The Disenchanted Normie

James Baldwin admits in his 1964 essay Nothing Personal to turning on the TV some mornings in order to distract himself from the frustrations the day would bring. He described the variety of commercials for products that defied natural biological realities to be “remarkable sights”: from women with dyed hair and grinning models with impossibly straight teeth, to glamorous middle-aged adults with wrinkle-free skin, and youth with “all conceivable body odor, under no matter what contingency, prevented for twenty-four hours of every day, forever and forever and forever.”