IJ study archive

Gately and Joelle on the veil and U.H.I.D. (p. 535)

quote

You stick your hideous face right in there into the wine-tasting crowd’s visual meatgrinder, you smile so wide it hurts and put out your hand and are extra gregarious and outgoing and exert yourself to appear totally unaware of the facial struggles of people who are trying not to wince or stare or give away the fact that they can see that you’re hideously, improbably deformed. You feign acceptance of your deformity. You take your desire to hide and conceal it under a mask of acceptance.

Context

Joelle, three days off her overdose, explaining U.H.I.D.'s doctrine of hidden hiding: the smile worn "so wide it hurts" as a manufactured mask over concealed pain — the same forced-smile apparatus as Kate's "frightening smile," delivered by a woman describing, in the second person, how you perform being fine.

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