Chateau: One of the most famous photographs in history is the “Afghan Mona Lisa”, a pic taken by a National Geographic photographer in the 1980s of a 12 or 13 year old Afghan girl on the cusp of womanhood. In the pic, you can see her nascent, striking beauty beginning to assert itself. Many years later, that girl, now a grown woman, was tracked down and another photograph of her at approximate age 30 was taken. Here are the two pics side by side:
Tragedy. Beauty is but a flicker in the quickly brightening and fading light of a woman’s lifetime. If you think women don’t feel stress competing in the dating market, look at this photo for a helpful reminder of the Damocles Sword of sexual expiration that dangles over the head of every woman. Unlike men whose urgency centers on relieving the pressure valve in their gonads, women are inextricably bound to a powerful, implacable emotional urgency centered on the need to capitalize on their beauty before time runs out. Women have made a pact with the devil — in return for the promise of exquisite beauty, their window to this world of lavish male attention is woefully brief.
