We don't really like to be sympathetic about the burden of physical beauty, because it's easier to define ourselves sometimes by our lack of sympathy for those we consider luckier than us, but that doesn't mean being a pretty woman is a picnic. Every single one of us is objectified by the way we look, and as non-straight males, every single one of us is objectified as a matter of course. There are obvious ways in which being a beautiful woman means being treated like even less of a human being: It makes some things easier, some harder. Just like with any other quality, from intelligence to hair color: Those things are not ourselves either.

(Thinking they are is an express train to hell. Priding yourself on your intelligence is undercutting your wholeness just as much as priding yourself on any other one thing, and it makes you weak and it can turn you crazy. Probably if you're reading this, you should think about that. Because I swear to you there are more wonderful things about you than your great big throbbing brain. No matter what you've been told.)

But when you're pushed into that particular pretty-object box, which all of us are to some extent, you have the choice of going completely dark inside, and being just a pretty thing. And that's what was going to happen to Gabrielle regardless, for the sin of being beautiful. Add Alejandro into that mix, and I'll be damned if I can find much of a reason to blame her for much of what she's done. The fact that she's still kicking and trying to find a way to negotiate with the outside world -- while still, it's true, being just as cartoonish as the other characters on this show -- is one of the reasons she's always been my favorite.

I'm not a woman, but I think it might be easier to find sympathy for all of this as a gay man, because as a gay man you get pushed into that same exact box no matter how pretty you are. You are pressured to be infantile, volatile and snarky from the time that other kids start noticing that you're different: It's the only way out. You have to be a silly pretty object, or risk getting the shit beat out of you for speaking up or having thoughts, because you're not a man in the same way that other men are men, which is at least as threatening as looking like Eva Longoria. You have to agree that certain labels are worth killing yourself to avoid -- that having no word and no label, sometimes, is better than having a name to call yourself -- and keep your trap shut about it. You have to play along.