There was a meme circulating 15 or 20 years ago, back in the days when people thought memes were clever. Maybe you remember it. It was a series of infant photos and a series of famous adults and you had to try and match the infant face to the adult face. One of the adult faces belonged to Adolph Hitler and the point of the meme was that, based on appearance alone, we have no way to predict which innocent children will grow up to be genocidal megalomaniacs.
I look at this infant’s face and I see a generic plasticity to its expression. It has an undifferentiated innocence that makes it both delightful and dull. Delightful, because all infants return us to a time when the world was bright and simple. Dull, because innocence is an amoral state and therefore not particularly interesting.
Like the infant shown here, I’m inclined to direct my attention to the woman gazing down into the stroller. Life in the stroller is constrained; not much happening in there. But out in the world! Look at all those people walking past. And that woman looking down. What has she done to her lips? And her eye lashes? Why does she need to accentuate them like that? Will I have to do that someday? And that coat! Who dresses her in the morning? Who changes her diaper? Maybe, when you’re grown up, you get to drop your shit wherever you please. Wouldn’t that be amazing!
