The hyper-visibility means that you both can't hide, but also never really feel completely seen by authority figures and by your peer groups. Trapped… - Tressie McMillan Cottom

Too much small talk is how a country is given to sociopaths who thrive on shallow chatter to distract their emotional sleight of hand. Talk should be meaningful and kept to a minimum.

If I believe that I can become beautiful, I become an economic subject. My desire becomes a market.

Black women have worked hard to write a counternarrative of our worth in a global system where beauty is the only legitimate capital allowed women without legal, political, and economic challenge. That last bit is important. Beauty is not good capital. It compounds the oppression of gender. It constrains those who identify as women against their will. It costs money and demands money. It colonizes. It hurts. It is painful. It can never be fully satisfied. It is not useful for human flourishing. Beauty is, like all capital, merely valuable.13