First day of junior year and I couldn’t stop thinking about her — her tan skin, delicate wrists with the clattering gold bangles, white dress floating around her knees. Who could’ve predicted that someone could have beautiful knees?
I thought, perhaps, that she could’ve been the hottest girl I’d ever seen, had I not had access to the internet. Hear me out. If she was born in 1970, pre-photorealistic media, she would’ve been, by far, the hottest girl in my high school. There were 477 people in my graduating class and, at that point, the competition was not so stiff.
Today, unfortunately, she competes against not only the hottest girls of the SEC but the hottest girls in the world. Bella Hadid staring from the glossy pages of a magazine, Emrata from her phone. She brushes her hair back and she notes the little bump in her nose. Could probably get that fixed.
Since the 1990s, the definition of success has skyrocketed - it is no longer enough to be your local maximum. You can’t just be the hottest girl for your high school. Your success is fleshed out for the world to see. And honey, it’s a lot harder to be the hottest girl in the world.
Success is marked by the prizes of globalism, the ones you can film on TikTok and photograph on Instagram. They are the global maxima, the best possible restaurants and the best possible clubs and the latte that everybody wants.
So what will you covet? The ski house in Tahoe and the million followers and the Hermes bag? What is it? The Equinox membership and Alo leggings and the Tabi flats? What kind of pre-determined consumer template do you fit under? What kind of Instagram targeted ads will your all-providing algorithm give unto your greedy eyes? What good does it do you, to pursue this global maximum, if it’s someone else’s maximum? The signifiers of a meaningful life are the ones that no one but you will recognize.
She knows, for the record, that she’ll never be the hottest — a tragedy which she will quietly absorb, as all girls do. But her cheeks look like her mother’s, and her knees will always stay in my mind as the best I’ve ever seen.