Sh says, she may not be the most attractive person on Earth, ever, but she can look pretty whenever she wants to. To which I'm like um, suure. Water has long gone under the bridge since the PotterGirl and
Heroni days, so it's safe to be sarcastic without being too mean now.
"No,
seriously yaar. If I try hard, I can actually be quite attractive ni,"
she says, and sends me a Halloween photo of herself. The devil that she
is, she looks nice. I suspect foul-play.
"Photoshop!" I go for it. I'm trying too hard though though-- she stands next to a
professional model-- whom I have had the fortune to see at work, thanks
to Sh-- and she looks...not particularly different than her usual self.
No foul play here.
But clever as she may be, Sh has forgotten to hide an important, often looked-over, clue. The knees. The weak-knees.
As Sh stands on what appears to be a disappearing floor revealing the underworld beneath, with her Scimitar,
daring the camera with her eyes glowing like the eternal fires of the Erebus ( where she is presumably from), cloaked in
material apparently designed for the deities of the fiery worlds (I want
to talk to the designer who put hoodie caps on fancy party dress),
along with someone who bears a striking resemblance to both Cleopatra and Isis, the goddess of Magic and Life, there's only one mistake that can ever reveal her mortality, and the veneer of striking attractiveness : the knees. The weak knees.
For a man, knees are a way prove himself beyond what he may seem to be. Yes, I may be ugly, and fat, and not terribly bright, but look at the strong knees of mine, he says, and it works. A man's knee rarely works against him, and yet can do wonders to make him a hero -- a modern-day knight with the shiny bony knees of his.
On a woman, knees are mostly a liability. Unless a woman is exceptionally good with her physique ( as some people are, ahem) the knees are wobbly, knobby, and do not correspond to the otherwise attractive physique. She may be the most physically attractive person around, and yet the knees will still be knbby wobbling mass of unrestrained meat (not to be confused with the other unrestrained mass of wobbling meat), not important enough to warrant a cosmetic industry for themselves, but significant enough to make one's look considerably different. Anyone with a skirt shorter than knee-length has to have an unusually flattering body image. The knees to a woman are New Jersey to New York, the Bagmati of Kathmandu.
And so Sh is revealed -- her knees reveal it all. The model is a step ahead-- she has a royal gown going way below her knees. You wonder if she's really an immortal-- the manacle and all.