What “Body Ritual in the Nacimera" Got Wrong

 “Damn, babe, with all the makeup you bought, you could’ve already bought yourself a Ferrari.’
‘Do you use makeup?’
‘No.’
‘Then where’s your Ferrari?’”

Albert Einstein, apparently, wore the same outfit every day of the week to limit decision fatigue—saving all his brainpower for science. Once I envied this one-track drive for intellect. Now I just feel pity.

Truthfully, the biggest lie that modern capitalism has sold us is that of minimalism.

Albert Miner’s piece “Body Ritual Among the Nacimera” criticizes the American culture of obsession with appearance. And alongside “The Pink Plastic Flamingo: A Natural History” by Jennifer Price, it was only one of the several essays we have read this week criticizing that same quality, of flash over substance, a culture whose ostentatiousness was exactly the indicator of hollow nothing inside. The flamingo cannot be bright pink and flashy for its own purposes. We always seek to justify our desire—indeed our instinct—for visual aesthetics. We cannot see something shiny and leave well enough alone; it must prove its worth beneath its first impression, otherwise, conversely, it can only be something evil.

Why isn’t beauty its own point?

In nature, we gravitate toward it—male peacocks preen their feathers to attract female mates. The thing is—in the race of survival, it costs precious energy to be showy. Being visually pleasing is unnecessary; but then it is precisely a signal of enough capacity for basic survival functions, a capacity which has then overflowed. Beauty is a biological indicator of excess. It is a symptom of substance, not one of its absence.

In the 1990s, Steve Jobs was able to dominate the electronics market by focusing on sleek, user-friendly design; making his products more accessible, as well as aesthetic—appealing to our innate desire for beauty. The technology was nothing revolutionary, only its presentation, which then became revolutionary in itself. But when the same lesson is applied to other parts of society—and many with misogynistic and patriarchal undertones—where does it vanish? We condemn vanity; and especially, we ridicule women for caring about their appearance, deeming them shallow, vapid, vain, insecure, superficial, promiscuous. There is something to be said about the corruption of society culture that chains a woman’s self-worth solely to their appearance. But what about the people who point fingers and roll their eyes in passing? How much of it is our mental coping for our own insecurities? And the root of that, which can only be that we recognize beauty as a gift, and an advantage?

Minimalism is slow regression: our streets are filled with gray, homogenous apartment buildings, forests and green spaces cleared, the machine forever oiled for maximum efficiency. Maximum simplicity. As elementary as it can go without losing a semblance of its basic executive functions. Minimalism’s greatest desire is for monotone—the antithesis of the baptism of beauty. Research has found that looking at boring, homogenous things makes us bored and uncomfortable, which is linked to higher heart rates and stress levels. On the other hand, individual happiness has surprisingly been connected with how beautiful one finds the city they live in, scoring higher than even cleanliness or safety. “Beauty meets an inherent need for meaningful information,” says the YouTube channel Kurzgesagt—In a Nutshell. The dull, drab propaganda of capitalism has simply indoctrinated us into suppressing the very quality we crave.

Beauty is not a trade-off, not a compromise, not superfluous. Why should we not desire it? It is a reward in itself.