“I never got any handouts. No one pushed me out of the sea and covered me with jewels. I made myself.”
“I don’t see why it’s so hard for people to take responsibility and just admit that you have to work for the things you want in life. That’s what I did.”
“I got myself where I am today. Honestly, it’s not that hard. I think some people are just afraid of a little hard work and standing on their own two feet, on a seashell, on a dolphin, on a nymph-queen that are all holding them up.”
“You want to know what got me where I am today? Me.”
“Hard work and self-reliance.”
“Bootstraps.”
“In a meritocracy, the cream rises to the top.”
“I didn’t grow up rich or anything. I ended up on Olympus – which, yes, is where my parents or from, but they didn’t give me a free ride or anything like that – because I wanted it bad enough.”
“It’s easy. Step one, just visualize yourself being lifted out of the sea. Step two, accomplish it.”
“Look, I earned this. I didn’t get any special treatment. Why should you?”
“At least I never had to rely on anyone else to get myself on shore. I can hold my head up high.”
[Images via]
To be fair, any meritocracy is gonna be pretty easy to conquer if you are the goddess of Literal Physical Perfection and Sexin’ Your Way to What You Want.
The best description I ever read of the Bouguereau Venus taught me the best word on the planet: FLOCCULENT, meaning fleecy or woolly.
Well, technically she is made of a dick.
I guess that’s why she’s owed vast deference?
THAT PUN
This is also, I think, the root pun of all patriarchy.
root 😀
This is just the tip of the pun iceberg. I’ve really been putting my brain to the testes.
that pun is possibly the best I’ve ever seen on the Toast.
*swoons* This is some seminal work in the field of wordplay right here.
I am but a mere vesicle in service to the lord of puns.
It’s why the Toast comment section is worth more than a casual glans.
OK, I’m really done now.
I’m prostate with laughter right now.
I prepuce a toast to y’all.
I’m sad that I was too late to observe this pun climax in real time, but I will bask in its afterglow.
OH MY GOD that is amazing! Thank you for that.
I’m gonna move to a cave under a waterfall and spend ten years meditating on the perfection of that pun.
My legacy, my glorious legacy.
The pinnacle of punnery, right here.
You think it’s easy, standing on this clamshell?! Look at all these sea-demons and flying babies, who would NOT HAVE A JOB if they weren’t fawning over me and carrying my clamshell around. I am goddamn indispensible to this equation. I’m a job creator.”
Ayn Rand’s Birth of Venus. Love it.
And now this update from Galt’s Trench
“You want to know what got me where I am today? Me.”
I had no help from the hovering cherubs. None.
The cherubs made it even harder, really. Their backs are so slippery when using them as stepstools.
Seriously. Cherubs are more trouble than they’re worth.
(A few days ago my mother and I may or may not have ranked depictions of Mary’s Assumption in order of assumptiveness. Most of it was bitching about gratuitous cherubim of the naked baby variety.)
I had no idea this was everything i needed until today.
EVERYTHING.
SO. MANY. PUTTI.
Give me a few o’ them and I’ll conquer the WORLD, I tell you.
“This large entourage? Oh, they’re fans who hang around because I’m the Goddess of Love. Look at who’s getting their facts wrong NOW. Open your eyes. Don’t be a sheep.”
dirtbag Venus, yuuuusss.
This is definitely the Aphrodite from Xena.
Also that one with the seaweed is SO GROSS. At first I thought it was wet hair, which is also gross, but seaweed might be worse.
“A commentary on privilege, by Mallory Ortberg” – this is what the liberal arts classes of the future will look like, and there will still be that one kid sitting in the front row who has a lot to say about the lesson and no idea that it’s about him.
cherubs: the pigeons of Greek mythology
Love the guy in the first painting blowing on the shell. He looks like he’s chasing the cherubs off.
“Get out of here you nasty winged babies!”
In that third photo all the women are gazing at Aphrodite like “How do I become more like you, my queen, my life’s blood” and the men are looking all sullen and darkly pouty like “This BITCH.”
