The Kyle Paxman Question, Resolved
There seems to be some debate about whether a certain blogger has "a crush" on jilted bride Kyle Paxman, so let me come clean: No. I don't really go for that emotionally vulnerable California blonde in a black minidress type.
Truth is, I've been bemused by the coverage Ms. Paxman's plight has received. Google her, and you get page after page of hits. In the chick blogosphere, she's become the next
Ellen James. She is a symbol of hope for jilted brides everywhere—more, for people anywhere who consider themselves a victim. I predict a television gig in the very near future.
But let me pose a question: Would Kyle Paxman have gotten a front-page story in the New York Times, and all the subsequent follow-up, if she weren't white, pretty and blonde? If she were fat and had bad skin? If she were African-American?
So when I reprint all the images of Kyle Paxman, I'm actually exploiting our own obsession with pretty blondes—you're reading this, aren't you?—while trying to make a point about the media and our own racial/aesthetic subtexts. Just as when I reprint the subterranean albino monster, I'm doing so to use it as an avatar for the existential dread and despair that we feel in this George Bush "we do not torture" era.
And I don't have a crush on the monster either, by the way.
