"A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world." - Edmond de Concourt

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I saw an advertisement listing a price for a service called "ovary maintenance". Below the listing were some chinese characters I could't interpret fully, but I think they had something along the lines of delaying something (menopause?) for 5 years.

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Last week, I finally saw my first ad for the Campaign for Real Beauty, on a bus. It's apparently been around since July, but maybe I've only just seen it because I don't get out much.

The most obvious thing about this campaign is that it is hypocritical. It claims that one can be beautiful without adhering to common standards of beauty, yet behind it all Dove is promoting their soap which, surprise surprise, gives one better skin: "Curvy or lanky, big or petite, every woman can be beautiful with firmer skin." If a woman can be beautiful even if she is as flat as an airport runway, does not have double eyelids, has a head of white hair, keeps boyish hair, is mildly plump, has freckles or is guilty of all of the above, which should flaccid/dry skin be an exception to the rule? If one can exult in being an AA cup, why should not one exult in having ichthyosis?

More troubling though, I think, is that instead of making women challenge the notion that they must be beautiful (How Girls Waste Time: 124. Using physical appearance as a proxy for self-worth) to be confident, useful etc, they're instead fiddling with the definition of beauty. This is shortsighted: going after the symptom (the definition of beauty) rather than the root of the problem (the notion that one needs to be beautiful). Furthermore, if everyone is beautiful, then nobody is: the concept has lost its meaning and relevance; calling the Elephant Man beautiful is tantamount to linguistic blasphemy. Far better to decouple self-worth and physical loveliness. But then that wouldn't sell many bars of Dove soap, would it?

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Someone on NUS: i get the impression that university greatness here is founded on the art of float making
utterly incomprehensible and bizarre

The constitution of the Economics Society says that the President and Vice-President must be Economics and/or Statistics majors. So what the professor told us the other time about "There was a year when the President of the Economics Society was not an Economics major. He was a Political Science major." was false. Or maybe they changed the constitution after that, bah.


In good universities worldwide, much debauchery occurs. I theorise that this is a necessary (though certainly not sufficient) condition for greatness. They condone alcohol consumption and whatever goes on in fraternity and sorority houses, and each doubtless has their own peculiar school of sin.

For example, Stanford has Exotic Erotic, where in the depth of winter, you go to the party wearing as little as possible. Brown one-ups them though, with real nudity:

Across campuses, groups bare it all

"Even though Brown has yet to receive a streaking challenge from Hamilton's team, Brown students have ample opportunities to see public nudity thanks to two time-honored campus traditions: the naked party and naked donuts.

The naked party is an annual, invitation-only party hosted by the Watermyn and Finlandia co-ops that took place Nov. 6 this year.

The Co-op event has music, dancing and in most respects is just like any other college party - except that everyone is naked.

Candace Toth '05, who joined the Watermyn Co-op this year but considered herself more of a naked partygoer than party planner, said she had been nervous about whether the naked party would be highly sexual. But ultimately, the party didn't feel sexual to her at all, she said.

Jackie Parente GS, who attended the naked party as a sophomore and again this year, echoed Toth's sentiment, saying that while a lot of times at other parties people's objectives are more or less to get someone naked, that step is conveniently bypassed at the naked party, allowing people to just enjoy the party itself...

Naked donuts, on the other hand, is a campus tradition that all students have the opportunity to witness, at least if their timing is right.

During the naked donut run, a group of unclothed students hands out donuts to people studying in the Rockefeller and Sciences libraries during reading period...

Vice President for Campus Life and Student Services David Greene, a Hamilton alum, though never a member of the college's streaking team, said Brown has no official position on naked donuts.

While Greene said he was not aware of any recent disciplinary cases involving streaking at Brown, the University "certainly encourages people to wear clothes at all appropriate moments."