strawberries
shadow boxer
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2010
- Messages
- 947
- MBTI Type
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Beauty is entirely subjective, intelligence is not. Intelligence has direct benefits over its absence. Thinking beauty is important has no direct benefits over thinking it's unimportant.
If you could convince someone with an ugly self-perception that beauty didn't matter, it would solve all of their problems on the issue. Their self-esteem would never take a hit again due to appearances, and they would judge less by them.
there are objective standards of attractiveness: health, symmetry, pedomorphy, hip to waist ratio... we are biologically wired to value physical attractiveness as it suggests fertility.
i can't say whether the experience was ultimately positive or negative for those women, as i don't know them or what they experienced during the programme. hopefully they were able to form some new positive associations regarding their body. to try to convince these women that their appearance doesn't mattter would be condescending. there has been much research done on the benefits of being attractive: higher salaries, more successful interpersonal relationships, better treatment by the legal system etc.
interestingly, lark had rodin's thinker statue as an avatar for a while. i remember lark being quite unimpressed when someone brought it up in the 'what's the gayest thing you do' thread. it's a beautiful bronzed form of a naked man - stripped of everything but his meditative thoughts.
does rendering an image in bronze make it somehow more virtuous than a photograph? or are we upset that the photographer's subjects are women? :rolli:
i'm glad that rodin didn't feel compelled to smother his thinker's superb musculature with modesty.
rodin on the thinker:
The Thinker has a story. In the days long gone by I conceived the idea of the Gates of Hell. Before the door, seated on the rock, Dante thinking of the plan of the poem behind him... all the characters from the Divine Comedy. This project was not realized. Thin ascetic Dante in his straight robe separated from all the rest would have been without meaning. Guided by my first inspiration I conceived another thinker, a naked man, seated on a rock, his fist against his teeth, he dreams. The fertile thought slowly elaborates itself within his brain. He is no longer a dreamer, he is a creator