February 1st, 2011 / 7:03 pm
Random

2 girls and 1 song

I had to google “Ke$ha,” and now I know she’s a singer, and that “Tik Tok” is a song of hers. Amy is really pretty and sings the song relatively well, lending a folkly sensibility to a hip-hopish song. In the comments, guys say they love her, and that she’s really beautiful. Katie, conventionally speaking, is pretty ugly, and doesn’t sing the song that well. Due to her weight problem, she speaks and sings in that “fat” way that sounds like gasping for air. I’m not trying to be mean, or exploit  Katie. I’ve just been obsessed with these two clips for awhile. I want this post to be about how deep down inside Katie is a great person and how deep down inside Amy is some bitch, but that would be presumptuous and unfounded. You might want this post to be about how I see beauty in Katie, perhaps even a humane fumbling truth, but I don’t. We all want songs to sound good, and for people to look good. The videos are “related,” so many of the guys who said they love Amy were also really 2x mean to Katie in the comments. One guy even said his dick fell off. I once had dinner with a friend, among other friends, and she said how attractive everyone was, not in a flirty way, but a self-satisfied way. I remember being disgusted by that comment, and felt sad for this world. I know I sound like god damn Holden Caulfield right now, but I think I’m frozen at age 17, save my hair line. Everything I’m saying is obvious. I’m a hypocrite. I like James Joyce and hot chicks. I guess I’m saying I wish I weren’t shallow. And dare I say, I wish you weren’t shallow either. I wish I liked Tom Clancy and Thomas Kincade. I wish the dollar symbol wasn’t “cool.” I wish we’d all stop trying to fuck hot people. I hate sexy, and I’m starting to hate sex. But Morrissey ruined celibacy for me. I hope Katie is a happy person. This post has depressed me.

12 Comments

  1. Anonymous

      My default setting is to hate beautiful people who are also really talented. I wish I knew a fix for that.

      But a lack of self-awareness is also something that bothers me on a preconscious level. Katie seems rather young, so it wasn’t really the case here, but I think I was hoping for some heart-wrenching subtext in her video about how shitty the world is (which is a class of snobbery all its own, I guess). Anyway, it was just boring and pretty bad.

      I do wonder, however, if the implication of (cultural/aesthetic/self-) awareness has anything to do with our gravitating toward the beautiful or if it’s just a “see shiny, like shiny” sort of thing.

  2. drew kalbach

      wait–you had to google ke$ha?

  3. Anonymous

      This post is so much like life, thanks dawg

  4. Jimmy Chen

      a perfect day for fishbananas; sweet

  5. Jimmy Chen

      i google it all — that’s how humble i am

  6. phmadore

      I feel you.

  7. phmadore

      OMG OMG OMG

  8. NLY

      In general I do not feel anxiety or self-loathing because I like beauty, but I also do not think of ‘shallowness’ in terms of just ‘liking beauty’, either.
      That definition seems almost deliberately too broad.

      Do you want to get anxious and loath yourself, Mr. Chen? (shiiit, there’s probably an app for that, too)

  9. bob

      rivers cuomo ilkes this

  10. Eli Artichoke

      Beauty is a curse.

      Of course, ugliness is a curse too.

      Being average is a curse.

      We’re all doomed.

  11. Madison Langston

      Seems super depressing. Also seems weird that dudes actually comment on these videos.

  12. curt

      u did it again chen, well done.