The New Yorker:

That credo was forged by a group of brilliant, oversexed German visionaries in the late eighteenth century. But did they really think it through?

By Nikhil Krishnan 

I remember the first time I encountered a pierced eyebrow. I was sixteen, travelling with the debate team from my high school in the quiet suburbs of Bangalore to the busy city center for a regional meet. I had managed to get the team together only by promising the other boys that there would be girls there. But the girls we were ranged against, who went to a “progressive” school for which we had an unreflective contempt, were creatures from another world. They all wore a kind of shapeless tie-dyed garment that couldn’t be part of any uniform, spoke in a slack, almost American drawl, and, with their air of casual privilege, were amused by our prissy diction—our try-hard idea of what proper English was supposed to sound like—and our evident lack of ease around them.

Being well practiced, we won the debate. But, chatting with the girls afterward, we found that they disdained our pleasure in victory, along with our hand-me-down polyester ties and blazers, our identical short-back-and-sides haircuts. I awkwardly asked the one with the pierced eyebrow whether her piercing had a “meaning.” She smirked a little. “Self-expression,” she said. “But what does it express?” I asked, entirely in earnest. She repeated herself very slowly, as if to a total doofus, “Self. Expression.”

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