BEAUTY ISN'T JUST PRETTY
We need to stop associating beauty with mere prettiness. Beauty is not cheap, and it is not reducible to young women and sex.
Beauty is a powerful force to be reckoned with.
Think Helen of Troy beauty - a beauty that brings about the wars of nations.
Think of the ocean - a beauty so deep, so incalculable, so magnificent & unfathomable that it terrifies us.
Think of a mid-summer thunderstorm - a beauty that swoops in in swirling glory and threatens to destroy us.
Think of the great French gothic cathedrals - a beauty that formidably points to an eternal, unseen glory, demanding allegiance.
Stomach-flipping, edge-of-seat beauty.
Breathless beauty.
Simultaneously fear & delight-inducing beauty.
Our modern world often does not understand beauty, and so neither does it usually respect it.
Beauty commands reverence, and beauty demands a response.
Courageous people do not falsely reduce beauty to mere prettiness in order to make it palatable.
Courageous people do not seek to destroy what is beautiful in order to relieve their consciences of their own mediocrity.
Courageous people decide to SEE beauty and let it transform them and bring about a response of greatness. They recognize that it is powerful force to be harnessed and used in favour of the good.
Wanting to be the kind of person who celebrates beauty in its fullest sense, and felt like inviting others here to as well today.
Xx, Kay
I find beauty in an old woman's hands. Or an old thrift store wood floor. The antique. I find beauty in a large belly or thick thighs. Or the chubby cheeks and dimples in smiles. I find beauty in the homeless the helpless and the "needy" I find beauty in art that isn't understandable art. Beauty is everything. It's beautiful that as an artist I wake up every day and am allowed to see so many colors the stains the grease marks the dirt. I could keep going on what is beautiful in my eyes and senses.
You have a deep, rich understanding of what beauty is. Thank you for your comment! Upvoted :)
Thank you. I'm an artist. I see things alot differently...spend an entire day watching the light transfer of dawn to dusk on one tree and you will see so many beauties in one thing.
Wow.. you're incredible. It's amazing when we really SEE. I'm an artist as well--poet, singer, writer. Have a few videos up already actually, if you're interested!
What kind of artist are you? I'll also take a look at your blog.. :).
I'm a painter who is just now learning to truly draw lol I'm doing personal studies right now with anatomy and am completely submerged. I will check yours out as well!! I just joined a few days ago and I only have a few paintings posted. I will post more soon
That's awesome! Welcome. Isn't it just the best here?
Omg so amazing! It's good to see people motivated to post good things. Interesting articles, photos, games and challenges! And not just Facebook meme broville nonsense
Seriously. So glad to hear you love it.
Hey, I followed you, please return the favor :)
I checked your blog, its inspirational :O
Bravo!
And from the viewpoint of faith, we know there is nothing ugly, nothing disordered, nothing foul, nothing dirty, nothing repulsive or repugnant in God. God is Beauty, even as He is Love. Since it is a quality of Him, it can be known, it can be defined... but never as ugly. Never as evil. Never as dark. Never as the absence of any good and perfect quality. Such things do not exist in God, Who is the epitome of beauty. This is why beauty cannot be subjective, any more than virtue can be. We have their highest model and example, and from Him, we learn the true nature of those things. (In this case, beauty like the things you listed!) One of them is indeed what we might call internal beauty... beauty of soul.
Ugliness, I think, exists so that we can better appreciate the beauty, and so that we have something to represent to us the ugliness of evil and sin... that which mars, which is disordered, which disfigures, which is horrific, and which is dark and brings darkness.
And, "Woe to you that call evil good, and good evil: that put darkness for light, and light for darkness: that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter." - Isaias, Ch. 5
Hey, I followed you, please return the favor :)
I checked your blog, its inspirational :O
Being a collector of antiques, I find beauty in the old and worn, in gilded edges, in dusty treasures. In people and objects with substance and wisdom.
Being in the medical beauty industry I find beauty in a woman, or gentleman, who upkeeps themselves, who knows their skin, who doesn't shy away from botox or fillers.
However you feel beautiful, that is your true beauty.
Hey, I followed you, please return the favor :)
I checked your blog, its inspirational :O
Beauty is in the heart not in appearances.
How we perceive things is relative to everyone of us. It's just bad that the notion of beauty is not recognized in the society the way it should have been.
Hey, I followed you, please return the favor :)
I checked your blog, its inspirational :O
It's such a deeper reality than it's been sold as. Breaks my heart to see it made so cheap. xx, Kay
I feel what you said. Hope, you view it the way you perceive it. And, thats all it matters the most
nice reclaim of beauty, from shallow aesthetics to real admiration and meaning
we've become so collectively surface-level that we tend to confuse the gilded shell of things for the value inside
I like the way you phrased that. A good summary of what I was attempting to say.
Agreed, beauty has layers like the fifty shades of gray or grey or beauty and there is a lot of depth underneath covers we judge and we often never take the time to appreciate the dimensions to beauty of sophisticated ideas and things and the sunset and many things.
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Agreed.
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Thanks.
You're welcome! Thanks for checking it out. Glad it resonated for you.
How eloquently stated. My first post on a different social media site about 4 or 5 years ago had a photo of an elderly lady, a grandmother or great grandmother, her hand covered her mouth as she gazed with that look of love that comes from deep within the soul. And the caption read "If only our eyes saw souls instead of bodies, how different our ideals of beauty would be." You have that spirit...
LOVE this post. Just today I wrote my intro on how I strive to just find the beauty in life and think of beauty as a way to live, not just a characteristic towards someones appearance. So many things in this world that resemble true, deep beauty.
So wonderful to have someone to share this with! It's so important. People think it's peripheral, but it's actually everything. A lack of beauty starves people in really painful ways. I write about this quite a lot, actually (I'm also an artist--musician and poet).
I saw your postings. You seem to be such a pure artist and I love it! There are very few believers in the world that know what it really means to feel, see, and embrace beauty inside and around one another. Without beauty, I don't think its a fulfilling life. I'll definitely stay up to date with your blogs. :)
Going to go read your intro! It's really important to me to try to unite serious writers, thinkers and artists on Steem.
Thank you so much! I'll be following your posts! :)