"I hate body artifice," Benedetta said, fingering keys with great expertise. "It’s even worse now that women’s bodies last forever. We women are so much of the female body it’s fatal to us, we even have to die beautiful. Even Paul...he talks to me about theory. Like a colleague! Like a philosopher! Then the glamour girl appears in her wig and lipstick and it’s like his little Muse just jumped off the train for him. Women never learn! Men contemplate beauty, but we have to be beauty. So the female is always the other, and we’re never the center."