"But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example"
About this Quote
She lands the punchline like a stiletto: the face gets blamed for its own ruin, and society conveniently names the culprit "dissipation". West’s sentence turns that moral shorthand inside out. "Thicken the features" is the old language of judgment - the idea that pleasure, drink, sex, late nights leave a visible, shameful residue. It’s Victorian physiognomy lingering into modernity: character as something you can read off a jawline.
Then West supplies the counterexample that exposes the cruelty of that logic. Tears. Not vice, not indulgence, but grief - the most socially sanctioned, even sanctified response - can also alter the body. The subtext is sharp: if suffering and "sin" produce the same outward signs, the whole project of reading morality off a face collapses. She’s not merely defending the allegedly dissipated; she’s indicting the spectator who wants a simple story. The culture loves a visible explanation because it lets us assign blame quickly and feel righteous doing it.
The line also works because it’s economical. "For example" sounds almost polite, as if she’s offering a neutral illustration, but it’s an ambush. Tears are intimate; they suggest losses that can’t be audited by strangers. West, who wrote with an unsentimental eye about war, women’s lives, and the social appetite for judgment, folds compassion into aggression: your certainty about other people’s faces is ignorance dressed up as discernment.
Then West supplies the counterexample that exposes the cruelty of that logic. Tears. Not vice, not indulgence, but grief - the most socially sanctioned, even sanctified response - can also alter the body. The subtext is sharp: if suffering and "sin" produce the same outward signs, the whole project of reading morality off a face collapses. She’s not merely defending the allegedly dissipated; she’s indicting the spectator who wants a simple story. The culture loves a visible explanation because it lets us assign blame quickly and feel righteous doing it.
The line also works because it’s economical. "For example" sounds almost polite, as if she’s offering a neutral illustration, but it’s an ambush. Tears are intimate; they suggest losses that can’t be audited by strangers. West, who wrote with an unsentimental eye about war, women’s lives, and the social appetite for judgment, folds compassion into aggression: your certainty about other people’s faces is ignorance dressed up as discernment.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sadness |
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