The Aesthetics of Male and Female Beauty

Being a heterosexual man, I am continually in awe of the female form yet often dismayed at the male counterpart. 

I am aroused at the sight of an attractive woman and if she happens to be nude, more so. I love a beautiful face, I love long legs, a firm buttocks, slim arms, a gentle neck. Though I would say I love beautiful feet, I have no foot fetish I know of. 

In general, the female form is the more pleasing, aesthetically. There are no harsh lines, the balance of flesh and bone being harmonious. Curve follows curve and where bone is present, as in the case of the shoulder blades, the skin manages to soften and diminish the impact of the frame within. 

The female form is a kind of hearth of humanity, a physical, daily ark that is the house of past, present and future. The lineage of the world moves towards and through the shape and beauty of the female form. From desire to birth, we are conceived because the female is beautiful. As Mircea Eliade, Romanian philosopher and historian of religion wrote, the female is a mirror of the universe.

The male is the yearning for the female. Just as the female is the universe, a representation of planet, of beauty and birth, the male is the questing figure. The male is the one looking at awe at the bright starry sky above and wondering why and how. Sometimes he is is fear of this beauty. A woman is a vast landscape, never to be conquered but cherished. From her moods, her storms and still seasons, from the movement of her hips, the close of her eyes, the turn of her head, how can a male not be sensitive and deeply drawn to all the nuances and mysteries that evolve around her features, her limbs and gestures. 

As a heterosexual male my wonder and delight in the female, her form and grace particularly is often immediately challenged and thrown off balance by my distaste and sadness regarding the male form. I simply do not find beauty in the male bearing. I struggle to see beauty. I shake my head at the apparent dichotomy. 

Whereas a woman's breast, her buttocks and genitals are gentle on the eyes, the naked male is an obstruction to beauty. His legs, his arms betray the bones beneath, his feet like harsh pedestals and his penis an impediment to refinement, a pathetic reminder of our human need to procreate. It would seem that the genius of the universe gave all the elegance to the female and left the male ugly and exposed. An unclothed female is nude whereas a man is naked in my mind (thinking of the art historian Kenneth Clark's distinction and taking it in a different direction).

Even without arousal, the female nude is beautiful. Her being is beauty enough. There are times when men become beautiful through body building but it comes only with effort, sculpting and morphing the given body into something else. The shift is dramatic, the change noticeable. Granted, many woman have to stay in shape to retain their waist sizes and such but men must strive. They have to go beyond, almost reinvent and improve what they are given to become closer to beauty. 

I suppose it would make sense in the grand natural selection sense of the word. If both men and women were equally attractive, equally beautiful, we wouldn't be able to keep our hands off each other. Too much focus on procreation would inevitably lead to overpopulation and quite possibly parental negligence - i.e. producing too many kids and not being able to properly raise them because we would spend too much time enjoying each other. 

The male desires the female but the female has to be selective, has to say 'no' many times in order to find the right one to say 'yes' to. If she wants a man, she wants him not only for who he is but what he can provide for her. (And this goes for lesbians as well as gay men: there is still a male-female attraction at work. It's very rare to find a male-male couple because we are inevitably attracted to our opposite - the female towards the male and vice versa.)

Women, however, because they are the gatekeepers, have to endure more fears than men, put up with greater struggles. A man walking down a street may be at risk of being robbed or beaten but a woman faces potential rape if she happens to be approached by the wrong crowd. A woman also has menstruation, she must in some way sacrifice more blood than her male counterpart to provide a potential home for the future fetus of the species. The female has to endure more for the sake of humanity and it wouldn't make sense if both men and women were equally attractive.

I suppose I am grateful for female beauty and my own physical lack. I think I'm attractive but when I see myself naked, I admit I feel a certain melancholy. It's not that I'm overweight, I just know I don't posses the beauty of a woman. I don't want a woman's body but in many ways I want to have that equality, an equal place in beauty with her. 

