Beauty
Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on Simplicity
--Plato
I've been thinking about beauty a lot lately. The kinds of things that make people beautiful. Not in the cliché way("Oh, we're all beautiful people on the inside!"), but in the more physical sense.
Is it really that there's simply animal attraction, pheremones that we smell and then create attraction? Or some universal undercurrent that tells us that the people in movies and on magazines are attractive? If either of those are the case, then how is love accounted for? (Does love even exist or is it simply a state of mind? <--question for another day)
I find so many different kinds of people attractive, depending on when I encounter them. Sometimes I can't stop looking at blond people, sometimes brunettes, it just depends on when I see them.
There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for any of it. It all seems random to me.
So what about something more simple, clothes for example. I usually find the same things attractive, no matter what time. Of course, I have different clothes for different times of year, but I tend to wear the same kinds of clothes because I like them. I have one shirt that I find incredibly attractive and wish I could wear all the time. I don't think it will ever be unnattractive to me.
Now for something a little more complex, coffee. Coffee is something more akin to people because I like different kinds of coffee at different times, I have to be in the mood. This coffee comparison is actually a reasonably good one because I liken the sense of taste to the sense of sight. I don't enjoy the look of coffee per se, but I do enjoy letting it wash over my tongue, making all of my tastebuds tingle. And, in the same vein, I let like to watch beautiful people, letting the pleasantness of their form wash over my mind. People tend to think that there's a hint of sexual excitement that goes along with purely physical attraction to beauty, but I argue that, as with coffee, pure enjoyment can be found simply in experiencing the sensation.
Maybe the fact we find something beautiful is based more on our brains interpreting signals than anything rational (the taste of coffee vs. a sense of fashion). The array of things I find beautiful and attractive changes by the hour and I wouldn't have it any other way. Variety is the spice of life and I use it liberally.
--huzah--
--Plato
I've been thinking about beauty a lot lately. The kinds of things that make people beautiful. Not in the cliché way("Oh, we're all beautiful people on the inside!"), but in the more physical sense.
Is it really that there's simply animal attraction, pheremones that we smell and then create attraction? Or some universal undercurrent that tells us that the people in movies and on magazines are attractive? If either of those are the case, then how is love accounted for? (Does love even exist or is it simply a state of mind? <--question for another day)
I find so many different kinds of people attractive, depending on when I encounter them. Sometimes I can't stop looking at blond people, sometimes brunettes, it just depends on when I see them.
There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for any of it. It all seems random to me.
So what about something more simple, clothes for example. I usually find the same things attractive, no matter what time. Of course, I have different clothes for different times of year, but I tend to wear the same kinds of clothes because I like them. I have one shirt that I find incredibly attractive and wish I could wear all the time. I don't think it will ever be unnattractive to me.
Now for something a little more complex, coffee. Coffee is something more akin to people because I like different kinds of coffee at different times, I have to be in the mood. This coffee comparison is actually a reasonably good one because I liken the sense of taste to the sense of sight. I don't enjoy the look of coffee per se, but I do enjoy letting it wash over my tongue, making all of my tastebuds tingle. And, in the same vein, I let like to watch beautiful people, letting the pleasantness of their form wash over my mind. People tend to think that there's a hint of sexual excitement that goes along with purely physical attraction to beauty, but I argue that, as with coffee, pure enjoyment can be found simply in experiencing the sensation.
Maybe the fact we find something beautiful is based more on our brains interpreting signals than anything rational (the taste of coffee vs. a sense of fashion). The array of things I find beautiful and attractive changes by the hour and I wouldn't have it any other way. Variety is the spice of life and I use it liberally.
--huzah--
