Conference turris::womannotes-v3

    
    personally I like men's bodies better than women's - I love the planes
    and subtle curves - the hard texture of the muscle and bone covered 
    by the soft warmth of the skin - seeing the way the muscles flex and
    move beneath.
    
    But this may also hook into the fact that I was often told I was
    physically unappealing when I was younger.  I mean, if you are your own
    template of femaleness, and you are told you are visually unpleasant,
    you come to listen to what they are saying and learn to appreciate
    something different.  I think most models today are too thin, fwiw, and
    I do like the curves on some women - long legs and slender, rounded
    curves are the body type I think I like best - subtle curves -
    cheekbones - calves.....wait - I amend my statement - strong women are
    a different kettle of fish.  Having been soft and put down for it - I
    have it ingrained in me that it is not something to appreciate.  Being
    muscular (not overly so) is something I appreciate in both sexes,
    though - a kind of pantheresque, leonine, rippling, graceful strength.
    
    -Jody
    
    
    

    It's difficult for me to pick by sex.  I mean, all women are not
    better looking than all men, and all men are not better looking
    than all women.  Kim Basinger is certainly more appealing to look
    at than Danny Devito.  But, Mel Gibson is much prettier than Roseanne
    Barr.  (my opinion in both cases, of course)
    
    So, I guess the question is, are beautiful women more appealing
    to look at than handsome men?  Hmmm.  I sometimes enjoy looking
    at beautiful women but they don't excite me.  I admire their beauty
    in the same way I would a beautiful painting, flower, or intricate
    glass paperweight or something.  Sort of like a decoration.  But,
    I don't want to have sex with it.  I love looking at good looking
    men, but more as sex objects than as decorations.  So, I guess that
    purely aesthetically speaking, I do think beautiful women are more
    visually attractive than men, just to look at.  I think part of
    it is that beautiful women usually have more refined facial features
    as well as more curvy bodies.  I also find long hair, jewelry and
    feminine clothing to be more attractive than what men usually wear.
     I guess I think extremely feminine women are the best looking humans,
    but with nice clothes on.  I enjoy looking at both Stevie Nicks
    and Kim Basinger, and I think Julia Roberts looked fabulous when
    she got into the sophisticated clothes in "Pretty Woman."
    
    I also love cameos which usually have women's faces and miniature
    portraits, and portrait jewelry with paintings of women.  And, I
    love the paintings that Frank Benson and other impressionists did
    of women.  (except for Renoir's overweight nudes)
    
    Lorna
     

    >Being
    >muscular (not overly so) is something I appreciate in both sexes,
    >though - a kind of pantheresque, leonine, rippling, graceful strength.
                                                                             
    
    I happened to read an article about Madonna's exercise regimen
    yesterday. She works out 2 1/2 to 3 hours EVERY DAY with a
    personal trainer, who travels with her. The routine sounded murderous.
    First, we start with an hour of running, then, staircase work, etc.
    etc. etc. She is also a strict vegetarian, and has her own
    vegetarian cook, who also travels with her.
    
    This explains why she makes so much effort to show off the results of
    her labors, I guess. If I worked at it that hard, I would, too.
    
    -roger
    

    Mike, you missed the point, I think:  she does 2.5-3 hours PER DAY, ie
    17.5-21 hours per week.  I bet you don't do that.

    Ah, okay, I misunderstood you because I thought you knew that women
    have a harder time biochemically:  the amount that suffices for a man
    is too little for a woman.

    
    Hmm, I like gentle curves on both men and women. I mean,
    I like lean athletic bodies, no big breasts, no wide hips 
    and no big muscles.
    I can't stand figures like Dolly Parton's and Sylvester Stallone.
    I find both male and female bodies attractive to look at - like
    objects of art, sculptures. But, real bodies are better because
    there is life to it.
    I think all animals bodies are beautiful, well maybe except the
    rhinos'.
    
    Eva.

    
    When I look into a woman's eyes and see warmth, love, strength and
    softness, I'm seeing beauty.  The body is just a package and it doesn't
    matter if she is 20 or 55, whether she weighs 100 pounds or 300 pounds.
    
