Beauty Beheld: A Retelling of Hansel and Gretel (The Classical Kingdoms Collection Book 3)

Product Information

They represent archetypes we may aspire to, but for the most part, the images themselves can only be achieved through a great deal of effort and a certain amount of illusion.

The woman who takes this approach to self-presentation might be just as much—or just as little—a “freak between the sheets” as her more publicly sexual forerunners. You’re not seen as complete unless you’re having sex, and plenty of it, and in just the right ways—for all the sexual permissiveness we’ve come to grant ourselves, there are still just as many ways to get sex wrong.The first time it happened, I was in Hell’s Kitchen, steeling myself against whatever the man walking toward me was sure to say. It hadn’t yet occurred to me that the skin of the women on those bulletins was suspiciously light for a woman of the Levant; my skepticism, it seemed, only went so far. The fact that their looks garner each of them a generous amount of attention becomes almost secondary; it just lets them get away with absorbing the gaze of others in a way that doesn't seem desperate.

Certainly I don’t want a world where we can’t express our sexuality through the way we look—we’ve been there, and it didn’t work. There are so many oppositional ideas about how beauty affects people out there: You've got men who are genuinely surprised when they meet a woman who manages to be both beautiful and brilliant, you've got people who assume beautiful people have it easy because "everything is handed to them," you've got people shaking their heads about how hard gorgeous women have it because other women supposedly hate them so much.

And cannily executed, an endorsement, particularly a celebrity endorsement, can be effective if the consumer sees a reflection of herself in the spokesperson. Yet even within this odious framework, I appreciate their commitment to at least thinking through the evolutionary logistics. You will remember the name Patience Christine Hampton from now on because it will haunt you in your motherfucking nightmares for the rest of your miserable, delusional life!