Monday, September 8, 2008

Siren Song of the Virtue Princess

There is a certain sort of person, inevitably female, who makes me feel bad about myself. A selfless, correct sort of person, who has no car and does social work and exercises outdoors. (The exercise is only for health because the virtue princess cares not for silly things. Be she hot, it is purely accidental.)

Virtue princess candidates, if you're reading: wait! I may sound resentful, but my resentment is borne of the highest admiration!

If only I could admire the virtue princess from afar, without being lured into her sensible shopping habits and prediliction for lentils. We should cheer on the virtue princess, thank her for educating our underprivileged youth and working at our shitty nonprofits and volunteering in third world villages. Thanks for doing all those hard things I'm not doing! Glad that's taken care of! But guilt can instead goad us lesser souls into mocking the virtuous. How naive they are, world-saving goals doomed, &c.

I'll grant that the virtue princess doesn't quite exist. She's more of a mythic creature, an amalgam of perfectly selfless traits.

Some real asshole, someone who throws away cans, might even think I am a virtue princess, to the meager extent that I waste money on organic food and like animals.

But I push back on virtuous tendencies. Because dammit I want to listen to rap and buy the fancy jeans. (Oh, I forgot to mention that the virtue princess listens to non-sexist vaggie music and wears amorphous mom jeans.)

Maybe some people, those who approach virtue princessness, just are that good. If I say "good for them," it sounds snarkerrific, but I mean it for real.

And if it's my nature to be a little bit bad, I can at least try to relish my sins.

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