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I know it is wrong to bag on a woman’s looks. I know it’s something only the worst of trolls do. Unfortunately, I am too self-aware to conceal my nature. But on top of my trollery is a layer of something less gross, something finer, that, if it doesn’t mitigate my trollish nature, may nevertheless transcend it, rising vaporous from my hide like a subliming essence. I feel what I am about to do is more complex than simply mocking someone’s appearance. I feel very strongly that an analysis of her appearance is related to her political behavior.
I agree with recent experts on the internet who say that Marjorie Taylor Greene looks like Barney Rubble in drag. And I don’t believe this is her intention. I can only assume from her values that her intention is to come as close as possible to appearing to embody the standard of feminine beauty demanded by the Macho Heterosexual Western Caucasian Male Gaze. Or to what she believes is the standard demanded by the Macho Heterosexual Western Caucasian Male Gaze.
This is very difficult for a woman of her build and face shape to achieve, of course. And it’s sad to me that she is such a vile, shallow person, because I’m sure she would both feel and be very cute were she open to other standards of perfection or beauty. She could be an adorable stubby, stocky, bowlegged, slightly baboon-faced woman – or man! – but she would have to first transform her epistemology.
She really does have two little dots for eyes like Barney Rubble, but if behind those dots was a soul filled with empathy for people different from herself, people with needs other than those she currently considers wholesome, the resemblance to Barney Rubble would be endearing rather than unfortunate and pathetic.
She recently was tasked with giving an anti-trans, anti-immigrant, and anti-Democrat speech at the Republican National Convention. I think she truly means the foul things she says about people she has no knowledge or information about. I’m sure the assumptions feeding the amorphous negative emotions she has around gender image, definitions, fluidity, and non-binary gender identities originate deep in her misbegotten carcass of a soul.
My analysis is that Marjorie Taylor Greene hates trans people and others alien to her experience because she is ambivalent about liking herself. Her ambivalence arises from her disappointment in being a stubby, bowlegged, baboon-faced woman instead of some mistaken, narrow feminine ideal. She transfers that hatred to trans people and those from other cultures because she hates that there are people who might resemble her yet are joyous about who they are. That there are women and men and trans women and trans men and non-binary persons who are stubby, bowlegged, and baboon-faced and love themselves. That they love the gender esthetic they embody. That they love embodying and being appreciated according to an esthetic veering far afield from or totally circumventing and avoiding the Macho Heterosexual Western Caucasian Male Gaze.
I myself am envious of those who look like me — like a short, round victim of a Dr. Moreau experiment — yet have loving attitudes toward their appearances. I can love my body at times, though not as much as I used to. And this shallowness of mine, for that is what I believe it to be, is a source of pain and sorrow. But it doesn’t make me hate those whom I might envy. I could never be convinced to stand up in front of millions of viewers and become the poster child for the hatred of anybody, not even of people I actually hate. Marjorie Taylor Greene for instance.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is ashamed of what she believes are her physical shortcomings and despises others she believes have the same physical shortcomings but aren’t ashamed. They don’t seem to even experience the attributes in question as shortcomings at all.
So wrapped up is she in her hatemongering lifestyle, so invested is she in it, that it would never occur to her to investigate or explore another system of values. It would never occur to her to react to such an alien system of values in any fashion other than to recoil in disgust and fear. It would never occur to her to examine her disgust and fear and attempt to understand where they come from.
Not only would it never occur to her, she is repelled by the very notion. She must not consider another way of thinking about the body or gender roles or sexuality or love or human value or meaning in life because it is literally her job now to be the antithesis of a curious, open-minded, three-dimensional person. And now that she’s so publicly established the hatred of trans people and immigrants as her sub-brand under the MAGA subsidiary of the Republican brand, she would find it desperately difficult to change course. It would require explaining herself to millions of those she’s sold herself to as a particularly flat caricature of a human.
I feel we should all take a moment of silence to briefly mourn the full person Marjorie Taylor Greene could have been. All right, that’s enough. That was a living person. Cut down at the dawn of her life. And not like an aborted embryo, undone before she was born. Marjorie was born from a human womb, but her growth was stunted and her blossoming choked off at the source by a grasping claw. The crushing grip of shallow, empty values. It strangled this better hypothetical person before she could even assert herself.
The Marjorie Taylor Greene we see now is a nattering, nasally whining hollow husk of a person. She is not fit to make declarations of any kind, certainly not about something as personal as sexuality. Who does she believe she’s talking to? To whom? To any but the most fearful, phobic, cowardly members of the US public? And is her point to amplify that cowardice? Because she can only amplify that cowardice or reassure the cowards that they must carry on in their cowardly ways.
I have no doubt there are dimensions of her that are hidden from the public. But the public dimension cannot but injure or even destroy the others. So do your charity work, Marjorie. Do whatever it is you feel you must do to salve the abrasions and scars on your soul, wounds which you open again and again like those of a miserable, short, round Dr. Moreau experiment but without the solace he has of facing his fears and learning to love from those he understands have gifts he lacks. Those who generously offer those gifts and in doing so pass them to the benighted troll himself. To better him, not to reinforce his cowardice.
May someone one day be so magnanimous to you.
I was amused by this.
I then cogitated about how, when she first appeared on the scene, she was such an extreme outlier, and now is at the center of GOP power and influence.
And I wondered who was more extreme in ridiculousness, MTG or Kate Winslet’s character in The Regime.
Nice essay. She projects an angry ape vibe, like Alex Jones or Limbaugh. Your thoughts on Lauren Boebert as Betty?