Aphrodite doesn’t care about you, darkly pouting men. Aphrodite doesn’t care at all.
I have this painting in my bathroom and the Toast is always giving me good additional reads on it.
I used to have it up in my bathroom too. It’s a great bathroom painting.
I love Bouguereau anyway and this is one of my favorites of his. I aspire to that hair.
If you look at the guy in the bottom left of #3 quickly, it looks like he’s holding the shell up to his ear.
Shell guy: If I hold this shell up to my ear, I can hear the ocean!
Cherubs: Dude, you’re IN the ocean.
Oh my gosh, the lilly-white skin. In every single one.
Fun story (not fun it’s terrible): I was on a Lake Shasta houseboating trip in highschool, and a 16-yr-old white supremacist boy told me I was the most beautiful girl on the lake because I was the only one without a tan. BARF. Seriously, this kid was like baby American History X. He also pulled a knife on me later, so that was interesting. He was totally Central California. But this Venus is totally Orange County.
That’s because Shasta is basically in Jefferson and they’re all creepy separatists up there anyway.
We are like 30% creepy separatists, thank you very much.
Other 70% is creepy weed growers. Or like, feral hill people.
I feel like Aphrodite is by far the most likely to be a libertarian. Don’t come for her birth control, but ugh, these whiny welfare queens wanting things from those of us who’ve worked for this (she says, from her golden throne)
I love the fish peeking out of the water in #6. Its expression is just so, “Wait, WTF is happening on my back right now.”
I love the expression on that fish-thing- I make that face when I think there’s a spider in my hair. “Oh God, is it on me? It’s on me isn’t it?”
Googly-eyes forever!
This post=life.
Anyway, we’d all have clamshells and adoring cherubs if we made the right decisions instead of going to art school, right???
I love being of Cypriot extraction when it comes to discussions of Aphrodite. Y’all can keep your Olympians, I GET A SEX GODDESS.
I love how in the ninth one (Coypel?), she has a cherub taxi waiting nearby for when she decides to zoom off after her soujourn in the shell.
Of course she’s not going ANYWHERE til she has been fully swathed in silks, presented with all the pearls, has talked those cherubim into making those flower garlands into a crown, and snacked on that dove she’s eyeing up.
“Also, no clothes. It is vital to discard all clothing in your rise to the top.”
You’re much more aerodynamic that way.
Well, come on–when you’re that fabulous, you’ll just make the clothes look like crap in comparison. That’s hardly fair. She’s really only being considerate.
In #3 are those men rocks from the hips down? Are they rock-centaurs? They look like rock-centaurs.
(also WHY is Venus 10 SO WHITE)
Either because she’s made of sea foam, (or sperm), or because of race/class privilege?
Difficult to say, really…
This, like Venus, is perfection! (Watches as home town is ravaged by Greeks sent by dirtbag Hera)
I wonder, does it go by town of birth or town of current residence? Because if the former, Ave Aphrodite!
You have a typo in your title, it should be “Ayn Rand Narrates The Birth of Venus.”
I love all their zaftig-ness
“you know the wage gap would be a thing if “women” weren’t such “girls” about it”
Aussie comedian Hannah Gadsby also has something to say about this.: https://youtu.be/m4j4RwzE6j4
Who painted the third one? I must know. I am one of those ladies who surround her and gawk.
Bouguereau! He is my favorite painter of neoclassical things.
Have you seen it in person? It’s absolutely MESMERIZING.
I have and it is.
I’m going to Paris this spring and I’m going to the d’Orsay just to see the Bouguereaus, the beautiful shiny bastards.
They were the height of the d’Orsay for me! Bring back postcards? 🙂
I may have spent more than I should to get a repro of Venus on actual canvas.
Even better I will bring back selfies. And also postcards.
I love this but no Botticelli? Or do you like that painting too much to include it?
My whole life, really, has been a no. It has not been easy for me. I started off in the sea. My father gave me a small loan of a million drachmas. I came into Cyprus, and I had to pay him back, and I had to pay him back with interest. But I came into Olympus and I started buying properties, and I did great.