it’s okay to notice when rich people look like garbage
Continuing our sub-theme of Rich People Studies, the new Mrs. Bezos looked like shit at her wedding, and I’m not afraid to say it. In fact, I think it’s important to do so. In the last 5-10 years I’ve run into a certain Thing online—and sometimes in real life—in which good-hearted liberals and leftists insist that you’re not supposed to criticize physical appearances, especially women’s looks, regardless of the situation. This is an outgrowth, I think, of responses to misogyny, fatphobia, and ableism, but the situation has mushroomed totally out of control if you can’t criticize the new Mrs. Bezos. And I did indeed see nice worried liberals, passing around photos of Lauren Sanchez Bezos’ terrible outfits at her wedding in Venice, saying “I didn’t mean that this was an open invitation to criticize her looks!”
First of all, there’s simple hypocrisy in play: if you’re sharing a photo of a rich person on social media with “wow this looks terrible,” there’s no chance you’re restricting the criticism merely to “wow this outfit looks terrible” rather than the face or body of the person wearing the clothes in question. Faces and bodies are also sculpted by money; Mrs. Bezos’ famous “snatched waist” is undoubtedly due to long hours at the gym—and more esoteric treatments—as well as corseting.
And here’s the thing: if you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit by me.1 Talking shit about terrible lewks is a time-honored sport, a tradition, dare I say a legacy. And telling us that we can’t, that talking shit is wrong, is frankly h o m o p ho b i c. Pride month may be over but the library is still open, and bitches need to get read. And Lauren Sanchez Bezos isn’t some random lady whom we’ve randomly choosen to mock online. She married one of the richest men in the world who mostly earned his money by making other people work for pennies in dangerous, discriminatory environments; they had one of the most expensive weddings in history, and she had the temerity to look like trash at it.
All of these photos are from the New York Times, which ran one of their typical fawning style pieces where they pretend bad things are good things, lapping at the feet of power as usual. This is simply what the New York Times does; if aliens landed and took over the planet, they would fall all over themselves to praise silver rayon or whatever the aliens are wearing, or how great the probes feel in their asses, and actually the science shows that ass probes are healthy for you and the NYT has covered it that way all along. For the moment, the NYT is staring us dead in the eye and telling us that the Bezoses are our gods, and actually they look fantastic.
It’s genuinely difficult to look this bad. And say what you like about the rich people of the past; say what you like about the Medicis and the Borgias, for example, they knew how to serve some fucking style with their murders. That this wedding happened in Venice—and yet we still aren’t supposed to talk shit about rich people’s lewks??? In VENICE? Please. If you go to Venice you need to serve face, or masks, or something. Lauren Sanchez Bezos wasn’t serving anything besides money. All you can say about her gowns—the ones worn at the wedding and at her various public appearances before it—is that they’re clearly expensive; many hours went into snatching these waists, both her own hard labor and the painstaking effort of many hands sewing. That’s it. There’s no style or cohesion besides the slenderness of one feature and a certain dull sleaze. She manages to convey both skank and frump at once; the mistress you leave your wife for and the wife you’re sick of at the same time. I guess embodying the Madonna/whore complex at the same time would be kind of interesting, if it were deliberate, which it isn’t.
Look: these people suck. We don’t have to like them; we don’t have to respect them; we don’t have to admire them; we don’t have to feel sorry for them. The nicest thing I can say about our current crop of rich people is that I hope they die. I mean it: I truly do hope they die. They’re a waste of the earth’s good resources, just like those gowns are a waste of good fabric.2
I’ve heard many variations of this quote, and it’s been attributed to many people including Dorothy Parker and Olympia Dukakis, but apparently the correct version is “If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.” It was originally spoken by Alice Roosevelt Longsworth, Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter.
Somewhat good fabric. That red gauze/chiffon/whatever was a disaster start to finish.
Fun fact about Teddy’s daughter Alice: her dad was approached by other powerful men who asked him to reign in her behavior and he responded that he could either run the country or control Alice but certainly not manage both. The public loved her and called her Princess Alice.
Rich people don't have any taste (even if they pay people to style them or decorate their houses or whatever) and they certainly don't keep people around them who are honest enough to tell them they look like shit. Thank you for taking on this labor!