Beauty

With Saint Valentine’s Day now behind us, I find myself wondering about the way people think. It’s easy to blame media for how we act, but there has been. Long before the flood of ultra-thin, photoshopped women ever existed, items like the Paleolithic ‘Venus’ statues tell us that there were standards of beauty throughout our existence. Different cultures have favored different things.

Austria Venus of Willendorf

Looking at the contrast between the Venus figures and the modern standard, we can see that rarity has been what is most valued. In a time when extra weight meant an abundance of food and security, thin was out of favor. In our own age where food is so plentiful that being thin has become a high effort task, thin is the new beautiful. Photoshop adds even further rarity so that the woman in the picture can’t even live up to her own image!

I’m not going to debate the right or wrong of this. It’s a part of our basic nature to value the rare and devalue the common. My point is simply this, none of it is real. If you had been living in Paleolithic times, that thin little waif the guys are drooling over would have been utterly ignored. Does that mean she isn’t beautiful? No. It means they simply can’t perceive her beauty.

As a man, in my opinion, you can’t be worthy of any woman until you come to a place where you can recognize that every woman is beautiful in her own way. Maybe that woman doesn’t match your preferences, but that in no way diminishes her beauty. There are people who see her as the pinnacle of beauty no matter what she may look like or how she is formed. Those people aren’t wrong. Those men aren’t freaky or have a fetish. They have an ability to see the beauty in her that you don’t see.

Women seem slightly less inclined to this problem, but more and more women are also falling into the trap. Whatever your gender, whatever you like, always remember that your interests are simply that: Interests. The person you are seeing is beautiful and deserves to know it. They deserve to see themselves as beautiful. Take from this whatever you will.

These are my thoughts. I’m interested to hear your own. Feel free to comment with your own feelings on this matter.

What are your thoughts?

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