Beauty

First, I am posting late and I do know that I am. I would give some sort of excuse but I'll spare you all and say, "here it is" and I'm sure you've all been waiting with bated breathe for this moment.

So. Beauty. A really interesting topic, especially coming from a woman who is easily and instantly offended or struck by the naked portrayal of another woman's body in an ad. Here is my first beef. I think humanity and the human form are beautiful (and I've been called a feminist by many-a-person before, though I don't really consider myself anything of that exact sort). Yes, women can be demeaned and yes, their bodies are sexually exploited daily, as are young children and men. The root of the obsession is not because women are inferior but because they are generally considered to be more visually appealing than men are (and a host of other reasons, innumerable). Beside that, one thing can be agreed upon in many cultures worldwide and despite gender and sex: humanity is extremely attracted to beautiful things. Something that is difficult to do is to define something so vast. But, there is something to be said of the test of time: marble carvings of men and women from Greece and Rome, Mozart's Requiem, Bach's Cello Suite 1 Prelude, Michaelangelo's The Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel, Flowers, Mountains, Clouds, Stars, Women with shapely bodies, Men with toned muscles, books that contain true and artful descriptions of life, Poetry, computers that are white and glow blue and phones that can contain all our lives within a sweep of our fingers on the screen.

The point is that beauty takes many forms. And what people remember and what they write about, think about, live for, die for, fight for, dream of, stare at and sometimes stalk, it is beauty. The ability to write well, to speak well, to dress well, to present yourself appropriately in different situations, that is your ability to effectively use rhetoric and those who are most successful, they are the beautiful ones, the ones we remember most: Shakespeare, Martin Luther King Jr., Sarah Palin (just kidding ;) ). 

Beauty, in fact, has everything to do with everything. It is most relevant and as much as we would all like to deny ourselves the carnal instinct to acknowledge and drool over its powerful presence, we cannot, in our most honest moments, truly pretend that the beauty contained in favorite texts do not move us.