Female beauty is perfectly, glowingly, morally good. It is not bad - not in any way, shape, form, or degree.

You've heard me say this a million times, but today's question is : have you ever heard anyone else say it?

The answer, is no.

In fact, I believe that I, Dwаynе Bеll, am the first person, ever, in the history of mankind, to declare female beauty is a good thing.

Sure we admire it - we admire it like crazy. But when someone gives us a disapproving look, we shrug and concede that it is a sinful pleasure we're enjoying. We see images of fantastic female beauty everywhere these days, yet all we hear is that it's depraved, destructive, and deadly.

I am the first person ever to declare that it is not. In fact, I'm so sure I'm the first that I thought today I'd tell you about my standing offer to pay $100 US to anyone who can find someone who said it explicitly before me.

All you need to do is find one other person in the entire world, in the whole history of mankind, who has gone on record as believing that female beauty is good. Good. Not wonderful, or amazing, but good - that is : morally good, meaning : deserving to be valued; worthy of being chosen, pursued, possessed, praised and protected.

Know what?

You won't. Because, believe it or not, no one - NO ONE - seems to have said it before me. Instead, a great many have said exactly the opposite, over and over and over. And as we say in our motto, beautiful women have paid the price for this view, being condemned and killed for it, both by individual madmen and by bloodthirsty societies full of them.

Now you know why I've said it a million times : beauty is good.

And why I'll keep on saying it. And why I hope you'll start.

We've got some serious ground to make up.

Postscript: Since writing this piece over 5 years ago, we've received scores of submissions about people who supposedly said female beauty is good before we did. None have turned out to be true.

Most of them site the Bible oddly enough, in spite of the fact that nowhere in the Bible does it state explicitly that in moral issues female beauty falls squarely on the side of Good. Neither does it state explicitly that female beauty is Evil, but instead leaves us to draw a general impression of its take on beauty from stories about how Eve destroyed paradise by tempting Adam, and how it's better to poke one's own eye out rather than contemplate the beauty of a woman. How anyone can take the Bible as a moral authority espousing the value of female beauty is beyond us.

Others have pointed out various authors and philosophers such as Plato and Ayn Rаnd. But while Plato did say that beauty was a virtue, he also said that it doesn't exist on earth, thus ejecting himself from contention. Whatever he was talking about it was not the beauty of actual human females. The same is true for a lot of thinkers since Plato, both established and amateur, who go on about the loveliness of female beauty while at the same time wailing in sorrow that it belongs in another world, and is unattainable in this one. Just to be almost laughably clear, this contest, and Body in Mind in general, are talking only about beauty that really exists - in this world.

Ayn Rаnd, on the other hand, a philosopher and author with more respect for reality than anyone in history, and a unique gift for seeing it clearly, dismissed beauty as a non-moral issue. While she certainly approved of it, and loved it dearly, especially in men, regrettably she never commented on beauty itself in this context. We wish she had, considering how she must have agreed with us that female beauty - in general - is a value.

A few readers have even suggested that Eоlаkе Stоbblеhоυsе has openly declared female beauty to be good in a website he named Thе Dіrty's Old Mеn's Assоcіаtіоn Intеrnаtіоnаl or DOMAI. In spite of a website name which implies the evil of female beauty, we contacted Stobblehouse. He responded in an equally contradictory fashion, saying on one hand "this is so obvious only insane people will think otherwise" while on the other "female beauty is not good or evil, it just is." Whаt Stоbblеhоυsе does actually say on his site is the following: Looking is good, Beauty is important, and Nudity is natural. None of these qualifies as an explicit statement of the value of female beauty. Yes beauty is important, but only morally important. Apparently it's worthwhile to devote a whole website to justifying looking at beauty, but justifying female beauty isn't worth a single line. Rather than being the first to say that female beauty is morally good, Stobblehouse is merely the latest person to emphatically deny it. (And on a technical note, a search of domain name registrations for Body in Mind versus DOMAI proves that Body in Mind was there first. Sorry.)

To our great delight, in recent years Body in Mind has become more and more popular. A great many people seem to share our conviction in the goodness of female beauty - at least deep down. However, to our knowledge none have taken a stand on beauty's behalf. None have gone on record against those who condemn female beauty. So our offer stills stands. If you can find someone who said female beauty is good, and said it explicitly and before us, we will gladly give you a $100 or a lifetime membership in Body in Mind, whichever you prefer.

We don't think you'll find anyone, but we still want you to try. We want people to know how rare and precious this idea really is. - D.Bell (August 23, 2003)