From Hugo, I found this absolutely repugnant post from K-Lo defining the “good girl” and the ideal trajectory through life you need to take to achieve feminine perfection. It’s a sad story, of course, because a woman’s lot is fundamentally sad in the eyes of the patriarchy that defines the “good girl”. It’s the story of Agata Mroz, a volleyball champion (therefore thin, tall, and of course blonde and beautiful---wouldn’t be a tragic story of How You Should Be if the heroine wasn’t blonde and beautiful) who got cancer, but got married and made her husband a baby anyway, dying in the process at the age of 26.
In other words, the ideal woman is young and beautiful, and has the good sense to check out of life before her beauty fades, but of course taking the time to make a man a baby before she goes. Women, like houseguests and fish, don’t last too long without stinking, and really we should all get the hint.
By shaking my fist in fury at the world’s biggest dip, K-Lo, I’m not judging the actual human being Mroz. From her story, I get the impression that Mroz didn’t really think she had a good chance of surviving in any direction and thought that having a baby before she died was something she had to do, probably for the same reasons most people have children---to leave their mark, to say, “I was here.” I will grant someone dying young more right to do this than someone who has a good chance of long life ahead of them, a long life where the dramatic impact of producing a child fades as the child becomes less about her parents being here and a unique person herself. Going out on a high moment has much to recommend it. But K-Lo didn’t single out this story as an instructive story on how to keep on living even when you’re dying.