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The Beauty of Woman; A Skewed Perspective
Who is it that started this? When did we, as a society, decide to embrace this unyielding, brutally bizarre
concept of the female form? Why would we offer up our daughters,
wives, sisters and mothers to such base contempt at the hands of
strangers ? Who are they (whomever THEY may be) to dictate that
your daughter is to fat or your sister just isn't "pretty" enough?
Are they Adonais incarnate? I think not.
Our culturally short-sighted ideal of a beautiful woman seems to be
as enigmatic as it is unrealistic. The entire concept of a small
-framed, huge chested (preferably) , nearly boyish figured female is
absurd to the point of ridiculousness.
Our concept of female beauty has not always been so skewed. Not too awfully long ago we paid homage
to a fuller-figured female archetype that was comfortingly beautiful on a deep, inherently cultural level.
As a species we have understood the desire of plentitude and have lauded it
throughout the ages.
Often we have given the female form a place of
honorable designation in the form of titles such as
Mother Earth, Mother Nature or Lady Liberty.
Our perception of beauty has always been steeped in
our families and social circles. Only when we lost
sight of the natural beauty of ourselves and the world around us did we begin
to assign a more denigrating role to the female gender.
I am quite aware that not every person alive today
sees women as objects and I also know that there
is a large amount of extremism on both sides of
this hot-button issue.
Feminism can be almost as hard to bear as
mysogyny depending on how it's presented.
I have always been and always will be a proponent
of women's rights, but I will also find it incredibly
difficult to sit by and endure namecalling and
male-bashing just because I'm expected to. We
are all in this adventure together and we should
all treat one another with the respect that we feel
we deserve equally.
I am also quite aware of the poor treatment of
females throughout the ages by patriarchal myths
and legends. We (the collective we) have always designated strong women as femme fatales who only want
what men have and that is just so much bunk. Women are smarter than that. They have tried for millenia
to make our world better for us, but we tend to be too thick-headed to learn very much
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Comment
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Comment by Maryanne Mesple on May 4, 2012 at 12:08pm
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So so enjoy your perspective Again and and I would definitely say "you pulled this off"! Bravo! Also, I am so glad to see the image of your wife here! She really does look like the center of a flower and how lucky you were to capture that shot! I really enjoyed sharing this challenge with you Bob :-) Gini Steele, that is interesting about Marilyn Monroe.
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Comment by Gini Steele on May 4, 2012 at 11:20am
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Fabulous, Bob! As a photographer you'll love this tidbit I read about Marilyn...everyone said she was "luminous"...that her entire body "glowed"...and a photographer she worked with regularly mentioned in his memoir that her body was covered in these tiny blonde hairs that just captured light...light from the flash, outside light, indoor light...she truly was radiant.
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Comment by Robert P. Meyer Jr. on May 4, 2012 at 8:54am
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Hmm...It seems that in my techno-dyfunctional way I may have pulled this off. I thought I had more to say, but it seems that I agree with all I've said here. I do have a few more photos to offer, but I think I'll keep my commentary at a minimum with them.
This is my own photograph "Rock Climber". This girl is very young, but is the epitome of what women are expected to look like. This is in direct contrast to the photo of Queen Latifah who is a full-figured, exquisitely beautiful, real woman.
The earlier photo is indeed of Marilyn, who was also a full figured woman and was, (as a size 12!)a goddess of the screen and was quite brilliant despite how she was portrayed in the press.
My photograph "Muse" is an enigmatic shot of my wife Kathy, who is also a full-figured woman and a "classic" beauty. I have always valued women and their importance in my life and their steadying influence on my life and on the very fabric of our society. I thank Kathy and women everywhere for bringing me this realization and proving it to be yet again true, every single day!
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Comment by Maryrose Orlans on May 4, 2012 at 1:00am
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Wonderful! Really enjoyed! Thank you, Bob!!!
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Great piece! Pushing ourselves beyond the norm is so necessary to break out of conformity of perception and necessary to un-skew how we see and experience the female form. I so remember when Twiggy was popular and I so remember trying to look like Twiggy ~ and of course there is no way in this lifetime that I would achieve that! So I settled for the Twiggy lashes and hoped no one would notice I had breast and hips! And don't get me going on Barbi! There is a middle road, a middle way (do I sound Buddhist?!!! hahaha!) and that place in my thinking is where we appreciate our bodies and our minds as perfect without need for enhancement of or subtraction of! When that day approaches the Feminist of which there are many differing perceptions of what a Feminist is (I am a radical voting feminist marching to protect women's rights) and the Chauvinist (I personally think that word is to harsh to use here but I am lacking for another one) will no longer exist because there will be no need for labels and we all will be loving and accepting of who we are, comfortable with our gender, and Beauty will be appreciated in all of Human Kind. Thank you for your insight and hopefully your beautiful way of seeing woman will be more and more the norm.
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Comment by wiffledust on May 3, 2012 at 7:44pm
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go, bob! what a joy to read a full blog from you! you are such a good writer, and i just knew you'd be a great source to hear from on the topic of beauty and women. you have such a wonderful eye as a photographer, and i love seeing things through your eyes routinely on here. how great to read some thoughts behind that vision!!! as a woman, it's also so nice to hear a man think the new popsicle stick with huge boobs look is ridiculous looking. not quite natural, is it? ....and oh how i hear you on the smart women are just waiting to roll all over somebody thing. well i could write pages on that. but i'm too busy enjoying your images here. the one that captures my eye is that of marilyn monroe. at least she looks like marilyn to me. she always stands out in a crowd.to me, she is very feminine looking...a knock out for sure, but in a natural way. and she had plenty of brains too. i have always liked her, wanted to know her. i think part of her beauty always came from within. i think all beauty does. so many women have that same marilyn look but aren't marilyn in beauty. why? because it's more than just a "look". thanks for doing the challenge, bob!!! i see you have five pics.did you want to do more? you may if you like!! GREAT JOB!
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