Another Name For A Rose

There was a genuinely beautiful woman on the treadmill to my left this morning. Not a speck of make-up, hair pulled back, her posture was excellent and her bones exquisite. She smelled like a cow pat on a hot day. The funny thing is, she was so pretty it didn’t occur to me that she was the source of the odor until she left and it stopped.

Now class, what do we learn from this? Not much, really. It’s a gym. People go there to sweat. Duh. I mean, Q.E.D.

Still, we can smack our preconceptions around a little. Our culture deifies prettiness, so we expect pretty people to be somehow superior. They’re not. They’re no different from the rest of us, but a lifetime of advertising makes us forget that. Subconsciously we expect our toothpaste to make people like us, our paper towels to improve our cooking and air freshener to make our families behave better. Don’t get me started on feminine hygiene products.

Similarly, we expect pretty people to be exempt from our indignities. I remind myself that the phrase “His shit don’t stink” was never meant as a compliment.