Black Swans: Stories

by Eve Babitz

I’ve always noticed that once you let your looks take over your life, you’re going to spend all the livelong day talking about being too fat, having the wrong hair, and otherwise reducing yourself to the most sluglike common denominator—and if you ask me, someone looking back on the middle class of America during the twentieth century might be horrified to know that all the beautiful girls did nothing but hate their asses, legs, stomachs, and breasts. And what really is shocking about it all, too, the men who committed incest on their own daughters told a lot of them “You’re so fat, no wonder nobody will ever love you.”