By: Franz Kafka

Often when I see dresses with many pleats and frills and flounces, draped
beautifully over beautiful bodies, then I think to myself that they will
not long be preserved in such a condition, but will acquire creases that
it will be impossible to iron out, dust in their details so thick it can no
longer be removed, and that no woman would wish to make such a sorry
exhibition of herself as to put on the same precious dress every morning
and take it off at night.

And I see girls who are certainly beautiful, displaying variously
attractive little muscles and bones and taut skin and masses of fine hair,
yet daily appearing in that same masquerade, always laying the same face in
the hollow of the same hands, and having it reflected back to them in the
mirror.

Only sometimes in the evening, when they come home late from a party, it
looks worn to them in the mirror, puffy, dusty, already seen by everyone,
almost not wearable anymore.