Both beauty and intellect convey power, but a woman might find a career as an entertainer far more
profitable than as a financier.
Dear Dr. Bill: I have to say I take some umbrage at the association of an entertainment career with a lower intellect. Intellect, depth, and talent are always the key ingredients that make certain performers true artists that transcend and jump out from the rest and reach the hearts and better the lives of millions with their work (see Judy Garland, see Joni Mitchell). I know you may not have intended it to sound that way. But since it did to an extent, and as someone who has spent a good part of his life onstage, I had to point out that the idea of entertainers of any gender being equated with a lower intellect makes me bristle...and is just a silly notion. Actually the gift of rhythm and feeling required for transforming music, acting, dance, etc. into art usually denotes a heightened intellect, even in those who choose to sell-out their integrity and perform at shallow levels for the almighty buck (sadly, these are the ones who usually do themselves in with booze or drugs, etc...hell, even Elvis was frustrated at the level of artistry his image entrapped him with, thus his self-destructive early demise). But I bet one of those old bluesmen like Mississippi John Hurt could talk circles of philosophy, albeit in simpler words, around any one of us here!
>Remember, when someone gets a blackeye we say, "You've got a beaut! A strange connotation!
>"I love life. But I don't love life because it is pretty. Prettiness is only clothes-deep. I am a truer lover than that. I love it naked. There is beauty to me even in its ugliness. In fact, I deny the ugliness entirely, for its vices are often nobler than its virtues, and nearly always closer to a revelation....
To me, the tragic alone has that significant beauty which is truth. It is the meaning of life--and the hope. The noblest is eternally the most tragic. The people who succeed and do not push on to a greater failure are the spiritual middle-classers. Their stopping at success is the proof of their compromising insignificance. How petty their dreams must have been!"
--Eugene O'Neill, from the biography by Barbara and Arthur Gelb
