by Eric van Aro
I recently went swimming with stingrays. Beautiful, serene creatures — the kind of encounter that asks nothing of you except that you pay attention.
Next to me in the group was a young woman who had applied triple false eyelashes for the occasion. To go snorkeling. Under sunglasses she wore the whole time anyway.
I’m not telling you this to mock her. I’m telling you because I stood there in the water genuinely puzzled, and the puzzlement turned out to be the start of an idea I’ve been chewing on ever since. It isn’t really about eyelashes. It’s about a question I can’t shake:
When did we start mistaking more for better?
The wrong way to say it
The easy version of this essay is the one every generation writes about the next. Things used to be classier. People used to show restraint. Now everything is turned up to eleven and I’m exhausted. You’ve read that essay a hundred times. I’ve started to write it more than once.
But I think it’s wrong — or at least lazy. Because “too much” isn’t actually the problem, and the moment I tried to defend restraint as a virtue in itself, I noticed I couldn’t. Restraint isn’t superior to abundance. The Baroque was not subtle. Aretha was not subtle. A cathedral is not subtle. Some of the most powerful things humans have ever made are maximal to the point of overwhelming, and they earn every inch of it.
So the eyelashes didn’t bother me because they were big. Something else was off, and it took me a while to name it.
Earned versus reflexive
Here’s the distinction I landed on. There is intensity that is chosen — pointed at something, doing a job, answering to an occasion. And there is intensity that is merely reflexive — the default setting, applied to everything equally, because turning the dial down never occurred to anyone.
The snorkeling lashes weren’t too much. They were too much for nothing. There was no stage, no audience, no moment they were reaching toward — just decoration arriving out of habit, where the habit has replaced the decision. That’s the part that unsettles me. Not the volume. The absence of a reason for the volume.
Once you see it this way, the whole complaint reorganizes itself. The problem was never spectacle. It’s spectacle on autopilot.
What intention actually looks like
The most powerful performance I’ve seen in years was Dominique Jackson as Elektra in Pose. And here’s the thing — her character is not understated. She is heightened, commanding, larger than the room. By the lazy “restraint is class” standard, she’d be Exhibit A for the prosecution.
But nobody who has watched that performance would call it empty. Every ounce of its size is aimed. It means something; it’s defending something; it costs her something. The flamboyance is the argument, not the noise around it. That’s intensity with a spine.
This matters especially when people complain about flamboyance in queer culture, which is where conversations like this usually drift. Most of that flamboyance isn’t a failure of taste — it’s a choice with a long history. Visibility as defiance. Refusing to make yourself small and palatable as the price of being tolerated. When it’s chosen, it’s the opposite of the snorkeling lashes: it’s maximal because it’s pointed at something. The mistake is lumping the two together just because they’re both loud.
A note on the vocal athletes
Let me risk this one. The great voices — Mariah, Whitney, Patti, Celine — are technical masters, and I bow to the skill. But somewhere along the way the run became compulsory. Every phrase a competition, every note a launchpad for three more. A trip to the grocery store turns into a pentatonic obstacle course.
And again: the problem isn’t that they can do it. It’s that the doing has stopped being a choice. A run that lands on the one syllable that needs to break open is devastating. A run on every syllable is just calisthenics — and calisthenics never made anyone cry.
Do yourself a favor and listen to Shirley Horn. Miles Davis reportedly called her his favorite singer. She could level you with a whisper, because she understood that the note you don’t sing is as loud as the one you do. She left space on purpose. The silence was aimed at something too.
That’s not a smaller talent than the acrobats. It’s the same talent, governing itself.
The actual plea
So I’ll drop the cranky-old-man version. I’m not asking anyone to be quieter. I’m not nostalgic for some imagined era of good taste — that era never existed and I wouldn’t want it back.
I’m asking for intention. Be as big as the moment deserves. Bring the triple lashes to the stage where they belong and let them be glorious. Run the scale when the song actually breaks open. Build the cathedral. But know why — point it at something, let it answer to an occasion, trust that the size is doing work.
Loud isn’t the enemy. Loud-for-no-reason is. The fix isn’t less; it’s meant.
And, okay — maybe still leave the triple lashes on the shore before you get in the water with the stingrays. Not because they’re too much. Because the stingrays were already enough