Clinging to a youthful self-image produces a grotesque public parody

Evidence

The longer we stick around, the more unfamiliar we can become to ourselves, each distorted version of our younger “prime” selves a little less recognizable than the last. Cling too hard to your youthful double and risk becoming a surgerized, injected parody. Or worse. That, after all, is the unmissable warning carried by The Picture of Dorian Gray: if you seek eternal youth, and deny your aging double its reality, you’ll both end up dead. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 580

Categorization

• XREF: Dorian Gray as a canonical doubling text aligns with the book’s doubling-device method. — connects to: A gag built around a dripping wig turned a bad song into comedy — Dolores DeLuce, Blow Jobs: A Guide to Making It in Show…, 20; Hugh Hefner’s public image at parties was already a self-parody by the 2000s — Dolores DeLuce, Blow Jobs: A Guide to Making It in Show…, 159