    The physical features can change, but the beauty never does...
    
    wes
    

Personality, more than anything else, colors whether I think a woman (or a person)
is beautiful,  since it can take people I considered unattractive and almost 
instantly make them lovely.  

Since they were mentioned earlier, I find that jewelry, bulging muscles,  
"statement clothes" (like power suits, pricey clothes, etc.), and makeup detract 
from a person's appearance.

M 

    All the extraneous stuff is what makes women more visually interesting.
    A picture of all the stuff, with no woman in sight, can usually
    generate the same responses in a man one would expect if a woman were
    in the picture.  Soft lighing, a rumpled bed, casually tossed high
    heels, some odd jewelry lying around and a horse's tail, (though
    nothing else of the horse in sight to identify it!) are some of
    the props people mistake for beauty.  No one knows it better than
    Heffner and Guccione!
    
    A naked, unpainted, average woman is no more "beautiful" than her male 
    counterpart - they are equally beautiful in that they are both strong, 
    healthy and fertile.  That's genuine beauty.  Everything else is just 
    changing societal preference.  And our society prefers props on women 
    to "make" them beautiful - to change them from the strong and simple
    to the weak and complex.  And she becomes as morbidly fascinating as a 
    car accident.  Everyone looks.  Even those who immediately turn away.

I'm not sure women really see women's bodies through their own eyes, to 
judge if they are beautiful or not. Men, and consequently women, see 
women's bodies through men's eyes. This quote says the same thing: 

	"Most women in Western culture see themselves only through the 
	distorting gaze of a society dominated by men...Our culture has 
	been so constructed under the lens of male experience that women 
	see themselves from the perspective of patriarchy...There has been 
	no place in our culture for an ordinary woman to turn for validation 
	of bodily experience that is uniquely female."

   		-- Elinor Gadon, The Once and Future Goddess: 
				 A Symbol for Our Time, 1989


I have a friend who is heavily into pornography whose fondest imagining is 
that women are constantly lusting after men's bodies -- crave images of 
them -- the way men presumably are after women's. Whether women are or are 
not doing this (and if they are not, whether it has something to do with 
their being "less visually oriented" than men) seems to me the wrong 
question to ask, or at least not the first question to ask. I think the
question to ask is, where are the images of women in our society *as seen
by women*, that would validate them, give them a sense of themselves as 
they really are in their full human potential and of living in their own
actual bodies? Then we could move on to whether we think their bodies are
beautiful, more or less than men's. 

The best hope I see for this is in recent feminist art.

IMHO,

Dorian

>    A naked, unpainted, average woman is no more "beautiful" than her male 
>    counterpart - they are equally beautiful in that they are both strong, 
>    healthy and fertile.  That's genuine beauty.  Everything else is just 
>    changing societal preference.  

"Genuine beauty"?  Nope.  I would never make such broad generalizations.
There isn't such a thing as "genuine beauty."

As I said, I like softness and curves.  An average woman, naked and unpainted, 
has more curves, more softness, than average, unpainted man.  It has *nothing*
to do with fashion, with makeup, with society.  It is truth, and shape is
as genuine as anything else.  

It could be argued that the reason I like curves is societal.  But they
curviness itself is biological, and what can be more genuine than that?

How can you point at *my* definition of esthetically pleasing, and say it
isn't "genuine"?

Forget props.  Forget rumpled beds and high heeled shoes. I like looking
at pictures of *people*, with or without clothes.  Some people I like looking
at more than others, and those I like looking at more I call beautiful.
And, based on that definition, I, in general, find women more beautiful than
men.

D!

PS: I find very little correlation to esthetic appeal and sexual appeal.
The high heeled shoes and rumpled bed might turn me on.  That isn't what I
am talking about, though, I am talking about the purely artistic/esthetic
visual appeal of people.  I get no sexual pleasure from looking at pictures
of people, with no props, no interaction etc.  I do get tremendous
esthetic pleasure.

