"You tell yourself that’s all right, but it’s not all right. It is important that we learn to express ourselves, to say what it is that we like, that we want."
Said Françoise Gilot, quoted in "Françoise Gilot: ‘It Girl’ at 100 The painter, writer and the only woman with the spunk and self-determination to leave Picasso has a few things to say about success, personal style and the nature of intimacy" (NYT).
She has not always been above using her looks to further her aims. Soon after they met, she writes, she took up Picasso’s invitation to teach her engraving. “I arrived on time wearing a black velvet dress with a high white lace collar, my dark red hair done up in a coiffure I had taken from a painting of the Infanta by Velázquez.”
When he remarked that her turnout was ill-suited for engraving, she informed him that she knew he had no intention of teaching that day. “I was simply trying to look beautiful,” she told him.
"She has not always been above using her looks to further her aims" — Is that sarcastic understatement?
Speaking of herself now, at the age of 100, she says: “Maybe I rather like the way I look... A sense of style is important... It’s like a pane of glass that makes you seem transparent but at the same time is a barrier.... You should not make yourself known that much to other people and keep your most intimate thoughts to yourself... People tell you to be natural. But what is natural, I would like to know?"
I read her book "Life with Picasso" half a century ago. Highly recommended.
How are you picturing that Infanta hairdo? This seems rather implausible:
