“The female body is a work of art. The male body is utilitarian. It’s for getting around, like a jeep.” Eileen, Seinfeld.
On this oval board is a woodcut-and-paint portrait of a woman. In the background are green reeds. The woman wears a white dress, open at the back to her waist. Her eyes are dark slits, her flesh and long braid of hair light gold. She is glancing over her left shoulder at her viewer, somber and unsurprised. Like the reeds, the woman is slender and stands erect.
On this oval board is a woodcut-and-paint portrait of a woman. In the background are green reeds. The woman wears a white dress, open at the back to her waist. Her eyes are dark slits, her flesh and long braid of hair light gold. She is glancing over her left shoulder at her viewer, somber and unsurprised. Like the reeds, the woman is slender and stands erect.
Most viewers of this woodcut, which I purchased long ago at a shop on Waynesville’s Main Street, would describe the woman as beautiful. If pressed, however, most of us might find it difficult to explain precisely why we affirm the woman as beautiful.
On the wall of my bedroom, above the shelves holding the books I use for teaching, is another object with a feminine theme. Here in a metal frame, set into green mat, are postcards of women collected when Kris and I honeymooned in Europe, reproductions by artists like Renoir, Degas, Picasso, and others. Regarding these images, we might judge these women as beautiful, though some by today’s standards would be deemed fat, some emaciated by drink or drugs.
As I grow older, beauty has taken more of a hold on my imagination than at any other time in my life. I have neither the will nor the requisite education and intelligence to engage in any serious study of aesthetics, but I find myself asking questions new to me. Why, for instance, does a certain yard on Flint Street in Asheville’s Montford district always give me pause in the spring and the summer? Why does it remind me of an Impressionistic painting? Why do I recognize that yard as beautiful but walk right past the yard next door? Is it the abundance of flowers and shrubs that make the yard stand out? The way the shadows of the maples fall on the flowerbeds and law? What images—pictures in childhood fairy tales, visits to museums, scenes from movies—cause me to judge this house more beautiful than its neighbors?
For fifty-five years I neither asked nor addressed such questions, a fact that leaves me both shamed and chagrined. I received no education in this regard, and from high school until my sixtieth year, I was usually too busy for such contemplation. Nevertheless, in terms of appreciating the sublime, I regret those lost years.
This newfound apprehension of beauty also extends to people, particularly women.
I am writing this piece in a coffee shop, The Daily Grind, in Front Royal, Virginia. At the moment there are six women in the shop, including the cahier. One of these women, who is seated outside at a table just beyond the window, looks to be in her seventies, though her appearance might easily mislead. For all I know, she may be only fifty, her looks the victim of a life lived hard and on the edge. She is missing some of the hair at the back of her head: wrinkles etch every inch of her face: her eyes are dull with that washed-out look of someone who has suffered tragedy and possibly alcoholism. In her, I confess, I see little that is physically attractive, though a Van Gogh might find in her that beauty which lies hidden somewhere in most human beings.
No one would describe any of the other women in the shop as beautiful. Yet in each of them I can find beauty that I once would have ignored. The woman who has just pulled out a chair at the table next to mine to drink her iced herbal tea and eat a blueberry muffin has a mole near her mouth, which, set against her pale flesh, attracts the eye. The cashier, a young woman who every day appears numb and defeated from work or lack of sleep or some larger mischance, has eyes, which, if she would allow them a spark, would be beautiful. The Asian girl sitting in a chair in the bay window is attractive for her long, dark hair. The thirty-something woman seated twenty feet away thick, with her thick, curling, gold-streaked brown hair; the woman beyond her with the tattoo on her shoulder and her full mouth; the tiny Hispanic woman in gym garb with her bare shoulders: all possess some element of beauty.
These are, of course, physical attractions noted about strangers. A more intense appreciation of beauty arises when we have explored the interior person, when we learn more about her. When I look at my daughter, for instance, a woman who inherited many features from her mother, I see a loving wife, a mother of six who devotes herself to her children, and a warrior for her Faith. This knowledge adds to my appreciation of her female beauty.
When I was a younger man, twenty, thirty years ago, my sense of the beautiful was immature, largely based on an aesthetic formed, I am convinced, by my upbringing and the general culture. Like many another young man, I judged a woman’s appearance with a glance without really looking at the details.
Now, as I have earlier stated, my apprehension of beauty has deepened. Some of this process comes from learning to see women in a different way, with less shallow eyes. Some of it comes from looking for their most attractive features, appreciating parts rather than the whole. Little by little I have learned to look for these points of beauty, an approach that brings me wonder and pleasure.
Some men I have known cannot look at women in this way. One relative of mine, for instance, was married to man who constantly criticized her for her weight. Though this wasn’t the chief reason for their falling-out, it was a factor and eventually they divorced. Some men find pregnant women ugly, a blindness to splendor I have never understood. Others won’t even glance at a mom surrounded by three or four children, whereas I find that children often increase the beauty of their mother, like flowers around a gardener. Some men, as Yeats reminds us in his poem “Anne Gregory,” can love a woman only for “your yellow hair” and “not yourself alone.”
