Clothing creates mirages that dissolve under sustained intimacy

Evidence

Clothes can be an instrument of conquest but not a weapon of defense; their art is to create mirages, they offer the viewer an imaginary object: in the erotic embrace and in daily relations mirages fade; conjugal feelings like physical love exist in the realm of reality. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1576

Categorization

• XREF: The mirage/reality distinction parallels Beauvoir’s treatment of the imaginary dimension of feminine narcissism elsewhere and echoes Sartre’s concept of the imaginary. — connects to: Intimacy strips disguises to expose the other’s flesh as pure contingency — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 897