    I'm not sure that I think conventional beauty has been completely
    defined by men.  I think it has been exploited by society and the
    media and some men but not completely defined.  If we were all totally
    brainwashed we would have no disagreements at all about what is
    or isn't beautiful, and we do have disagreement.  Somebody once
    had to be the first person to say or think that someone else looked
    beautiful.  The first person could not have been brainwashed since
    they were the first.  Those of us who have been born in modern times
    may be somewhat brainwashed, but I still think that our concept
    of conventional beauty is based on what was once the majority of
    peoples honest, unbrainwashed opinion of what struck them as beautiful.
     Why does a flower look better than a turd?  Is it just brainwashing?
     I just don't think that most human beings concept of beauty has
    been arrived at only by brainwashing because it had to start somewhere!
     What I think has happened is that our concept of female beauty
    has been exploited by advertising.  Maybe I'm just simpleminded
    but that's what it seems like to me.
    
    Lorna
    

re. images of women as seen by women ...

Well, I am a woman and I see women all the time.  The ones who are beautiful
to me have a sort of aura, a feeling of seeing themselves in their _own_ eyes.
But my experience of them is ephemeral and only benefits me.

I have photographed many women over the years trying to capture the sense of 
self that makes them beautiful to me.  They come in many ages and shapes and
colourings.  Photos last for a time only.

Some of works of sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington and her sister [who name I
blush to have forgotten] present powerful images of woman from the mundane to
the heroic, from toddler to crone -- lasting images indeed.

  Ann

re: Women through women's eyes

I have a book, I think called "World of women" which is a photographic essay
of the lives of women.  In it are some very beautiful women, not necessarily
in th tradition sense.  They have baby girls and pregnant women and thin
women and fat women, and women from other culture, and old and withered
women.  I don't know if the book is *by* women, but it did feel when looking
at the book like it was "women through women's eyes."

re: beauty - The most beautiful people in the world, I think, are pregnant
women - this is due both to my natural (intrinsic???) pleasure in simple
curves, and my socialized pleasure in the visual manifestation of a life
in the process of being created.

D!

    re .16 >the ones who are beautiful...have...a feeling of seeing 
           >themselves in their _own_ eyes
   
    Perfect. It's the ones who project a sense of "Look at my legs"
    "Look at my clothes", "Look at my hair style", "Look at my a**"
    "Look at my <what_have_you>" who are *not* beautiful, no matter what
    their *appearance*. A truly beautiful woman likes what she sees
    in the mirror, whatever that is.
    
   	
    

    re .18, Dana, isn't that sort of contradictory?  I'm sure that the
    women who project to you a sense of "look at my legs" ...my hair,
    etc, like what they see when they look in the mirror....so I guess
    you do find them beautiful afterall? :-)
    
    Okay, so all we have to do is like what we see in the mirror.  Then
    I guess most of us are beautiful, huh?
    
    Most of us may be beautiful in some way, and it may be a way that
    has nothing to do with physical appearance, but that is not the
    same thing as being physically beautiful.
    
    I think that just as long as we value people for other things besides
    looks (personality, good deeds, brains, talent, whatever) that there
    is nothing wrong with also noting that a particular person is beautiful
    on the outside.  I think it's just that being beautiful on the outside
    has been over-emphasized in our culture.  But, I don't think it's
    evil to appreciate physical beauty.  (which is practically the
    impression I get from you guys!)
    
    Lorna
    

re . 17 -

Thanks for mentioning that book.

Also, I'm really glad you mentioned the beauty of pregnant women. I was 
afraid that people, in assessing women's beauty, would just leave that out.
I absolutely agree. Recently in a store that sold arts and crafts from the
Caribbean I saw some big dark wooden carvings of heavily pregnant women, and
thought how rare that image is in our own society (not to mention in our 
religious imagery...). 

I'd like to see Playboy put out a Pregnant Women issue! (*No* pun
intended.) 