In my younger years, I looked at women as men might assess poor Anne Gregory. Having grown older and grown up, I now see how shallow were my standards, how I failed to note the “personhood” of a woman rather than judging her looks by some pre-ordained cultural measuring stick.
In case any readers are unclear about my meaning, I will close with the words of an actress I have long admired, Audrey Hepburn, a woman who possessed beauty both in looks and in the heart:
“The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries, or the way she combs her hair. The beauty of a woman is seen in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart, the place where love resides. True beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul. It's the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she shows & the beauty of a woman only grows with passing years.”
On the wall of my bedroom, above the shelves holding the books I use for teaching, is another object with a feminine theme. Here in a metal frame, set into green mat, are postcards of women collected when Kris and I honeymooned in Europe, reproductions by artists like Renoir, Degas, Picasso, and others. Regarding these images, we might judge these women as beautiful, though some by today’s standards would be deemed fat, some emaciated by drink or drugs.
As I grow older, beauty has taken more of a hold on my imagination than at any other time in my life. I have neither the will nor the requisite education and intelligence to engage in any serious study of aesthetics, but I find myself asking questions new to me. Why, for instance, does a certain yard on Flint Street in Asheville’s Montford district always give me pause in the spring and the summer? Why does it remind me of an Impressionistic painting? Why do I recognize that yard as beautiful but walk right past the yard next door? Is it the abundance of flowers and shrubs that make the yard stand out? The way the shadows of the maples fall on the flowerbeds and law? What images—pictures in childhood fairy tales, visits to museums, scenes from movies—cause me to judge this house more beautiful than its neighbors?
For fifty-five years I neither asked nor addressed such questions, a fact that leaves me both shamed and chagrined. I received no education in this regard, and from high school until my sixtieth year, I was usually too busy for such contemplation. Nevertheless, in terms of appreciating the sublime, I regret those lost years.
This newfound apprehension of beauty also extends to people, particularly women.
I am writing this piece in a coffee shop, The Daily Grind, in Front Royal, Virginia. At the moment there are six women in the shop, including the cahier. One of these women, who is seated outside at a table just beyond the window, looks to be in her seventies, though her appearance might easily mislead. For all I know, she may be only fifty, her looks the victim of a life lived hard and on the edge. She is missing some of the hair at the back of her head: wrinkles etch every inch of her face: her eyes are dull with that washed-out look of someone who has suffered tragedy and possibly alcoholism. In her, I confess, I see little that is physically attractive, though a Van Gogh might find in her that beauty which lies hidden somewhere in most human beings.
No one would describe any of the other women in the shop as beautiful. Yet in each of them I can find beauty that I once would have ignored. The woman who has just pulled out a chair at the table next to mine to drink her iced herbal tea and eat a blueberry muffin has a mole near her mouth, which, set against her pale flesh, attracts the eye. The cashier, a young woman who every day appears numb and defeated from work or lack of sleep or some larger mischance, has eyes, which, if she would allow them a spark, would be beautiful. The Asian girl sitting in a chair in the bay window is attractive for her long, dark hair. The thirty-something woman seated twenty feet away thick, with her thick, curling, gold-streaked brown hair; the woman beyond her with the tattoo on her shoulder and her full mouth; the tiny Hispanic woman in gym garb with her bare shoulders: all possess some element of beauty.
These are, of course, physical attractions noted about strangers. A more intense appreciation of beauty arises when we have explored the interior person, when we learn more about her. When I look at my daughter, for instance, a woman who inherited many features from her mother, I see a loving wife, a mother of six who devotes herself to her children, and a warrior for her Faith. This knowledge adds to my appreciation of her female beauty.
When I was a younger man, twenty, thirty years ago, my sense of the beautiful was immature, largely based on an aesthetic formed, I am convinced, by my upbringing and the general culture. Like many another young man, I judged a woman’s appearance with a glance without really looking at the details.
Now, as I have earlier stated, my apprehension of beauty has deepened. Some of this process comes from learning to see women in a different way, with less shallow eyes. Some of it comes from looking for their most attractive features, appreciating parts rather than the whole. Little by little I have learned to look for these points of beauty, an approach that brings me wonder and pleasure.
Some men I have known cannot look at women in this way. One relative of mine, for instance, was married to man who constantly criticized her for her weight. Though this wasn’t the chief reason for their falling-out, it was a factor and eventually they divorced. Some men find pregnant women ugly, a blindness to splendor I have never understood. Others won’t even glance at a mom surrounded by three or four children, whereas I find that children often increase the beauty of their mother, like flowers around a gardener. Some men, as Yeats reminds us in his poem “Anne Gregory,” can love a woman only for “your yellow hair” and “not yourself alone.”
In my younger years, I looked at women as men might assess poor Anne Gregory. Having grown older and grown up, I now see how shallow were my standards, how I failed to note the “personhood” of a woman rather than judging her looks by some pre-ordained cultural measuring stick.
In case any readers are unclear about my meaning, I will close with the words of an actress I have long admired, Audrey Hepburn, a woman who possessed beauty both in looks and in the heart:
“The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries, or the way she combs her hair. The beauty of a woman is seen in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart, the place where love resides. True beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul. It's the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she shows & the beauty of a woman only grows with passing years.”