the first episode and presses PLAY, the volume on low.
A woman’s voice issues from her phone’s speakers. “Every woman owns her own beauty,” she intones. “And yet somehow, when it is put up for sale, it is almost always men who see the bulk of the profit. Artist and muse, studio head and actress, prostitute and pimp: All of these relationships function with varying degrees of consent and autonomy. But they all also uphold the same underlying economic structure, which holds that a literal middleman should be the person presenting a woman to the world—and taking a hefty cut of the profits in the process.
“If a man paints or photographs a woman, it’s art; if a woman paints or photographs herself, it’s an act of narcissistic self-indulgence. Women are assumed to be artless until they are put in someone’s art; it’s only the approval of someone else’s eye that makes them worthy of serious consideration.
“Men recognize the power of women’s beauty—and the danger in allowing them to harness it for themselves, without permission or intermediary. Beauty, Power, Danger is a podcast about the history of beautiful women in the arts, and an examination of the ways the men in their lives have sought to control their bodies, lives, and legacies for their own ends. I’m Christine L. Tompkins, and this is Beauty, Power, Danger.”
Lulu hits PAUSE. This seems like a lot for nine a.m., and especially for nine a.m. with a hangover. She’s not even sure how much it applies to her: No one is selling Lulu’s image but Lulu herself. Or does Flash technically own what she posts? She always forgets to check up on that. Either way, it’s not a problem she’s going to solve this morning.
She throws away the rest of her breakfast and goes back to sleep.
* * *
When she wakes up again, it’s early afternoon and someone is hovering uncertainly at the foot of her bed. Naomi looks like she was about to either sit down or sneak out, and Lulu happened to wake up in the middle of it.
So Nao is home from college for winter break.
Lulu’s head is so muddled that when she opens her mouth, what comes out is “No.”
“That’s how you greet your sister after months of separation?” Naomi asks. “No?”
“I’m tired!”
“That’s not surprising. This room smells like a distillery,” Naomi reports. “It smells like—a grow room. It smells like skunk, and feet, and death, Lu.”
“You know what a grow room smells like?”
Naomi ignores her. “I tried to stay up to see you last night. When the hell did you get in?”
Lulu groans and rolls onto her back. “Like, three?” she says. She’s really not in the mood for a lecture from her sister. “I’m very tired,” she says. “And hungover. And I want to be left alone.”
Usually being rude works on Naomi, but today she seems determined. “I bet you’re also hungry,” she says. “If you get up and take a shower, I can drive us to Nate and Al’s for brunch.”
Lulu’s stomach grumbles, and she remembers her gross, aborted breakfast. How likely is it that the house has grown new food in its cabinets while she was sleeping?
And what are the chances her mom will make anything remotely palatable for dinner?
Lulu sits up. “We should go grocery shopping, after, too,” she says.
“Already planning on it.”
* * *
Naomi is halfway through her junior year at Georgetown; her international relations major is a disappointment to their mother because it’s boring (“Like so you can be a diplomat?” she asked, when Nao announced it as a sophomore. “Like because a Jew who cares about the human rights of Palestinians should help negotiate peace in the Middle East,” she replied) and to their father because it’s unlikely to make her rich.
Lulu doesn’t understand it either—it’s way less sexy than the international-travel-and-intrigue thing she first imagined—but that makes sense: Her sister has never in her life chosen the sexy option. She’s steady and straightforward, well suited to the patient unknotting of delicate, complicated problems.
“You’re interested in the same things,” Bea told Lulu once, in a rare moment of extreme earnestness. “Isn’t diplomacy just like high-level social management, when you think about it? Knowing the gossip on everyone? Knowing who you can ask for what?”
“I guess,” Lulu said then. She remembers it now, listening to Nao talk through the politics of the office where she’s interning this semester. Maybe Bea had a point.
When Naomi goes to the bathroom, Lulu does what she always does: takes