THE BEAUTY OF WOMEN'S BODIES

Too much emphasis is placed on the "curvy" issue when discussing whether mature women's bodies are as beautiful as those of nubile girls.

I think that we haven't gotten a grip on the fact that most young people, men and women, have aesthetically beautiful bodies and that most women's aesthetically beautiful bodies are transformed to awesome, in the old fashioned sense of the word, after childbirth and we often are no longer aesthetic, so much as awesome - and awesome usually is not pretty. Pretty is too flimsy and shallow a platform for awesome. The beauty of awesome is something entirely different than having an aesthetically pleasing form.

I see the phenomenon of the pretty being transformed into the awesome that none but those who love us genuinely wish to approach and touch, but I also have not fully processed what it is and why. I do think it has something do to with the sanctity of being a Mother, which is something that doesn't invite parading ones' body anymore. The more Holy something is, the less likely it is to be accessible to any and all comers. After birth, Women's bodies, not being pretty anymore, ask us to veil them in sanctity and mystery.