Eye of the beholder

I miss a day, and you all send me links to stuff that's gross. The bugs were the closest thing to wholesome. Another correspondent sent me a link to a Damned Thing too horrible to even describe, much less link.

Fine! I'll give you links to pictures of pretty girls!

Unablogger maintains a very odd blog: it's a series of links to interesting weblogs, many of them political, without any commentary ... except for pairing each link with a picture of a slender, naked, surgically enhanced young woman. There's something weirdly fascinating about it: it seems like there's a philosophy behind it, but it's not possible to discern what that philosophy is.

If your tastes in pretty girls are less conventional than that, one of the charms of the confluence of postmodern subcultural fragmentation together with the internet is that someone else out there shares your aesthetic priorities. A quick visit to Gothic Babe of the Week or Hot Goth will show you girl after girl who would never be picked for the cheerleading squad -- for lack of curves, tan, blonde hair, or a button nose -- but is a goddess in her chosen world o' style.

Or think about the rockabilly world, where a little clever accessorizing gives character and appeal to a young woman who would otherwise be ''plain.'' Many of the '50s-ish clothes wouldn't look right on someone who wears a dress smaller than a size fourteen. Now that is a meaningful victory over aesthetic cultural hegemony.