Miss USA and the Privilege of Mental Health

“There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche, though you’d be forgiven for thinking it was Taylor Swift, or maybe one of the latter-day Instagram poets. The line originally appeared in one of the philosopher’s more obscure notebooks, and obscure it might have remained, if it hadn’t been so perfectly tailored to the age of the aesthetic inspirational quote. What beautiful surfaces did Nietszche have in mind? Who knows; who cares! The line slaps, that’s what matters: it’s practically begging to be stripped of all context and tattooed on a millennial’s ribcage, remixed with a “dark academia” Canva template and posted to Tumblr — or, as was the case last week, acting as the headline for the resignation letter of a teen pageant queen from New Jersey.