“But She Was Beautiful” Is Not an Argument

Brigitte Bardot, Diana Mitford Mosley, Chappell Roan, and the moral laziness of aesthetic admiration

I’ve had a handful of people on Substack and Instagram ask me why I’m not posting anything about Bridget Bardot.

I’m not interested and generally unimpressed by the assumption that I should.

Uninterested and unimpressed by those who are

I considered writing something nuanced, looking at her body of work, her impact on culture, and her downfall as the world got to know her for who she became (or who she was all along).

Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) writing fervently as every writer would like to imagine they do

But I’d rather have writer’s block…

Emma Thompson in Stranger Than Ficiton

I thought about writing something connecting her to Diana Mitford Mosley - who was also beautiful and problematic, whose memoir A Life of Contrasts, I read this year, and found utterly fascinating, only because it and she are part of a bigger political ideology that’s embedded in history and is important to study / understand.

Diana Mitford Mosley’s memoir

Don’t get me wrong Mitford Mosley held very concerning political beliefs but she was not a hateful person.

Diana Mitford Mosley was a British fascist, aristocrat, writer and editor

Unlike Bardot though, she was never sued by her son and forced to pay damages for referring to him as “cancerous tumour” and that she would have “preferred to give birth to a little dog.”

Diana Mitford Mosley and her children

I get it, Bardot was genetically privileged, she had great hair, looked good in a photo.

Bridgette Bardot

But this is a matter of luck, and is in fact not as rare as we have been conditioned to believe.

Judge Judy eye rolling

The consistent “but she was so beautiful” is weird - it’s as if this rudimentary fact erases how vile and racist she was.

Titian’s Vanity (1515)

It’s so boring and a reminder how much we are all conditioned to be enamoured by the shape of the vase rather than its contents.

Kathleen Ryan’s Bad Lemon (2024)

Fascinating that these two art works are more than 500 years apart and are saying almost the same thing - humanity will never transcend lol

This is really illustrated in this cringe (and sad) celebrity blunder.

Chappell Roan

Chappell Roan who is praised for being a self-aware artist, and for reinventing pop history in a contemporary way... posted on the left then deleted and posted the right.

Chappel Roan’s instagram stories

Of course Roan doesn’t know Bardot’s disgusting world view and the recent-ish legal actions taken against her for her hate speech. It’s because despite being lauded as a great young thinker, Roan is just like most people - too hypnotised by a vibe to think critically.

My final thoughts on Bridget Bardot was that sure she was objectively beautiful but she was also subpar actress and a fully fledged racist and bigot.