How Many Years of Life Is The Thigh Gap Worth? –The Melancholic and Death

I watched the television show Fleabagrecently (an excellent mix of funny, poignant and wrenching) and was struck by a scene in which a feminist speaker asks her audience, “Would you give up five years of your life to have the perfect body?” The protagonist and her sister raise their hands, but no one else does. We, the television viewing audience, are invited to think the sisters are shallow. We woke viewers understand that life is more important than having the perfect body, as much as we may complain about the latter.

This fable of Jean de La Fontaine’s came to mind.

A wretched man called out for death to save him every day.

The melancholy man said : O Death! How beautiful you are to me. Come quickly. Come end my cruel fortune.

Death thought that in coming she was obliging the man. She knocked at the door. Entered. Showed herself.

The man cried out: What do I see? Take this object away. It’s so hideous. I’m filled with horror and fright just looking at it! Stay back, oh Death! Oh Death, go away!

Maecenas was a gallant man (and close advisor of the first Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus).

He once said: Even if I’m impotent, legless, gouty or armless, so long as I’m…