"Great masters have reproduced the naked human body endlessly through the ages -- Michelangelo's magnificent 'David' is a superb example -- just as they have reproduced both male and the female nude body in all its splendor. Museums are filled with their testimonials to the beauty of the human form."
--Wardell Baxter Pomeroy, 1991
"Girls and Sex," Third Edition, Pages 46
And when I say to create your own, I don't mean to lower your expectations when judging beauty. If you only become less judgmental of others, you would still be going along with what society teaches as beautiful and ugly. You would be satisfied with achieving whatever level of beauty you had resigned yourself to -- and not creating your own standard of beauty.
When you change how you measure attraction, start and end where you individually desire. You are no longer dependent upon what the majority of news outlets have impressed upon you. You're not changing how much "beauty" you require in a partner, or how much "ugliness" is considered unacceptable. You're changing what you define as beautiful and ugly.
With your own standard, you will be personally writing the definition of 'gorgeous' and 'homely'. Choose what you are innately drawn to -- choose what is naturally attractive to you. It could be a facial hair or mustache, it could be legs or skin; there could be any attribute or detail that arouses you. You should know and understand your impulses. Then you can craft a measurement of beauty that is personally satisfying -- a view that provides guidance and confidence in your life decisions.
It is better that you are happy with what you want, than you are with being pushed into something that society wants you to be. If you are the independent individual, then all of life's experiences will be open to you. All of the exquisite joys and wonderful cravings of human existence will bring you to extreme joy. But if you spend years and years fighting it, ashamed of your desires, then you will have lost -- because that is time you will never get back to be happy.
"I like to have my hands feel the firmness and the roundness of her breasts, to press her lips against mine, to soak up rapture from her looks, and to die in her arms.... But I won't conceal from you that it is infinitely more pleasurable to me to have helped someone in distress, brought some difficult business to a conclusion, given some beneficial advice, read something agreeable, taken a walk with a man or woman close to my heart, passed some instructive hours with my children, written a good page, fulfilled the duties of my position, or told the woman I love something tender and soft, so that she put her arms around my neck."
--Denis Diderot, 1762
"Rameau's Nephew"
If you are happy with being attracted to what you want, then you will have reached your highest form of expression. You will be able to love and admire freely, letting your passions directly form your culture and lifestyle. You will not need to interpret or reinterpret feelings, to gage and weight this or that beauty. You will not be forced into false standards of what is attractive or unattractive -- you will be guided only by what you are naturally attracted to; lead and supported by what most quickly and powerfully causes you to reach ecstasy
What is it then, that you should form your standard of beauty around? What should you value as beauty and ugly, as ecstatic and ordinary, as amazing and uninteresting? Only you can know, because only you feel the desires. And more importantly, only you suffer or benefit by how you react to them. If you reject them, then you will spend years isolated and uncertain. But if you embrace and accept them, then you be free in your hopes, your desires, and life.
Make your own standard of beauty, and be free of what society expects you to like or dislike.
"Two persons, a male and a female, meet, and are drawn together by a mutual attraction a natural feeling unconsciously arising within their natures of which neither has any control which is denominated love. This is a matter that concerns these two, and no other living soul has any human right to say aye, yes or no, since it is a matter in which none except the two have any right to be involved, and from which it is the duty of these two to exclude every other person, since no one can love for another or determine why another loves."
--Victoria C. Woodhull, 1871
"A Speech On The Principles Of Social Freedom," with Stephen Pearl Andrews
Disclaimer: All information on this site is provided for informational purposes only! By no means is any
information presented herein intended to substitute for the advice provided to you by any health care or other professional
or organization.
