The Molotov Cocktail of Beauty

This week has been a bellwether one, a critical moment in a year that has already seen so much. A week that has left us, once again, gray with worry and fear. There is a temptation, at this point, to craft a calendar of grim antipathy, one with black and white lines drawn, and dates stamped with newsprint and vitriol. And there is a place for that. Bad things are happening.

But this week too celebrated the Grammy’s with a dazzling display of power, of voice, of wit, and style. And this week, in New York City, the 80th edition of NYFW is kicking off, already showcasing a dreamscape of vision, beauty, and new ideas of what beauty might be.

Some may call all of this a childish distraction, a dopamine hit to mollify our bigger fears. A pretty little cartoon playing on our devices while Rome burns behind us. I disagree. Fear robs us of our most powerful fantasies and stunts the imagination – the very thing that makes us human beings. It chokes off the light we all carry deep inside us. This is why we need beauty more than ever right now – I believe that beauty is the very stone upon which we can sharpen the blade of an axe called hope.

I quote Toni Morrison:
“I think of beauty as an absolute necessity. I don’t think it’s a privilege or an indulgence, it’s not even a quest. I think it’s almost like knowledge, which is to say, it’s what we were born for. I think finding, incorporating and then representing beauty is what humans do. With or without authorities telling us what it is, I think it would exist in any case.

The startle and the wonder of being in this place. This overwhelming beauty—some of it is natural, some of it is man-made, some of it is casual, some of it is a mere glance—is an absolute necessity. I don’t think we can do without it any more than we can do without dreams or oxygen."
To seek beauty and to be beautiful right now is to be brave. It is to stand out in an empty field and say, look at me, acknowledge my dreams. It lets us be loud. It lets us be here, right now.

I wonder if the greatest act of rebellion we can all make right now is to embrace that which is beautiful. To flaunt our own gorgeousness out in the cold February air. To revel in the flashing mosaic of a wild and varied humanity, one limited only by our own imaginations. The enemy asks that we flatten ourselves, that we retract into some brittle homogeny that has only one color and only one voice. We know better.

So I dare you all – launch that grenade: go, be so goddam beautiful that no one can look away. Let’s be gorgeous together.