The Derek Zoolander Extracurricular for Kids Who Can’t Read Good
The profoundly self-obsessed must be truly profound to catch our attention. Recently, in New Haven, profundity has once again reached a high—or low, depending on how you look at it—in Yale’s Movement for Beauty and Justice. Mission statement: Beautiful people are fucking awesome!
Our society is in a state of crisis. Political and social structures have disregarded the collective implications of our individual actions for too long. We live in a world of inequality, social injustice, and conflict.
We believe that promoting the proliferation, creation, and realization of diverse forms of beauty in the world will unite humanity and lead to a more just society.
Founders Justine Kolata and Ric Hernández ‘11 are pictured to the right. (At least their bunnies, “Beauty” and “Justice,” somehow have the good sense to hide their faces.)
The Movement for BJ [our own abbreviation] seems straight out of Elle Woods’s HLS admissions video, but perhaps it’s something more?
After the jump, the mission of what should be called The Movement for Butterflies and Pajama Bottoms and Cupcakes and Snugglebumblywumpsies.
The artfully nebulous philosophy that they spout on their website makes the Movement sound just about as legitimate as the Human Fund. They pledge to “facilitate the adoption of beautiful practices” and to pursue “diverse large-scale projects…with partner organizations and NGOs,” yet their actual meetings consist of “star gazing” and “general merriment.” (WTF does that even mean?)
Now let’s check out the Movement for BJ’s word salad. You’ll definitely become dumber by reading it, but at least they break their “Complete Philosophy” down into simple steps. Here’s a summary:
MISSION: A Two-Tiered System
…[run on sentence redacted]…
Mission One: Beauty
The World is an endless supply of beauty…
Mission Two: Justice
We recognize that extreme material deprivation and social inequality can prevent one from finding greater happiness in beauty…
Connection Between Mission One & Mission Two: Beauty & Justice
…Beauty as a higher value leads to a more just society, and acts of justice lead to the proliferation of the beauty that exists in the world.
Guys, you sound INSANE. Worse than a reading of “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by a white kid with dreadlocks drinking straight patchouli oil in a Williamsburg coffee shop. But then again, let’s take another look at the illustrious founders’ biographies:
Ric [that's right, still no "k"] Hernández’s first memory consists of pushing a red wheelbarrow through the backyard of his day care in which to collect the prettiest leaves from every tree.
Scratch that—it’s what would happen if Michael Scott read William Carlos Williams. For those of us not fortunate enough to be in the blast radius of such wondrous stupidity, the Yale Daily News covered the Movement’s appearance at the Freshman Bazaar:
[Kolata] was walking around Beinecke Plaza holding a rabbit and handing out small pieces of paper to unsuspecting freshmen…“You should join the Movement!” Kolata said. “The Movement for Beauty and Justice!”
Thanks, Squeaky Fromme, but no thanks. But wait—perhaps we don’t understand the Movement for BJ’s true purpose. Surely the YDN’s account of their first meeting will prove us wrong if we keep reading it!
Kolata was dancing around most of the time, recalling ancient times, when people used to dance around wearing white, loose clothes. Hernández, on the other hand, was busy immortalizing the gathering by taking numerous pictures.
Ah.
It doesn’t escape us that the Movement for Beauty and Justice could be a joke, and if it is, it’s genius. Maybe creating a flawlessly idiotic pseudo-organization is the latest initiation hurdle for aspiring Bonesmen to face. But if they’re for real, then Kolata and Hernández hope to share their Kool-Aid with the world beyond Yale:
Future [Movement] events include…[a picnic] with ‘members of the New Haven homeless community…’
That’s exactly what every down-on-his-luck, possible recovering addict needs: ditzy, deluded admissions mistakes waving cute, fluffy, delicious rabbits in his face. At least they’ve got their looks?
