"Women who are admired as beauties risk dismissal as brains. But Didion was both. It was non-negotiable: it was impossible to dismiss her words, and it was impossible to ignore her looks. Like her words, they were spare, elegant, and arresting...."
From "Joan Didion’s Priceless Sunglasses/An auction of the writer’s possessions is further confirmation of how, for Didion, style was not surface but essence" by Roxana Robinson (The New Yorker).
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Hmmm I looked for pics of hot Didion, but didn't find any. Im not saying they don't exist, just couldn't find any.
Yeah because women are well known for liking men to disagree with them.
>""(The mother of Marina Warner...used to ask her, 'Why do you keep disagreeing with men? They don’t like it, you know.')""<
...She said - of a universal human trait.
My own favorite is "Our Black Foremothers."
"Brilliant and beautiful"? Sexist much?
She was very cute 50 years ago, but can you imagine some male intellectual being described as "brilliant and handsome"?
There is nothing that precludes a woman from being beautiful and brainy. Most of us who make (or made, in my case) a living in the real world know that already.
OTOH, Joan Didion as a beauty? Not since the 1960s at the most recent.
Not bad looking, but not a beauty. The seemingly constant smoking does not help.
Joan Didion? Elegant? Roxana Robinson must have an extremely odd definition of that. She had smoker’s face at an early age, and it got progressively worse as she aged.
Ah, but smoking was so cool and feminine and elegant back then!
Almost all her early photos were posed with cigarette in hand. Hard to find celebrities of today, even the known chain smokers, posing with their vices.
I’ve not seen any of her screenplays nor read any of her novels or nonfiction. She’s one of those celebrities who’s an adored celebrity among the elite, ignored by the masses.
War of the worlds: Venus and Mars.
"Marina Warner, the beautiful and brilliant English cultural historian"
Not sure about at least one of the adjectives. But a certain kind of brilliance can enhance beauty.
"it was impossible to ignore her looks"
Elegant, arresting, yes, but beautiful?
Rich, spoiled women bitching about nothing.
And they say stereotypes aren’t true.
Style and beauty can overlap, but they aren't the same. Of all the people mentioned in that New Yorker article, the only one who was strikingly beautiful in her day was Marina Warner's mother, Ilia. She was born in Italy in the 1920s, so it's no surprise that she had old-fashioned ideas.
Only betas are intimidated by intelligent women. For alphas, intelligence in females reads as beauty. Just ask Jordan Peterson.
Didion was quite attractive in her youth, but the comment may be as much about her "look" in the singular. She had fashion sense, even in her later years, and fashion, appearance, and status detail play a role in her work. Didion won a Vogue contest shortly after Sylvia Plath won a Mademoiselle contest. I expect a book or essay or play will come out about the two of them someday. There's the unavoidable question of living so long or cutting life short.
Talking too much about alphas and betas means you're a beta.
I wish this post were about Hedy LaMarr.
Smoking gives you a nice buzz for writing too. Chain smokin and crankin out the pages.
Their dirty little secret.
I loved Joan Didion though.
"Women who are admired as beauties risk dismissal as brains."
Not a felicitous way of putting it. "Women who are admired as thinkers risk dismissal as tits and ass."
Another entry in the gag inducing “every woman is beautiful” cliché?
can you imagine some male intellectual being described as "brilliant and handsome"?
No, but I've always been impressed that Edwin Hubble was a boxer :) Isaac Newton also.
It's a puff piece about belly-button gazing.
Netflix has a Didion Doc - The Center Will Not Hold
Neither Didion or Warner were 'beauties'. Kate Cambridge is arrestingly beautiful and plenty smart. My girlfriend in high school was stunning and brilliant. Her dad was the head of the physics department at Bennington. She got his brains. Either of those women could disagree with me to their heart's content, and melty bliss would be my response. I'm easy that way.
- Krumhorn
Funny, I just finished reading Portrait of a Lady, wherein Isabel Archer admits to herself that she fooled Osmond by acting more simple and innocent at first, so that after they married he was appalled to find she had a mind and opinions of her own.
Tragedy ensues.
I mean what's a girl to do.
Who are these women who refrain from disagreeing? Where are they found?
I don't know if Didion had a sad life, but it seems that way to me. Her only child died not long after Didion's husband died. Didion herself suffered from bad health--migraines, MS. And now her possessions auctioned off; shades of Scrooge.
I had to look at the byline to see if it had been written by Virginia Postrel. (It was not.) I had enjoyed her book, The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness, and its follow-ups more than I had expected.
I mean what's a girl to do.
Beats me. I've had girl friends with IQs of 168 and 175, maybe they found me appalling :)
Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman were quite the Lotharios.
For Didion, "style was not surface but essence"? I guess for the New Yorker these days, this might seem like a profound truth. Or an editorial ideal, anyway. Seems pretty surface to me.
The man is a fool or fooled.
The man is a fool or fooled. The woman is a fool or foolish. They deserve each other.
"Beauty doesn’t challenge men, but intelligence does."
Why does this trope keep getting repeated as if an immutable law of physics? It ain't true, at least in my lifetime (same age as Ann). I've never known a man I respected who wasn't delighted to meet a super smart woman, especially if she was also attractive.
"Women who are admired as beauties risk dismissal as brains.”
The article gives examples of neither; it ignores the golden rule of writing: show, don’t tell. But among the fluff is the nugget that her library was full of Hemingway, Updike, and Roth. I give a girl a lot of credit for that, especially now that dead white males have been practically banished from our “culture.“
but can you imagine some male intellectual being described as "brilliant and handsome"?
Famous mathematical genius John Nash, subject of the book A Beautiful Mind, was described as “looking like a Greek god” in his twenties and early thirties, before he developed schizophrenia. The book was made into a movie starring Russell Crowe, but if you look at pictures of Nash as a young man he was quite a bit more handsome than Crowe.
Women who are admired as beauties risk dismissal as brains.
Because beauties with brains are rare. Wait, let me explain....
Finding two highly desirable traits in a single person is statistically unlikely. For example top 10% in looks and top 10% in intelligence? NOT a 50-50 chance.
Secondly, great beauty voids some of the NEED to develop intellect. Same thing for other highly desirable traits. Why are there so few brilliant athletes in, say, the NBA? Because, IMO, a LOT of these guys were identified as demigods in junior high because of their motor skills. Why would you crack the books when the world is being tossed at your feet?
Me? I'd trade a good deal of looks for brains in the women I find most attractive. Fortunately I did not have to compromise either in my partner.
I'm not sure I've ever read a word she wrote. . . .
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