Or has it been done,
         
Dorian

    re .19 Lorna, I meant the ones who are crushed when you *don't*
    look. Or, to borrow a phrase from another note, the ones who
    really *are* their bra size. And nothing more. The really good
    looking women are those who take it for granted, keep it in
    perspective, and get on with the rest of their lives.

>    Okay, so all we have to do is like what we see in the mirror.  Then
>    I guess most of us are beautiful, huh?

Gosh, can most women look at themselves naked in the mirror and love what they
see? (OK; I'm changing words.) I tried it after I read "Fat is a Feminist
Issue". I'm still working on it.
	Mez

Regarding pregnant women:

I consider Joy beautiful for many reasons, but when she was pregnant, 
I thought she was even more beautiful.  I also think pregnancy enhances
beauty.

Mark

Personally, I perfer Madonna to Mike Zarlenga but I liked her better
when she didn't shave (of course)!  ;-)

john

I'll make another run at it ...

I'm saying that I've seen women in their eighties, with thin hair and wrinkles
and weathered skin and sagging breasts that _are_ beautiful.  Women that I
do not know at all that are compelling and transcend notions of mere prettiness.

I've seen young and supple women with clear skin and luxuriant hair and strong
legs that don't quit that are beautiful.  They know that they are beautiful
beyond any notions of mere prettiness.

It's hard to say in words, but I find woman who know they _are_ beautiful to 
_be_ beautiful.  They cast an aura of beauty around themselves.

I'm quite sure that they would wish others to find them beautiful as well, but
they aren't driven by that desire.

It's more than liking the image in the mirror, it's loving the image in the 
mind.  And it _is_ physical, not cerebral.

There is _absolutely_ nothing evil about appreciating physical beauty.  
Conventions be damned, I'm just saying that what _I_ think makes a woman 
beautiful -- physically -- is a sense of rightness that seems to be more a
part of her than ephemeral qualities such as hair colour, skin tone, and
the circumference of her thighs.

In the abstract, I suppose I could say that I favour women with thick dark
hair of average height with a slight rounding to the stomach and strong legs
and clear skin.  Oh yes, and the visual age I favour is 30. [no I'm not 30]

That being said, I find that more of the women I find beautiful to look upon
do _not_ conform to this preference than do.

Because women are not abstract contructs of the mind.

   Annie

    re .22, Mez, yes, there's a big difference between *like* and *love*!
     :-)  I like what I see in the mirror, but I don't love it!
    
    There is a photo this month in "Mirabelle" magazine (I think it's
    called?) of Julia Roberts (of Pretty Woman fame).  She is sitting
    on the ground wearing old beat-up jeans, cowboy boots, a silk shirt
    and holding an old worn looking leather jacket in her lap.  She
    has on almost no make-up, her hair is in a natural, straight style
    and she has a huge grin on her face.  She looks absolutely gorgeous.
     It isn't just the pretty face.  She looks full of life and vitality.
     (Of course she has a lot to smile about with 3 hit movies, an oscar
    nomination, and Kieffer Sutherland for a boyfriend, at the age of
    22!)  I just thought it was interesting that her picture was taken
    in such a natural pose, not movie star like at all, not deliberately
    sexy, and yet she looks so good.  I also noticed that the photographer
    was a woman.
    
    Lorna
    

    I agree with Justine - that it's what's coming from the inside that
    makesa woman beautiful.
    
    In particular, I notice older women, Wise Women, Crones, however you
    want to call them....who have a Character Energy about them. They are
    not conventionally beautiful...the society has written them off long
    ago....but they have wonderful faces, smiles, and a look in their
    eyes that makes them absolutely Gorgeous.
    
    --DE
    

    
    --DE, your note made me think of Georgia O'Keefe.
    
    

	Inner strength and courage.

	The ability to face change with an open mind and improve one's 
	character.



						-sjk

    Inner strength and courage.....yes
    To have beliefs and values is beautiful.
    And the power to stand up for what one believes in.  
    
    There are lots of damn beautiful women in this file.
    And I am so glad I have them for role models.
    
    -Jody
    

    Not simply for women, but for everyone--having the courage to be
    yourself.
    
    Barb