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On Beauty
Ideals of beauty change. They change from decade to decade. Some of the characteristics our forerunners swooned over look pretty shonky today. Big hair- Louis XIV version or 1980s version? No, sorry, looks kinda silly now....
Consider the pin-ups of the past. Does the Venus de Milo do it for you (even if you can imagine her with arms)? No? Me neither.
Titian's fleshy blondes, Ingres' porcelain beauties, Liz Taylor in the era when she was billed as the world's most beautiful woman? No, not really....
Though I do confess a liking for the pre-Raphaelite stunner (Rossetti's word not mine.) Long tangly hair, big eyes, a studied melancholy. And I still adore the Audrey Hepburn look.
Our friend Mark was saying that today's ideal is one that is only naturally attained by girls around the age of 16- and which fades like the flowers of spring. "Fair daffodils, we weep to see ye pass away so soon...."
Beautiful is not the same as sexy. Barbara Windsor was sexy not beautiful. Beauty, however imperfectly we imagine it, is remote, a little inhuman. Venus is a goddess after all.
Don't touch. Lipstick smears, mascara runs, perfect hairdos get ruffled....
Do you know Merimee's story La Venus d'Ille? That'll learn you to keep your distance from goddesses. It's one of many iterations of the theme.
I am tempted to add that beauty has a spiritual quality, that true beauty is inward not outward, but that would be Quakery of me so I shan't....
Consider the pin-ups of the past. Does the Venus de Milo do it for you (even if you can imagine her with arms)? No? Me neither.
Titian's fleshy blondes, Ingres' porcelain beauties, Liz Taylor in the era when she was billed as the world's most beautiful woman? No, not really....
Though I do confess a liking for the pre-Raphaelite stunner (Rossetti's word not mine.) Long tangly hair, big eyes, a studied melancholy. And I still adore the Audrey Hepburn look.
Our friend Mark was saying that today's ideal is one that is only naturally attained by girls around the age of 16- and which fades like the flowers of spring. "Fair daffodils, we weep to see ye pass away so soon...."
Beautiful is not the same as sexy. Barbara Windsor was sexy not beautiful. Beauty, however imperfectly we imagine it, is remote, a little inhuman. Venus is a goddess after all.
Don't touch. Lipstick smears, mascara runs, perfect hairdos get ruffled....
Do you know Merimee's story La Venus d'Ille? That'll learn you to keep your distance from goddesses. It's one of many iterations of the theme.
I am tempted to add that beauty has a spiritual quality, that true beauty is inward not outward, but that would be Quakery of me so I shan't....
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