The Power of Physical Beauty: Who does it really empower?
The allure of a beautiful, young woman is substantial and men struggle to resist biting into the forbidden fruit that is a woman. Beauty peeks the interest of philosophers and pornographers alike. We study it, crave it and in recent years, exploit it. Beauty is power without a doubt, but who does it empower? A beautiful woman can have any man she desires, but what if it’s not a man that she wants? What if a woman craves to create her own success? Her natural beauty might land her a successful doctor, lawyer or CEO of a company, but what if it is not the man, but the job itself she wants? No matter how much power a beautiful woman has, the man who marries her will exceed her in power. …show more content…
Perhaps The Mona Lisa crossed your mind? The painter, Leonardo da Vinci, is household name. His work, especially The Mona Lisa, is still admired, studied and copied by many. The Louvre has over 70,000 pieces of artwork, yet crowds flock to see da Vinci’s the 21 by 30 inch painting of the mysterious women with an enigmatic smile.We all know Leonardo da Vinci and The Mona Lisa, but little to nothing is known about the women who made this painting possible. Who was she? Why was da Vinci so captivated by her? Does it not seem odd that a woman with enough power to captivate the mind of a genius such as da Vinci quickly became lost in history? We always remember the artist, but rarely the muse. In “The Oval Portrait,” by Edgar Allen Poe, the narrator of the story becomes obsessed with a portrait of a beautiful woman hanging in an oval frame in his room. The model in the portrait is none other than the artist 's wife. The painting is so life-like that everyone who sees it can conclude that the artist loved his craft and his wife, but what is not told in the painting is which of the two he loved more. The artist was so focused on capturing the beauty of his wife, he lost sight of everything else about her. She sat submissively day in and day out while her husband painted her, silently withering away into nothing. The wife was reduced from a subject to an object and by the …show more content…
But if this were true, why aren’t women running everything? Why aren’t there more women CEOs and officeholders? Granted, a woman who fits a certain standard of appearance can benefit from it. It might be easier for her to find romantic partners or at least find someone to buy her a drink in a bar, but this same woman might be told she is “too pretty” to work in a traditionally male, blue collar job. In this day and age, middle-aged, mostly white, men are the people in our society who actually hold the majority of the power and can get away with practically anything. They can rip off the government, rip off their customers, spread poison and propaganda all over the world and be so negligent that they get away with letting their employees actually die on the job. These men have so much power and yet, they still complain that women are lucky and that it is unfair that attractive women have an easier time getting out of traffic tickets; a ticket that a presumably white, male officer was supposed to give her. A pretty woman might not have gotten a speeding ticket because she was attractive, but do not forget who has the power to give her the ticket in the first
The allure of a beautiful, young woman is substantial and men struggle to resist biting into the forbidden fruit that is a woman. Beauty peeks the interest of philosophers and pornographers alike. We study it, crave it and in recent years, exploit it. Beauty is power without a doubt, but who does it empower? A beautiful woman can have any man she desires, but what if it’s not a man that she wants? What if a woman craves to create her own success? Her natural beauty might land her a successful doctor, lawyer or CEO of a company, but what if it is not the man, but the job itself she wants? No matter how much power a beautiful woman has, the man who marries her will exceed her in power. …show more content…
Perhaps The Mona Lisa crossed your mind? The painter, Leonardo da Vinci, is household name. His work, especially The Mona Lisa, is still admired, studied and copied by many. The Louvre has over 70,000 pieces of artwork, yet crowds flock to see da Vinci’s the 21 by 30 inch painting of the mysterious women with an enigmatic smile.We all know Leonardo da Vinci and The Mona Lisa, but little to nothing is known about the women who made this painting possible. Who was she? Why was da Vinci so captivated by her? Does it not seem odd that a woman with enough power to captivate the mind of a genius such as da Vinci quickly became lost in history? We always remember the artist, but rarely the muse. In “The Oval Portrait,” by Edgar Allen Poe, the narrator of the story becomes obsessed with a portrait of a beautiful woman hanging in an oval frame in his room. The model in the portrait is none other than the artist 's wife. The painting is so life-like that everyone who sees it can conclude that the artist loved his craft and his wife, but what is not told in the painting is which of the two he loved more. The artist was so focused on capturing the beauty of his wife, he lost sight of everything else about her. She sat submissively day in and day out while her husband painted her, silently withering away into nothing. The wife was reduced from a subject to an object and by the …show more content…
But if this were true, why aren’t women running everything? Why aren’t there more women CEOs and officeholders? Granted, a woman who fits a certain standard of appearance can benefit from it. It might be easier for her to find romantic partners or at least find someone to buy her a drink in a bar, but this same woman might be told she is “too pretty” to work in a traditionally male, blue collar job. In this day and age, middle-aged, mostly white, men are the people in our society who actually hold the majority of the power and can get away with practically anything. They can rip off the government, rip off their customers, spread poison and propaganda all over the world and be so negligent that they get away with letting their employees actually die on the job. These men have so much power and yet, they still complain that women are lucky and that it is unfair that attractive women have an easier time getting out of traffic tickets; a ticket that a presumably white, male officer was supposed to give her. A pretty woman might not have gotten a speeding ticket because she was attractive, but do not forget who has the power to give her the ticket in the first