Could absolutely not help camwhoring the hell out of the blossom trees I saw today. 100% not sorry for such vanity. They were too pretty. Rejoice in the pretty!
Below is my current spring-theme manicure, unfortunately this is about a week old so is chipping in places now. Pastel lilac with a pastel yellow accent nail. Like crocuses, or something! It's survived pretty well, to be honest... still looks passable!
I was admiring the flowers practically all day, and thinking about things in general as I revised (more genetics, disgusting.) Basically, in my novel's world, such trees cannot easily exist. The sun is covered by smog, they would barely get enough sunlight (the air in my novel's world is understandably filthy, full of dirt particles as well as carbon monoxide and other harmful gases. There are lower oxygen levels and higher carbon dioxide levels. Technology taken and enhanced from today's world has provided 'air filters', structures able to function in a similar way to trees and essentially purify the air, but these are typically confined to richer areas and so poorer areas of the city have to breathe in the disgusting air anyway. Even with these, the air quality is poorer than it is now. The alternative to breathing it all in, as many people choose, is to wear gas masks outside. Houses and other buildings are generally equipped with air filters.)
In the wealthy district (the city is based off the British class system taken to extremes, giving us distinct upper class, middle class, working class and impoverished districts), there are trees - but they are fake, they are all projected holograms. They never fade and the blossoms never fall, they are always perfect and beautiful, but they aren't real. They're called holos in the language of the novel, because that's what they are - hollow, empty.
I can't help but find it a little sad.
Lilia, the main character, grows up in this district with all of these beautiful light shows. Even the sky for them is projected, the real sky is grey and dismal and without a sun. It's similar to the television screen in Beijing showing the sunrise, because otherwise no one can see it. In her district, everything is beautiful. And it is beautiful, I'll emphasise - objectively, it really is prettier than the real thing, and the holos are engineered to be prettier than what they are meant to represent. That's okay - it's one type of beauty.
Also in this district, many people have plastic surgery. They're all rich, so why not? They use serums to regenerate their skin, surgical fillers to keep their faces youthful, they can mould and reshape their bone structure and features to their heart's desire. Implant more hair follicles, gloss their hair, dye their eyes a new colour, polish their skin to make it dewy. Most people want to look like the models in advertisements - everyone wants to be 'perfect'. In this future, plastic surgery looks very natural, but there's still something uncanny about a face with any imperfections scrubbed away. What's more disturbing is that often it's teenagers doing this - Lilia's friend Mellina Lassoir being a prime example. While beautiful anyway, Mellina constantly strives to improve herself in her own (and her father's) eyes. Mellina even has surgery to cause the corners of her lips to turn permanently upwards, so she's always smiling - but it's a fake smile. This is made even more ironic by the fact that Mellina is actually desperately unhappy - but since she's one of the richest in the city and gets everything she wants, everyone assumes she is always happy. She doesn't actually understand that she's sad. The reason for her depression is that her father, while giving her all the material things she wants, has extremely high expectations for her and mostly ignores her. Mellina believes that by becoming perfect, he will show her some interest, but she always falls short. It's later revealed that actually nothing Mellina could do would make her father kind to her - but that's a plot point. ;v Basically, all the money in the world can't make you happy if you're lonely.
Mellina is probably objectively prettier than she was before surgery, despite it being just a little creepy since she looks practically airbrushed. But it's really just a different kind of beauty than she had before. Perfect and imperfect, 'real' and 'artificial' - neither necessarily has to be better or worse than the other, they're just different. I mean, I don't know many people who wouldn't want to get rid of their own imperfections. I don't have anything personally against plastic surgeries/photoshopping... as long as it's made obvious that this is indeed 'artificial' beauty, not 'real'. There's nothing wrong with it! As long as you don't claim it's real?
Mellina never claims it's real in the story, haha. She's proudly 'plastic', and regularly suggests surgeries/methods that other characters could use to improve their looks. She sees working on your looks as pretty much the same as practising to become better at playing the violin, or painting.
I have my flaws - I'm really rather vain, in fact terribly so, and spent far too long looking in the mirror. I know my flaws really, really well - both in looks and in talents/personality. But, I'm actually okay with them just now. I'd never do plastic surgery, at least not now - it's expensive/painful/I don't trust a surgeon not to wreck my face. I'm okay with being the regular blossom-tree, with the odd raggedy petal, the tree that eventually will lose all its flowers... well, I'm not okay with getting old. I really wish I didn't have to do it. I like being young and somewhat attractive ;v It's fun. But then, doesn't the world have a weird obsession with youth? We idolise it, and we all want it, and yet we turn around and shit on it for being 'naive' or 'idealistic' or 'delinquent' whenever we get the chance. Don't you think it's weird, when you think about it like that? I guess it's like Chuck Palahniuk says, in his novel Lullaby. Every generation wants to be the last.
We don't like younger generations, because they remind us of how old we're getting. We don't like them because they're still idealistic and naive enough to believe they can change the world, when we failed to do it ourselves. We don't like them because they see what we've done wrong as a people and point it out, so we write it off as idealism and general stupidity so we don't have to listen. Sure, young people can be stupid sometimes... but we get a bad rep, generally.
I hope I never turn into the kind of older person I just described.
This post has been stupidly meandering, and I'm not entirely sure if I came to a satisfying conclusion... but I got some thoughts out, at least. Otherwise, what's the point of this blog?
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