the rights of the black man who, she and her colleagues believed, was soon to be back atop the human pyramid where he belonged.  A sentient being of the African forest, attuned to nature, of primal intelligence, tribal loyalties, strength, and natural virtue, nothing but racism kept him from his anointed place. 

She had fought long and hard for racial justice, had called out systemic white racism, joined the forces of Black Lives Matter, voted for every racial reform that the DC city council proposed, and tried her best to integrate within black society. 

This last goal proved difficult. Washington was no different than Botha's South African apartheid (east of Rock Creek park black, west of the park white; north-south busses white, east-west busses black) and as much as she tried to befriend black people, the door slammed shut before she could get her foot in.  The very identity politics that she and her progressive colleagues had promoted gave black people license to swarm together and keep white people out.

And to be honest Vicki was afraid of the ghetto - a nasty, horrid place of ho's, pimps, drugs, and violence despite the inherent, innate superiority of the black man - and although she had no doubt that the miasma would soon lift, the inner city would become the social and cultural center of America, and life would be better for all, she hesitated to set foot across the Anacostia river. 

She hated herself for such timidity and hypocrisy.  How could a woman who stood for racial justice and the dignity and honor of the black man not be willing to go where he lived?  Yet her better judgement told her to stay clear, to remain a loyal activist from afar, no less passionate, but far safer. 

None of this dimmed her desire to be with black people, to live the diversity and inclusivity that she had always promoted, and to join them in their struggle, their culture, and their way of life.  Perhaps most of all she wondered what it would be like to be loved by a black man.

Although she rejected the stereotype of black men as sexual dervishes, more well endowed, confident, and eager than whites, she knew that there had to be a scintilla of truth to it as there was in all stereotypes. 

She had never been satisfied by white men who had been whipped like slaves by feminism and MeToo charlatanry into timid, hesitant lovers.  Again, it was the fault of her and her radically progressive sisters, but the law of unintended consequences has no limits. 

When she asked her neighbor, a World Bank economist whose countries were all in Africa, where she might go on her African journey (she did not confide in him the real reason but talked only of cultural diversity and historical interest), he said, 'Don't bother'. 

Vicki would never have taken him for a prejudiced man.  The World Bank after all had a development mission to raise the poor out of poverty, to improve its socio-economic and judicial systems, and to hasten Africa's emergence as a legitimate member of the commonwealth of nations.  Wasn't that mission enough to dispel any thoughts of prejudice?

One by one the economist reeled off Africa's failures.  From top to bottom, east to west, the continent was failed space, ruled by big men in arbitrary, autocratic rule; socially backward, tribal, primitive, and medieval; venal, corrupt, and morally empty. 

Vicki couldn't believe her ears.  What racism will do to an otherwise intelligent mind.  The economist was blind to the truth and had become hardened with prejudice and racial hatred. 

The tour companies were less critical but more diffident than she expected. Lindblad, Avalon, Abercrombie & Kent, Trafalgar, and others had nothing on tap for the kind of sub-Saharan cultural tour she had in mind, but could possibly configure a personalized tour for her.  In the meantime, why didn't she consider something much more interesting, like a Nile cruise or a Serengeti safari?

She found a tour company which was delighted at her request.  They were proud of their eclecticism, their adventurous spirit, and their encouragement of off-the grid travel.  To be sure they could not offer the luxury of the big companies, but their experience would be far more rewarding.  They promised her 'an insider's tour of Africa' where she would be free to roam and at the same time would be well-taken care of. 

Her eagerness was such that she failed to dig any deeper than the agent's promotional pitch. Had she given even a cursory look she would have found that Ottaway Tours had filed for bankruptcy twice, recovered, repositioned themselves, rearranged their priorities, and rejiggered management. However no one but the most naive Americans hoping for adventure on the cheap, would have looked at Ottaway Tours. 

Vicki was one of these credulous, idealistic Americans, and Ottaway Tours said that they would fashion the tour to meet her particular, personal objectives.  When she said she wanted to meet 'ordinary' Africans for friendship and even intimacy, the tour agent immediately understood her meaning.  From start to finish she would be guided to the most popular African watering holes where the best and the brightest Africans meet.  

The bar at the Amitie Hotel in Abidjan was one of those places.  Wealthy Ivoirians from Yamoussoukro, the new capital far inland, came to the more cosmopolitan coast for a reprieve, and gathered at the Amitie and the Palm Bar to meet and greet, drink with old friends and meet new ones.  It was a sophisticated place with an Olympic-size pool, illuminated at night, festive, and filled with beautiful people. 