Is this the reason why men have become artists? Yes, I recognize woman have been suppressed by men throughout the centuries but for me, even in the best female writers and poets like Jane Austen and Anna Akhmatova, I find the male-ghost, that lonely voice striving for the distant home of beauty. I would argue that art is a striving for reconciliation with the broken parts of the artist's own psyche and heart. If you have been given everything, every opportunity to love and caress, if you have been spoiled by excess, then what good are you as an artist? The Marquis de Sade and Casanova both lived fascinating lives but you would never call their output literature.

Being a member of the unattractive sex, I recognize the physical faults of my gender. I know that the phallic has reigned on this planet, that it is ugly and we see its representation in things like skyscrapers, towers, bullets, guns and missiles. The hunger in the male species is exposed in the erection. His arousal is plain and embarrassing while the woman's is hidden. Standing naked, a horny male is vulnerable. If he satisfies himself with a partner, we play up to his ego, call him a stallion or a stud. If he is alone in his nakedness without a partner or rejected by a partner, we call him a failure or loser. A lone female still has a place of dominance because she can chose. The male has no choice in his being excited. 

Being on the outside of beauty, the male can only strive and continue to strive to find beauty within. If we think of Freud and sublimation, the energy for sex is channeled to art. The lonely make beautiful works of art. It is by feeling broken that we put the imaginary pieces together. 

It is a positive that the male physique is unattractive. He doesn't have the peacock's array of feathers but he can write poems, books and plays. He can compose music, sculpt and paint. The man serenading in the street, the lowly man, the troubadour becomes in our time Mick Jagger. And though we see Jagger as a dynamic soul, a powerful stage presence, take away the music and the movement and present his naked figure to an unknowing female audience and they would be hard-pressed to deem him attractive.

I think of Artistotle's book, The Metaphysics. Not so much the content but the title. In antiquity, Andoronicus of Rhodes, Aristotle's editor, placed the chapters that dealt with questions about things transcending the natural or physical after the sections of physics. The 'meta' or after physics went beyond forces and matter into subjects dealing with the intangible. The question of God, the soul, how we think, our certainty are all discussed. 

In a sense, women are the physical, the reality of life. They are Its beauty - the It-ness of being, the universe, of God, the planet and creation itself.

Men have to go beyond the physical to be beautiful. Their striving, the force of their being, either in procreation or persuasion bring them closer to elegance and grace. By body-building, by shaping their character through art or learning, by becoming successful, the male hopes to become beautiful beyond his basic role of provider. I would argue a lot of what men do is to be better than themselves for the other, the one they want to attract. Men cannot be dormant in their being. They have to be cautious and conscious of their limitations. Women are the unconscious and if they are insecure about their bodies it is because they allow their treacherous magazines and the media to sculpt their opinions of themselves. They are beauty. Period.

Sadly - and I add this more as a side note - of the two genders, women have more enemies among other women. I find men are rare to criticize each other in buddy groups. I don't think I've ever heard one guys say to another, "Say, Frank, you're getting a little chunky in the butt" or "You really should moisturize more." No. But women will find ways to undermine each other.

I would even suggest their curiosity of each other, their gossip and celebrity magazines do greater damage than good. But successful syndicates know, an insecure consumer, in this case a female, will make them more money if they can keep giving out stupid sexual tips and how to lose twenty pounds step programs. There is no sadder or more sexist place than the front of the cash aisle at our super markets.

Furthermore, the profession of being a model is a betrayal of female hood because the successful model not only has to starve themselves and strive to be perfect but by doing so and having their picture taken suggests other do the same. The fashion model - never a role model - along with female pop stars are lower than the prostitute for at least the woman of the night provides physical comfort, servicing a human being instead of infuriating one half the species with envy and the other with ungrounded desire. At one point in history, long before we came up with the pejorative term, prostitute, the profession was more a form of sexual educator. In ancient tribes, the men on the verge of manhood went off with the female sex teacher to learn how to make love, how to please a woman, etc... Nowadays we have the Internet, backwards morality and hip hop music. Porn teaches us nothing about lovemaking while pop music, especially popular rap and R & B offer us degrading images of women with a subtext that would appeal to our lowest, neanderthal selves.

In some way female beauty can be a hazard if it inflicts itself on others. It can also be smeared and polluted by the darker male psyche. Instead of artists, these record producers and fashion designers have degraded their models, their inspiration into a commodity, the singular, the individual and particular being used to appeal to the muddied universal of human fantasy and desire.

