As an artist, I find it very sad that so many people have a negative connotation with the word “beauty.” Although the etymology of the word is pretty convoluted (additional pun on “pretty” intended), to me it means… seeing the inherent and innate goodness or worth in something. It doesn’t mean flawless or immaculate, nor “attractive” unless perhaps we are speaking in terms of the laws of attraction and what esoteric mysteries are embodied therein. Nor is it meant to evoke the “beauty standards” of an external authority. Beauty is something that’s cultivated between you and “source consciousness” (call it god/creator, or simply call it nature: the essence of being alive in this inter-active universe). It is a relationship, and also an ever-evolving perception. And ironically perhaps it evokes the sound of the letters B-U-T as if to suggest that there might always be subjective qualifications and interpretations placed upon it (but never objective ones).
To see something as “beautyful” is, in a manner of speaking (because all words become subjective eventually), to apply love where there has been hatred. To see innate worth in something which has been deemed unpleasant and unwelcome. *** You could destroy this thing, or you could build upon it. *** Neither action is inherently correct and good, nor ugly and evil, but much like a wound or natural disaster …the question becomes… how do we heal, and where do we want to go from here?
For example: to me, a forest is beautyful. To somebody who wants a lawn or lumber? It is an impatient, wasteful, and messy eye-sore. Likewise, my body may not be perfect. It may be a-symmetrical in places, mottled, warped, lumpy, wrinkly, scarred, unusual, and downright unpleasant in the eyes of a certain kind of beholder (who I am not beholden to, as it were, and much to their chagrin)… But, not only does that not make it worth-less; but to a rare somebody else it may indeed be unusually beautyful. Of course, being my body, I am its sovereign keeper and nobody else can tell me what to do with it…unless I relinquish that power to them. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure, and yet this treasure belongs to me alone, and whomever I choose to bestow it upon, and only then if they wish to receive it in return…