 

'Why not start there?', the tour organizers agreed; and so it was that Vicki was housed in a modest hotel somewhere between the foreign enclaves of Le Plateau and Treichville, the popular center of town.  It was far enough from white privilege and close enough to native reality to give Vicki the impression that she was finally in Africa. 

After a quick wash and freshening after the long flight, she was met by an Ottaway agent who brought her to the Palm Bar, deposited her, gracefully left and promised to pick her up when she called. 

It was there that she met Ibrahim who showed her every courtesy, every bit of African generosity, charm, and attention.  This could only augur well, she thought, meeting such a wonderful, attractive African man on her first night in the country; and went back to the hotel feeling happier than she had been in a long time. 

Now, Ibrahim was not just an incidental African, but a businessman, one who like his Nigerian counterparts was a master of the scam.  However he did not deal in financial instruments, but in women.  Vicki was not the first American woman to come to Africa looking for bi-cultural adventure, men, and political justification.  

His conquests, however had only been partial.  He was given gifts, bought five-star dinners, and paid generous emoluments by eager women, but his goal - to marry well and go to America - had not yet been realized. 

Vicki was so blinkered by her desire to meet real black men that she was as careless about her male company as she was about her choice of tour agencies.  She was delighted with Ibrahim, found him cultured, sophisticated, attentive, and overwhelmingly sexy.  

They were all like this, these American women, Ibrahim learned early on. He was delighted that his American brothers had done the prep work.  With women like Vicki who were convinced that Africa was the cultural motherlode and that African men were soon to sit in the citadel of honor, seduction was a piece of cake. 

Vicki was a wealthy woman who had recently inherited stock in both Amazon and Nvidia, and was easily able to extend her stay in country.  Cote d'Ivoire Immigration had no problem extending her visa, delighted as they were to see American tourism increase after so many years of civil unrest.  

And so it was that she and Ibrahim became an item, and coaxed by him to upgrade into his real Africa, she moved to a suite at the Amitie overlooking the ocean with all the amenities of a first class stay.  

Ibrahim stayed with her there, and after a month of growing intimacy, the ultimate prize - marriage - was broached.  She would travel with him up country to meet his mother and his family, they would be married in a village ceremony and then one officiated the American consul, and would then sail to America. 

Vicki couldn't believe her good fortune.  God had indeed smiled upon her.  She had not only found her man but found an African one! 

After arriving in America and moving from her small apartment in Dupont Circle to a more spacious home in McClean, Ibrahim continued the scam he had learned so well, and with his Nigerian lawyer worked out a very favorable financial partnership with his new wife.  

When his residency was well established, his marriage official and documented, and his financial future set, he announced his departure.  He took thousands of dollars from their joint account and secured it in an Aruban offshore bank account, redeemed the millions of dollars of Amazon and Nvidia stock he had had cannily transferred to himself, and disappeared. 

He had done nothing wrong - he did not steal anything nor had he taken anything that didn't belong to him so he was not a wanted man, just a rich one thanks to - yes, his native intelligence, cultural superiority, social sophistication, and primal African sentience. 

Vicki's World Bank neighbor wanted to say, 'See, what did I tell you?' when he learned from his colleagues what had happened to her, but held his tongue.  She had learned a hard lesson, and would never forget it. 

However, he underestimated her progressive idealism and true belief in the rise of the black man.  The misfortune was entirely her fault, she admitted.  She was too smitten, too much a naive, desirous woman, too much in thrall to men and sexually deprived, too ambitious in her desire to champion blackness to protect herself. 

Some thought that this was an example of Christian charity, forgiveness, and absolution.  She had made peace with herself, had forgiven her predator, and returned to the higher values of life.  

The reality was far different.  Once afflicted by cultural myopia and infected with an untouchable idealism, her return to the canon of social reform was a given.  Ibrahim was her doing, not the black man's, not Africa’s.

Back in Abidjan, Ibrahim's family was delighted with their monthly checks from America and were as proud as punch over the success of their brother.  He was a true hero and his fame spread far upriver, encouraging young men to make the trip to the capital and to try their luck with white women. 

A development success story, not exactly the kind envisaged by the World Bank or USAID, but a success story nonetheless.