Now I not only find society’s obsession with materialistic beauty, wealth and fashion extremely distasteful, but I have good reason to feel personally violated, my intellect stripped, my complexities reduced or even ignored. I am no mere stereotypical girl that graces the gloss of glamorous magazines! Oh but the burden of being (my parents’ daughter)!
World! Why do you hound me like this?
Do I annoy you? Really? When all I want
is to put Beauty in my Understanding?
and not my Understanding in Beauty?
I have no interest in Money and Luxury:
it gives me more satisfaction
to put Wealth in my Understanding
than my Understanding in Wealth.
A Pretty Face is soon gone:
how can I value the daily loot of Time?
or the forged crown of Luxury?
For as long as I look for Truth, I believe
it is better to unmake the vanities of Life
than to unmake my Life with vanities.~ Juana Inés de La Cruz (1648-1695)