Witches and Wine
To the Dalai Lama: your patriarchy is showing, gurl.
About a week ago, he doubled down on a previous statement about a possible female successor. To paraphrase His Holiness: having a female successor is fine, but she must be attractive…otherwise, what’s the point…yes, inner beauty is the most important…but it’s also important to be appealing.
Clip is below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3STgsoKqRis
When the interviewer brought up that many women were offended by his statement, His Holiness more or less answered: if one wears make-up, then one obviously think being appealing is important as well.
The clip caused enough people to clutch their pearls in outrage, so he issued a clarification statement that included such classic non-apology apology gems as:
“He is deeply sorry that people have been hurt by what he said and offers his sincere apologies.”
Ultimately, his supporters and detractors are in a vicious cycle trying to either prove he is a victim of mistranslation, or a misogynist finally showing his true colors.
However, these two factions don’t realize they’re fighting over a tiny chicken bone, while ignoring the succulent breast meat: what we’re really talking about is glamour.
What is glamour?
Unlike the Law of Gravity, which has objective results, glamour is more akin to what former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography: it’s hard to define in words, but you know it when you see it.
Glamour is also a purposeful, magical act – at the 2019 Magickal Women Conference, I spoke about how South Korea has institutionalized glamour magic via Korean pop music, movies, and TV dramas.
Glamour is not about classical definitions of beauty, although often beauty is glamorous. But beauty can also be mass-produced, commodified, and homogenized to the point of such milquetoast basic-ness that it becomes yawn fodder.
In a sea of sameness, what was once tasty becomes bland. The eye and mind wanders.
Glamour is, first and foremost, delicious appeal. That moist, pink tongue that comes out to lick that indescribable mix of comfort + novelty. The death-defying act of what we know and what we didn’t know we wanted.
Basic-as-fuck beauty doesn’t know how to breathlessly french-kiss you, to put you in a daze that doesn’t fade easily.
Glamour can, and does, and will.
Glamour changes the world, through the steel of plushness.
But let’s get one thing straight: glamour is not sexist.
Men, women, and everyone in between, can be achingly glamorous.
However, while glamour, as its own embodied philosophy, is not sexist…the Dalai Lama made it sexist, because he made it only about women.
Misunderstanding glamour is dangerous…
The Dalai Lama specifically used the word “appeal” when describing the importance of attractiveness in a woman.
His female successor must be appealing.
She must be glamorous, akin to a movie star, who draws in the masses with a certain feminine wile unique to the, er, fairer sex.
Never once did he say, either in the interviews or in clarification statements, that, “male or female, my successor needs to be attractive.” He only singled out women.
And in this respect, the Dalai Lama and President Trump (with his flossed-out Miss Universe contestants) were rubbing noses with each other, because they both agree that glamour and appeal is important enough to mention in a woman…but not in a man.
To say His Holiness is “misunderstood” ignores the fact that he’s said the same thing twice (first in a Vogue interview…then in the BBC interview in the clip above): that a female successor needs to be attractive.
He never once mentioned the aesthetics of a male successor.
…because glamour is essential for this brave new world
His Holiness, a monk now in his mid-eighties, has a keen sense of the contradictions between the materialistic, globalized world he encounters on his travels and the complex, more esoteric ideas about reincarnation that are at the heart of Tibetan Buddhist tradition…He regrets any offence [sic] that may have been given.
– Clarification and Context of Remarks Made by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in a Recent BBC Interview
Does the Dalai Lama meditate about the dichotomy between this brave new world of Instagram influencers and YouTube gurus vs. the “spiritual people don’t see anything but the soul”?
Has the Dalai Lama ever meditated on glamour? About the false hierarchy of putting spirituality above materiality?
He should.
Because if the Dalai Lama is guilty of anything, it’s not that he’s sexist.
It’s that he’s the Joe Biden in the Democratic primaries, the irrelevant old-school career politician who doesn’t realize that the world has radically jumped into a chaotic brokeness/wokeness that defies all previous generations, thanks to the Internet.
In the next 5 years, the Internet will be closer to 80% video. And, because visuals transcend language barriers, the glamour of a person or a product, will be the ultimate leverage. Technology has rendered a millennia of static text into a privately accessible, quivering, technicolor Eros.
I believe His Holiness was saying that a female successor must be attractive because that is how she will be heard amid all the competing noise. He was making an unexamined observation about how the world works. And he is not wrong.
But is this mediocre, incomplete thought acceptable for a spiritual leader?
Should he not have considered as well: if my male successor looked like Keanu Reeves in “Point Break,” then this lineage is IN THE BAG…secured.
Broke: my female successor must be attractive
Woke: whatever their gender, my successor must be attractive
Bespoke: whatever their gender, my successor must embrace their glamour
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