Women, despite the morass of modern life, remain the more beautiful sex. And when men move towards their better selves, they attract the female, not by their physical appearance but by their own interior beauty. (Popular music promoters continually devolve because of their involvement in degrading female human beauty.)

We find meaning in responding to the mystery of existence. Our answers are personal and universal. Even should a poet or a philosopher never gain the attention of the fairer sex, their work edifies their being so long as they produce for the sake of finding, uncovering, or putting together beauty. The fragmentation of male beauty should strive to become whole within.

The female is beautiful without but the male has to work towards becoming beautiful within. The female inspires, the male is inspired. Beauty shapes beauty. The moving towards and through beauty becomes a means to personal edification. Learning to accept my physical limitations I can evolve towards bettering my interior self. 

Hopefully, my dismay can be removed about the male being and even if seeing my form, I can look beyond, (after) my physical form to feel an awe for what I can't see.

An Awareness of Mortality

It is fascinating to live in a culture where violence is played out in our entertainment and our news and yet death is little more than a side note, the end of a story, an incident in a movie, an anecdote we hear. 

A friend of mine has been working in Pittsburg, 'refurbishing' a relative's house. Luba, my friend's aunt-n-law was not the tidiest of women and she wasn't very beautiful. She lived in a house with various relics from different centuries. A beautiful house on tiered hill which must have made mowing the lawn difficult for anyone who volunteered or received a paper-route payment for attempting the task. 

My friend told me that when she died it was actually peaceful. She put on a  new silken night gown, did her hair and applied some make-up and then, with everything in place, she sat down beside the bathroom sink, closed her eyes and rested her head against the wall, giving herself up to the Almighty mystery. The neighbor later told my friend she looked 'beautiful', serene. Even the cop was impressed in the manner she had passed on. 

The other week, a co-worker of mine had to leave work early because she received some terrible news. A friend of hers had overdosed and died in the middle of the night.  Just two days ago she went to the funeral. The guy who died had been young and if anything, his death was unnecessary. 

But to say death is unnecessary... is it possible? From the old woman to the young man, the common thread is mortality. We are mortal but we are rarely aware of mortality. It's like we live in this plastic world of plastic worries - credit cards, bills, televisions, computers, get-togethers. We have our lives and we live and  before I go on, I must stress that I'm not using the word 'plastic' in the sense of shallow or pre-fabricated but 'pliable'. We are molded by our concerns and our habits. In a sense how we live can give us an indication of how we will die. 

Luba even though she wasn't a silken gown kind of gal, there was an inner nobility and what better way to announce it in death by adorning her human frame, making it noble. And the young man who died of an overdose - the sword he wielded was the sword that took him down. 

Recently I learned my father is forestalling a trip to Europe to take care of some urgent health matters. His doctor advised him to put off his vacation in order to address some heart 'issues'. He made need a shunt or an operation to relieve pressure in his chest. 

When he told me this, I thought about his life, his habits, the things he ate, all the beer he drank in pubs. Does it all add up? I'm sure it does. And yet, I also began to think f my own youth, my present life. Am I really young? or is it an illusion. I can't say my diet is a 100% healthy or perfect but I'm not terrible. 

But then there are times after climbing some stairs where I feel a little winded... hmmm....

I'm also concerned with his future presence. I want to have kids and for my kids to have a grandfather. I want him to share in the joy of being around my children.

The news has hit me and I feel it in my gut, my chest, my head. I feel it the way you might get on a roller coaster and even though you were expecting that first drop, for some reason it's almost a surprise. 

A surprise but strange. I veer between the philosophical and the emotional trying to avoid the latter. But emotions are inevitable and for me, discomforting. To be mortal and not give a thought to mortality until it's there in front of you, close to you, touching you. 

We all have these bodies and live with the mind set this is the way it's always going to be. But it's not. That's the illusion, the fallacy. Maybe it's healthier to acknowledge death everyday, it's closeness as oppose to be shocked by it when an echo of its presence is felt. 

