...Only Skin Deep

More efforts to effect a paradigm shift - as it were.

So it (it, in this case, is code for my thought process along this if/then trail) all began with a little "dresses I love" afternoon email... and this dress came up because it is lovely (as is Miss Maggie) and as (I largely suspect) a nod - encouragement, maybe - to my training to be in the next Batman.

Then it skipped over to an interesting article about the genesis of the modern conception of the Body Beautiful - with specific attention paid to the bodies of Olympic athletes. The author, Guy Trebay, states "It was the art historian Anne Hollander who noted that, even naked, the body is subject to fashion and that the body beautiful differs according to an era’s prevailing mores and tastes". What I find alarming is that, while all of the women I associate with are truly beautiful (not in a campy, real beauty is on the inside, every kid gets a gold participation medal kind-of-way) and intelligent and thoughtful and caring (and etc.) - there seems to be a greater than necessary emphasis placed on physical beauty.

In Ways of Seeing, John Berger posits that the point of advertising is to make the consumer (ahem. you and me) marginally dissatisfied with her or his place in society. Not dissatisfied with society in general - but with our own place in relation to it.

For me, this focus on physical beauty is really more about perfection. Because I (have been encouraged to) believe that what I am is not enough - but if I were more perfect - I somehow could be. *Please note my use of "more perfect". It is not an oxymoron. God has perfectly created me.*

But then I came across an interesting article about women in Pakistan - and it really made me reexamine my thoughts on what beauty is and can be. It turns out that Guy Trebay is right - beauty is about strength. It's just that real beauty transcends physicality.

In The Hidden Words of Bahá'u'lláh is stated:

"O Man Of Two Visions! Close one eye and open the other. Close one to the world and all that is therein, and open the other to the hallowed beauty of the Beloved."