A Mаn Wіthоυt Beauty

When we tell people that female beauty is being threatened, and that it needs protecting, the usual response is: silence. Crickets. An inaudible shrug.

We suspect most people don't think beauty is in danger at all. Just look around, they seem to say. It stares back at us from every billboard, from every magazine cover, from every music video and television show. How can it be endangered when it's everywhere?

Either that, or else people just don't care anymore. Everyone has grown up with the attitude that beauty is somehow immoral, that it's a dangerous thing, that it will lead young men astray, that it destroys women who pursue it. We all harbour secret and deep-seated negativity about beauty, no matter how much we protest otherwise, because deep down we think women who possess it are either shallow, stupid, slutty, or too far out of our league to ever look at us anyway. Deep down we berate ourselves for liking beauty because we believe, sometimes earnestly, that we would be better people if we weren't so mesmerized by beauty. Maybe that's why it's too easy to just shrug and turn away when someone suggests its worth fighting for.

But what would the world look like if no one stood up for beauty? If everyone turned a blind eye to the attacks on it?

It would look something like this:

You're a man in your twenties, thirties, or even forties and you haven't met your dream woman yet. You have a vague sense that she's out there somewhere, you have a vision of the kind of warmth and love and companionship that your special woman will bring into your life, but so far, none of the eyes you've looked into have lit the sky for you. You are sexual, sensual being, and you long for the kind of intense sexual and romantic relationship you know is possible with someone who excites your body and your mind as well.

So in the meantime, you look for your dream woman in images of beautiful women. You can't see a person's values on the inside, so you are drawn to pictures that seem to symbolize these values for you: if you want a sexy woman, you are drawn to images of buxom girls in bikinis, if you want a feminine woman you find long hair intoxicating. If you want a smart woman, you find a business suit and glasses a turn on, and if you want all of these things in a woman, you look for images that seem to encapsulate all of these values in one person.

In the end, you are drawn to the ultimate fantasy woman, the image of what your perfect lover would look like, and it helps you understand what qualities you want in a woman of your own. Putting pin ups on your wall or your computer desktop keeps you going through the lonely days of your search. It reminds you that you're a man, and that being very attracted to a woman is a proper and wonderful part of your life.

But one day you go to your computer to visit your favourite nude gallery site, and you get a message saying it isn't there. When you read the explanation, you see that the site is no longer available because the site owner has lost his method of taking memberships. A major credit card company has decided to clamp down on what it considers to be adult sites. They include nude gallery and artistic sites in this sweeping condemnation as well. Many smaller businesses can't afford the large fees that the credit card company has labeled erotic or adult content, and even some credit card processing sites have gone out of business because of it. The one you use no longer allows you to buy memberships to sites that involve nudity.

So you decide to go out to get a magazine. You don't go to the corner variety store anymore because the only magazines they carry are wrapped in plastic, and feature only graphic pornography anyway. You don't want porn, you want inspiration. You're tired of raunchy porn long ago. You want to fall in love, and if you don't have a real life woman to fall in love with yet, you at least want an image of one to inspire you. The magazines at the corner store are now all so seedy that you're embarrassed to even look through them, never mind buy one. The one magazine that you know you can count on for non-sexual nudes has cut back issues yet again, and is now released only quarter-anually, and won't be out for another 3 months.

You go to a local department store just to see who might be on the cover of the latest magazines. But all the men's magazines you used to buy are gone, and there's a note on the shelf saying that in the interest of protecting children, this store no longer carries men's magazines. You ignore the gnawing guilt you feel in your stomach - for what are you, but a man? Doesn't the sanctimonius removal of men's magazines make it clear that the store believes that there's something wrong with men themselves?

You look at the cute cashiers you used to flirt harmlessly with when you bought your groceries here, but somehow, you don't feel up to it now. And you wonder how you will ever meet the woman of your dreams if you don't even want to talk to them.

You look instead to the women's magazines, and see that most of them have been covered up with plastic barriers, supposedly for the sake of children. There are magazines on the shelf that feature gothic tattoo artists, that show scenes from violent video games, whose covers display the latest hunting rifle for the purpose of shooting down helpless animals, and on the backs of all these magazines are slick, happy people pitching cigarettes as some sort of suave lifestyle choice, but none of these are covered up. Only pictures of beautiful women are deemed dangerous enough to warrant immediate and dramatic action.

So you walk back through the mall, feeling even worse than when you went in. You see a couple of attractive women walk by, but you don't dare let yourself get caught staring at them. You'd be labelled a stalker, or a pervert at the very least. Somehow, you don't have the balls to risk it.