The Great Hiatus

In the realm of entertainment and distractions, the 'great hiatus' is simply silence. We drink in and indulge in the inanity of mediocrity. Our consumption is shallow and what remains great is always out of reach. 

Sometimes I think just shutting the hell up is a better way to be than spouting off the latest platitude or expressing your inner bullshit. In Chinese culture, especially in Taoism and in the many paintings done in the Orient, the 'nothing' is vital. A landscape is a landscape and if a human figure appears the sky, an empty white dwarfs the figure of man. The bowl is useful because it possesses emptiness.

The West is strangely obsessed with 'content.'. In the beginning, there was the 'Word'. Does this mean we have to speak all the time and fill in the blanks with seamless sentences and gossip from both the rags and the real time news clickers that pass below our 24 Hour News stations? 

Oh, I value solitude and silence. I enjoy the escape and it's strange to live in a society that continually wants to be plugged-in. Maybe I want to be plugged-in, winner the social lottery and accumulate e-mails of praise and be 'Twitted' about. I don't know. The consumption is apparent in our shopping habits but what else do we consume besides time...? 

Perhaps we long for an on-going bout of self-importance....

I don't know... I just don't.

Day after day, the West is always longing to gain something new and leave something else behind. The remaining world is the world of quiet, solitude and peace. Newspaper after newspaper, blog and vlog after blog and vlog saturate the day and when it comes to night, I feel sleep is better than anything we might accumulate or recognize in the waking hours of day.

An ode to silence, to the emptiness in all our moments. Let there be a nothing settling in all places of our life. If this is life, we need to balance the thisness with the nothingness. 

Amen...

The Wounded Healer

For anyone who has read my blog, I have a distinct distrust of the medical profession. The pharmaceutical industry is a multi-billion dollar business. Drugs are sold not to heal nor dissolve our wounds but to maintain them, to distract us from the purpose of going deeper. Just as we have our distractions, we have our quick fixes to fit our untidy schedules and weary expectations of life.

I am also equally skeptical of those in the homeopathic, naturopathic and counseling arts. For some of the great therapists I've met on my path, whether I call it a healing journey or not, I've met several people whom I have called 'charlatans'. Some had a certain devious streak in them while others possessed an apathy, a sometimes god-complex. 

Recently I met one of these individuals. Years ago, I would have felt angry for days but in this instance, I feel more compassion. 

I met "Lynn" (not her real name for obvious reasons) through my aunt. My aunt is very well connected in the region and she arranged for me to see Lynn free of charge. Lynn specializes in healing irritable bowel and other psychosomatic ailments. 

Before I continue further, I should state that psychosomatic doesn't simply state that the 'disorder, disease is in your head' (i.e. you are purposely making yourself ill) but rather a result of embedded and misdirected emotion, whether it be trauma or suppressed rage. I am a firm believe our emotions are the most misunderstood aspects of our lives. Whereas we have gyms to exercise our muscles, universities to prove our intellectual prowess, libraries to learn, there is no centre or forum in which we can truly maintain a healthy emotional equilibrium. We are not a preventative culture. We have support groups for those with chronic illnesses, for the suffering but not for the on-going turmoil of simply expressing and releasing our pain. 

What attracted me and also equally caused me some concern about Lynn was her devotion. I'm not wealthy at all. I have no job at the moment. That I could have free sessions to heal my ongoing bowel problems seemed rather promising, almost too ideal. Reading over her website and the information she sent me, I knew I was committed to helping myself and do away with the bad habits and get on with the good. 

Lynn said she wanted 150%. I questioned this. What exactly is 150%? When you are devoted to a cause, is being devoted a hundred percent reasonable or not? If you are on-board, without question and willing to spend your time working towards a goal, is 150% a form of overkill? Obsession? 

I felt very worried about this. True, I wanted the free sessions but what did this 150% entail. For Lynn, it meant keeping in check via email. Okay, I thought, that doesn't seem such a bad idea. But what about boundaries? What if something comes up in the process and I need to process it? Can I discontinues the email check-ups and go within?

I brought my concerns to the first session. I basically said I had some bad experiences in the past and didn't want to repeat them. Consulting my notebook, which I had brought along, I went over my idea that some of the most successful breakthroughs were a result of a balanced, client-counselor relationship. That is, instead of being 'worked on', I would work with someone. 

