“…When the curtain of social judgment pulls back, it reveals the most amazing beauty.
“I first become aware of this phenomenon when I was a college art student. Every few weeks, I’d join this or that group of artists, and we’d all pitch in a few bucks to rent a studio and hire a model. Most of the people we got to pose were college students with bodies that matched the social ideal –slender, fit, perfectly proportioned. (After all, who else would risk standing naked in a roomful of strangers?) And then, one day, we got somebody really different.
“She looked well over sixty, with a deeply lined face and a body that was probably fifty pounds heavier than her doctors would have liked. She’d had a few doctors, too, judging from her scars. Shining purple welts from a cesarean section and knee surgery cut deep rifts in the rippled adipose fat of her lower body. Another scar ran across one side of her chest, where her left breast had once been. When she first limped onto the dais to pose, I felt so much pity and unease that I physically flinched. But we were there to draw her, so I picked up a pencil.
“When this perceptual shift happened, I was so surprised that I stopped drawing and simply stared. The model seemed to notice this, and without turning her head, looked straight into my eyes. Then I saw the ghost of a smile flicker across her face, and I realized something else: She knew she was beautiful. She knew it, and she knew that I’d seen it. Maybe that’s why she had consented to pose nude in the first place. Knowing that a roomful of artists couldn’t draw her without seeing her –I mean really seeing her –she may have decided to give us a gentle education about our perceptions.”
This story is an excerpt from Finding Your Own North Star
I am interested to hear your thoughts on the matter. Is cellulite inherently ugly? Or is beauty really a matter of perception, as the well-known adage attests?
You might also like:
Why is Cellulite A Beauty Issue?
The Big Fat Secret Surrounding Cellulite
How Celebs Really Feel About Their Cellulite
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
It made me think of Van Gogh, he painted the "simple folk" because they were what made the land. They were beautiful because they were close to the land and the culture. I may have to pick up that book now. Thank you for sharing.
Exactly, you can't discuss the topic of beauty without bringing up art, and artists have such an expanded sense of what is beautiful. Van Gogh saw the beauty in a plain wooden chair!
Beck's book is one of those books that's "right where I'm at right now," not to mention laugh-out-loud hilarious. I already picked up the sequel, Steering by Starlight, at the library yesterday.
Thanks for this story. Beauty is about perception and too often about the perception that is forced on each one of us through the culture of media that is thrust upon us each day. Unfortunately, we usually, lazily accept this because initially it is shimmery and golden… Beauty should come from perception, the perception of "value" that is earned through living life. This brings different shapes, sizes, textures, colors, and much more diversity to what we deem as beautiful.
I like your take on the matter, Trevor, and the emphasis on value. How could something like cellulite (or any infirmity for that matter) be interpreted as beautiful? Maybe it's in seeing a value behind the experience –the pain, or the striving that might go along with it. A sense of connection. Or of hope. Or, desperation. Or whatever other emotion might feel pure and pungent at the moment. For me,beauty is one of those concepts that's hard to assign a comprehensive definition.