Still you wish you could just walk up to the girl sitting behind the ice cream counter and say "You're very beautiful, I just thought you'd like to hear it" without worrying about her reaction. You read in the paper the other day that a six year old boy was suspended from school for a 'sexual assault' - because he pecked a little girl on the cheek, so who's going to take any chances? There are some nice poster ads outside the mall featuring some pretty girls, but their faces have either been obscured by the word "bitch" in magic marker, or else covered over with a sticker from a feminist group that says starvation isn't fashionable. You look at the pictures again, they're of fairly average looking girls (supermodels disappeared from public ads long ago) neither gorgeous nor pencil thin. There's no reason for either of the two statements that are obscuring their faces. Still, they are there. And on many more posters you've seen around the city as well.

When you get home, you check the internet again and read that the Miss Universe pageant is on tonight. Great, you think. Finally, a little beauty break in your day. But when you scour the TV guide, you realize that no one is broadcasting it. The networks have received too many complaints from women who object to these pageants, and who don't want their children to be 'corrupted by pornographic television', and so the pageant is not televised. Instead, they are running a documentary on the protesters who travel the world picketing outside beauty pageants to protest unfair sexualization of women. On another channel is a satirical movie about beauty pageants in which all the women are painted as vicious, stupid and vain. You notice that only supermodels have been cast for the roles of bitches.

You remember, too, that not so long ago, the presence of beauty pageant contestants in Nigeria sparked murderous rampages and riots, all because someone suggested that a prophet might have chosen his wife from among such beauties. You remember the pageant being relocated to a safer place, but that instead of outrage and contempt for the fundamentalist zealots who took to killing and violence, the news was full of feminists who used it as an opportunity to blame the beauty contestants for yet another societal problem. For some reason, only the most beautiful of the pageant contestants appear in the photos that accompany the angry accusing headlines.

You go back to surfing the internet again, thinking that you might be able to find another site that features nice pictures of pretty women, one that doesn't attack them or make them look stupid, immoral, or both. There are a few, but for some reason the 'women' featured are barely women, most of them look fifteen or sixteen, which wouldn't be so bad if it was just their beauty the sites were celebrating, but most of the girls are being posed and presented in the same tired styles usually reserved for porn or erotic photography, and you realize that these modles are being featured not because they are beautiful, but because they are young. You get the distinct impression that such sites are becoming popular because they represent the helplessness and non-threatening nature of youth, that some men need to see young girls because real women are too challenging for them.

These sites are not for you. These girls could be your daughters or nieces, and responding to them sexually or erotically is totally foreign and deeply repugnant to you. You want a mature woman, you want someone whose affection you have earned, not someone who's so young that she has not yet formed her values or her standards. So where are all the pictures of beautiful, grown women you ask? You remember when you check your email. They are in the copious pornographic spam that drops uninvited into your email inbox every day. It breaks your heart to see so many young, beautiful, women with so much promise in their bright smiles and sparkling eyes, so much of life yet to experience and so much beauty in their tight bodies, tanned skin, and long legs, who make their living by sharing their beauty and being insulted for it in subject lines like "See stupid bitches tricked into sex" and such.

Obviously there are beautiful women around, but where has the appreciation for their beauty gone?

Well gentle reader, it is here at Body in Mind. And it is in your soul as well. It is in our vision of a Bеаυty Pаrk where decent men go to enjoy a beautiful garden park full of happily nude women who are there to be photographed, talked with, and befriended (donations welcome). It is in the photography of soon to be regular Body in Mind contributor Pеr Brоrsоn, who took these lovely photos of Mіss Chаrіsmа Cole which we've just added to our members section today. And it's in the future lovely young ladies of the planet earth who are now only young girls watching our collective cultural reactions to female beauty with intense interest. They need to hear that the beauty of the human female is an irreplaceable value to us all.

Is this what they are hearing?

Without appreciation for beauty, without understanding what it is and what it is for, without encouraging respect for it in men, and pride for it in women, we will lose beauty utterly, all of us. We have lost much of it already and we have much more to lose. Beauty is not automatic, it is not natural, and it is not guaranteed to anyone. It must be conceived of, created, and earned. And it must be constantly defended.

Imagine that you are the young man in our scenario above. Imagine how badly you want to meet the woman of your dreams. And then imagine how she will react when she learns that you did not fight for her when you had the chance.

This is why Body in Mind fights for beauty. It's because we don't want to lose it.

And this is why you should fight for it too.

You can begin by enjoying and fully appreciating the beauty of Charisma in today's gallery, and then by supporting the sites at SuperBeauty.Org, all of whom feel the same way you do.

		Members can see larger images here.
		Others join here to enjoy larger images.

© 2003 by Dwayne and Lеаnnе Bеll | Photos © 2003 by Pеr Brоrsоn

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