Thinking back, I don't necessarily recall any direct promises. I got the impression she was on board with my ideas.

From there, we talked a lot about my previous experience with doctors and other healers. I said I responded very well to hypnosis and that for the most part, it was a balance between shifts in attitude and past-life regression therapy. (I do believe in the existence in past lives but I'm also willing to allow that our stories of pre-existence, who we were in another time could very well be stories we create to unravel disparate aspects of our being. Narrative is a strong element in our lives and just as much as we learn about ourselves by reading a fascinating book - "The reader is while reading the reader of himself" - Marcel Proust - or watching a compelling movie, we heal through stories.)

Lynn put me under hypnosis just to see how well I would do. Before I left, she gave me some more information to read about her healing processes. Enclosed: three cds to play, one meant for relaxation/meditation and the other two for background listening. 

That night I seemed to feel pretty good. There would be structure in my life, a new approach. I would from now on dissolve the old habits and work towards good and healthy ones. 

That day, I got my first email from Lynn, asking me if there were any shifts. I had nothing to report. 

She quickly emailed me back and asked if I was doing the meditation work. I realized in my previous email that I had forgotten to mention that. I said I was following the meditation guidelines she enclosed. 

Right away, I felt a little uneasy, as if someone was hovering behind me. 

The next two days I received emails. There was something in our dialogue that came up which I felt out of place and should have been addressed in our one-to-one session. I couldn't tell from her words whether she was angry or disappointed in something I wrote (a reply, actually to the first sensitive thing she brought up). This caused me some stress and moreover, concern. That night, I began to feel more and more uncomfortable about this daily 'checking in'. I know it was something Lynn depended on but we had also (supposedly) talked about a balanced, respectful relationship. Before going to bed, I sent off a quick email: I needed some time and space to process my thoughts.  Could we talk further on Sunday?

I didn't sleep well that night. Truth be told, I liked the idea of free sessions and someone who understood a lot of my ideas about healing, that our emotions play a large part in our disorders and bodily pains and dysfunctions made me think she had a lot to offer and that I should continue. But shouldn't there be space and respect?

If you're in love with someone or even just someone's good friend, you respect their boundaries, their wishes in times of need. When a friend breaks down in tears, you have to ask yourself, do we comfort them or let them be alone? In the Bible, Job's friends sit in silence with him for three days, allowing him time to grieve, giving him the space to process the pain, the realization he has lost everything.We are not human based on a set of fixed and unyielding approaches to each other but by flexibility, compassion and understanding.

The next morning I received an email from Lynn. I had to shake my head. The email stated that I had 'inspired some writing' in her. I opened the document she attached and read her philosophy about conditioned responses and our resistance to change. Thinking about her session, her philosophies, I already knew she was thinking, namely that by asking for space that I was actually fighting the healing process and hoping to keep my illness.

It wasn't that at all. I immediately knew I didn't want to work with a person who favoured a strict set of rules as opposed to engaging me. I was sensitive to the fact that my aunt had arranged for the sessions but I also knew I had to be honest. I wrote to Lynn about feeling 'watched' that I felt more like a student being kept in line by a distrusting teacher. I even noted that the idea I had inspired her made me think I was being 'worked on' as opposed to being 'worked with'. 

She responded that 'protocol is protocol' and that I had been unfair in my judgment. That was her assessment but I was honest about how I felt. 

I later wrote to my aunt, thanking her for recommending Lynn but I said it wasn't going to work. She  responded by stating that I had to stop thinking the world should manipulate itself for me (obviously her and Lynn talked about me). I was taken aback In no way had I asked the world to contort or be re-shaped in my favour. I had simply asked for some space. I equated this space with respect and continue to do so. Asking for space doesn't mean I don't want to heal or I want the world at my beck and call. It simply means I'm human with a very human request. If I hadn't asked and continued to feel the way I did, what would that have made me?

I have to say, I do find it ironic. Basically my aunt is calling me stubborn, saying I'm unyielding. But  really, I'm not the one who wrote 'protocol is protocol'.