3.
Images are all you are, sweetie. Not to me, of course, to whom you are the world's center, the point at which everything converges and has meaning. No, not to me, but to everyone else, namely the corporations. Sure, male persons, and some female, will see you two-dimensionally, size you up and down, side to side, whistle and honk and maybe, if they're truly stupid and ignore the very clear signs that you are a young woman not to be fucked with, try to have a grab, a little pinch here, a squeeze there, as if checking for substance. But those persons are only acting the way they've been taught to act. They cannot see you as real or full because their brains have been sucked out of their skulls through their eyeballs. That's not a nice image, is it? No, it's a disgusting image, disgusting because it reflects the truth behind the abuse of the image itself: corporations transform persons into billboards, flesh and the etceterata that make up a body into fashion statements. The brains are sucked out by images, thus transforming the vessel that once carried those brains into images. You are not a billboard, you will not be a fashion statement. This shirt, no, the one I just returned to the rack … this shirt, if you wear it, will transform you from a 3-d person, my world's center, into an image, a plateau whose only meaning to everyone else is the corporate logo silkscreened across your torso. By wearing this shirt, you automatically become an advertisement, and though you're an amazing, dynamic person whom I love unconditionally, be you 2-d or 3-d, I cannot condone your transference from 3- to 2-. To do so would be unfatherly, unacceptable. I will not condone your sucking out others' brains nor the sucking-out of your brain. Unconditional love does not mean letting you harm yourself; yes, if you harm yourself, render yourself as flat as the logo on that shirt, I will still love you. I also would love you if you were run over by a tractor and made one with a field. That doesn't mean I wouldn't push you out of the tractor's way or even jump in front of the tractor myself. Is that what you're asking me to do? Jump in front of the tractor to prove the unconditionality of my fatherly love? Twisting my mental arm-oh, you're a smart one-to buy this shirt, this billboard, not for you but for me? Render myself a logo? Assuming I could fit into a girl's size 12, that I might be seen and then ridiculed for wearing girl's clothing, I would never pay money, money begotten from a job that removes me from your presence 60 hours a week, I would never pay to be a billboard.
