My Beautiful Friend
What an unfortunate article. Not because the content reveals anything wrong or abnormal about the writer; rather because it is so commonplace and so very normal.<p>But embedded inside of its message is a deep, I think, and fundamental misunderstanding of beauty, as immutable, objective, so easy, obvious and self-evident to rank into an unambiguous ordering of things. But this kind of lowest common denominator simplification makes it possible for a society to create rules and structure, so it becomes a cultural default.<p>But I think that aesthetic beauty is multi-dimensional and temporal. A fine wine or a brandy; a sublime cheese and not a fresh glass of milk. There is a very specific kind of electric, youthful beauty which is ephemeral and fleeting. But there are other kinds of beauty which can be subdued and hard to miss, which can appreciate over time. I don&#x27;t even mean that in a subjective &quot;beauty is in the eye of the beholder&quot; but rather, that beauty objectively can come in more than one form.<p>Is a bombastic Wagner opera more or less beautiful than a simple, haunting, short song by The Cranberries? The question doesn&#x27;t even make sense, they&#x27;re apples and oranges. But if you ask me, I prefer the song by The Cranberries and for the kind of beauty it holds deep inside of itself, the Wagnerian opera would never come close.<p>I wish society would accept and circulate this truth rather than the other simpler, convenient, and yet so very wrong lie reflected by this article. I may not be a woman, but I&#x27;ve felt so many similar kinds of body dysmorphia of this sort living in NYC surrounded by conventionally attractive male models for so long until I stopped trying to be a conventional kind of attractive that would never sit right on my skin and instead embraced the one that felt like home to me.<p>I sometimes regret that I didn&#x27;t realize this sooner. But on the other hand, I&#x27;m glad that the experience taught me a lesson and imbued me with a confidence that now cannot be taken away from me by anyone or anything.