In studying the long tale, I came across some questions from Madeleine de Scudéry to the gathered men of a seventeen-century French salon. She was regarded as not beautiful. She asked:
Why can’t you spend fifteen minutes talking to a woman who isn’t beautiful? Why must you leave abruptly simply because an unattractive woman arrives on the scene? It seems that all young men commit this sort of injustice — even those who are ugly, incredibly ugly, can’t endure a woman’s ugliness. In fact, they want the fairest eyes in the world to look favorably upon them while they look upon beautiful women with the ugliest eyes in the world.
{ vous ne puissiez parler un quart d’heure à une Femme si elle n’est pas belle : et que vous sortiez mesme d’une visite, où il en arrivera quelqu’une qui sera laide. Cependant tous les jeunes gens ont presques cette sorte d’injustice : et il y en a mesme qui sont laids, de la derniere laideur, qui ne peuvent souffrir celle d’une Femme. En effet ils veulent que les plus beaux yeux du monde, les regardent favorablement : et ils veulent de plus quelquesfois ne regarder que de belles Femmes, avec les plus laids yeux de la Terre. }
Humans, throughout history, have been shallow and self-absorbed. Extensively networking and communicating doesn’t change those characteristics and may even exacerbate them.
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Notes:
Quoted text: Madeleine de Scudéry, . Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus (Paris: 1653), p. 6957. In site Artamene. Institut de Littérature Française Moderne. Université de Neuchâtel. [on line: http://www.artamene.org/cyrus10.xml?page=6957]. English translation: Scudéry, Madeleine de, and Karen Newman. 2003. The story of Sapho. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 37.