One of the very first posts I made was a list of “Heroes”, one for more or less every conscious year of my life. It was my youngest son who first pointed out that there were no women on my list. I, in turn and a little defensively, pointed out that it was a list of ‘heroes’ and not ‘heroines’, which of course I have but had decided to focus on the former as, in most ways, having had a greater influence, also as a result of , often ‘narcissistic’, identification.
However, it has long been my intention to deal with “the other half of Heaven” and was recently inspired by my friend Digital epiphanies who on another social network had posted a list of women who had inspired her and men she would have liked to meet.
I consider all of these women inspirational and am as much in awe of their talents as anything else. I decided to break them down into categories that are relevant really only for me, but it makes for a series that I hope will prove engaging also for others.
I start with what might seem the easiest, or most banal (below I will try to say why I don’t think there is anything banal about it). Subsequent categories will be ACTORS, LETTERS, POLYMATHS and MUSICIANS. Watch this space.
Perhaps the most banal comment about beauty is that it is “in the eye of the beholder”. Well, yes and no. It is true, fortunately and magically, that we have an individual capacity and propensity to see beauty where others might not, but there are, I believe, certain examples of beauty – faces, landscapes, works of art, etc. – that are immediately and universally recognised and therefore not susceptible to serious debate.
And since female beauty has been a central theme in poetry and art from even before the ancients, it seems only right to recognise it as a force in our lives. But, unlike the other categories – that all have six icons – this category seems to me so particular as to demand an even more rigorous selection.
The two women above are, in my view, so unique and so extraordinarily and unquestionably beautiful, as to merit being at the apex of this personal pantheon. They have a beauty that also seems to suggest hints of varied ethnicity; they don’t look Belgian or American, for example, or French, or German, or anything else for that matter. They have been blessed with faces and bodies that are perfect in form; the sort of form that an artist might choose to create. They are without voluptuousness or vulgarity, they are emphatically not what one hears described as “sexy”, and yet their femininity, charm and intelligence make them incomparably alluring.
Come back next time for ACTORS.
michaelsbackpocket 