Source: Existential Comics #667
Transcription:
Evil Queen: Mirror mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?
Mirror: Snow White.
Evil Queen: Hmmm …
Evil Queen: Mirror mirror on the wall, does that mean there is an objective standard of beauty?
Mirror: Uhh … yeah sure …
Evil Queen: So how did you determine your answer? What is the objective standard that you used to determine this?
Mirror: Oh you know, she is just the woman most people would think is most beautiful.
Evil Queen: What? But that’s not objective!
Evil Queen: If that were true I don’t even have to kill Snow White, I just have to kill enough people who have the hots for her to tip the scales for me.
Mirror: Okay fine, then it is her pale skin.
Evil Queen: That’s it, pale skin?
Mirror: Yeah paler the skin, the more beautiful the girl.
Evil Queen: You know … that almost sounds a little racist, mirror on the wall.
Mirror: And another thing, there are too many immigrants …
These types of explanations always ring hollow to me.
Yeah sorry, I don’t think I could care less what was “acceptable” at the time. She’s a child. She looks like a child.
It’s the same shit with slavery. I’ve been told that Jesus never condemns slavery because “it was the culture at the time” (as if Jesus’ entire thing wasn’t being counterculture, but ok). I really do not fucking care. Slavery was the accepted culture in the US in the 1800s, I’d still find it objectively abhorrent and disgusting.
I would love to agree, but I think this falls into hindsight being 20/20.
For myself, I eat meat. However, I can easily imagine a world where that would be considered ethically horrible. I believe it was punishable by death in Japan for like 1000 years in the past. However, I was raised to eat meat, and honestly don’t see a problem with it. I’m sure I would feel different if raised differently.
When we say “I would hold my same morals regardless,” I think we may be giving ourselves too much credit… Or not giving enough credit to those who lived in the past.
That’s why the phrase “the past is a different country” rings very much.