The greatest thing about beauty is that it offers hope in a dysfunctional world. It gives the working man or woman a reason to be happy about their lives, to be glad at what they've accomplished, to aspire for more, and to live with a lasting sense of inner-peace and self worth.
A quick hour spent listening to the addictive evening news bulletin only tells you how alienating our world is. There are people dying in one of the most miserable and unlucky continents on this planet: people seeing their loved ones die, and who still have to fight for survival, and yet, the rest of the world can't offer its help thanks to a group of militants who are supposedly religious. I do not know how anyone can claim to be following a religion or even a primeval code while denying help to fellow human beings. A quick spin upwards shows a peaceful nation that has learned how much damage a single man with a gun can do. Another spin to the west, and we find a nation in which the politicians, who by definition are suffering from dissociation and a tinge of sardonic egomania, deciding on gambling with the livelihood of millions or probably billions of people around the world just to satisfy their schadenfreude and a burning desire to humiliate a man that they do not agree with. A last scroll to the eternally turbulent Middle East, and its a flashback to the fall of the soviet union, but it is more bloody. How can you point a tank's barrel at a condo that houses tens of families, press a button, and see it disappear in a few milliseconds without having any guilt about it? Do you know how long it took people to build it? to decorate their homes? to collect their memories in small gemstones and statues? Little tim who saved his entire allowance to buy a poster of his favorite superhero only to be disappointed by realizing that the superhero can't protect him against the appaling cults of self-worship. How can you do it so that you can stay in power? a power that you supposedly derive from the same people that you're killing, and whose houses you are destroying? How can you send your militias of terrorists to hurt innocent civilians whose only guilt is asking for their human dignity and their basic rights? That's all beyond my comprehension.
Dictators and terrorists lie without any guilt on TV, they murder people and do their best to destroy hope. Patriotism is shoved down our throats to keep us submissive and to make us accept what we're supposed to challenge, but waving a flag doesn't guarantee a better future. There's a reason hope was the last thing in Pandora's box. No matter how much adulation and worship some murderer gets, there's always the hope of justice, which, according to history, often manifests itself in an apparition of Ma'at or Themis.
In such an artificially miserable world, it almost feels as if all our work is ultimately ephemeral. There's beauty in what we create, in our relationships with our partners, or even in our dreams of those relationships. As ordinary citizens of the world, all we want to do is to create something remarkable and impart a part of our soul on it, to find an understanding partner, and to be able to have a cup of coffee late at night from your balcony in peace, but it seems that some people consider that too much to ask for.
We need to have pride in who we are; some glimpse of hope that asserts that we're unlike those selfish egomanical personalities who infest every government of this planet. That there are other human beings who are ethical, and who don't make headlines just for being the great people that they are. There's beauty about being human. We can look at skyscrapers with awe, or at bridges that encroach upon the domain of whales and defy the elements of nature, or at our footsteps on the moon. Those are all objects that represent the greatness of who we are, of what we can accomplish. Those are great reminders that we are just as good at building things as we are at destroying them. Most of us didn't actually contribute into the creation of those objects, but they're a symbol of the achievements of the human mind, a reminder of the value of our brains.
Nudes are also a magnificent form of beauty. They are about absolute human attributes; They aren't about the model or her body: A picture can only give you a tantalizing glimpse of a personality, and a perfect human form can be generated using simple 3D software. The form in those images is familiar, it resembles us, and it allows our minds to construct a personality around what our brains recognizes as beautiful human beings. We give them personalities, we give them the attributes that we truly value, we turn them into legendary superheroes, and then we start considering what we need to do to resemble that image, to be more like them, to be as beautiful, and to be more proud of who we are. We all have an image of who we want to be inside us, beauty comes dressed in that image to remind us of our long-forgotten dreams and aspirations.
It is a genuinely selfish value. It is a mirror of who we are, and at the same time it reminds us to make the most of our lives, to love ourselves, and to learn to wish ourselves better lives without feeling guilty about it. When it's a person of a different color in the image, or a disabled person, or someone who's different in any way, it teaches us to empathize.
In my humble opinion, that's the message of beauty that no censor can destroy, that no beauty-hater can sabotage with any amount of vitriol of destructive hypocritic self-righteousness. A person who looks in a mirror and sees the monsters that they have become will certainly do their best to destroy those mirrors.
There's so much to live for, and the world will remain beautiful as long as we believe in who we are and believe in our beauty.
This is an essay titled "Coed Sleepovers" contributed by one of the site's visitors: David Hopkins. It's really worth a read as it raises up a very important question.
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Coed Sleepovers
We sleep to rest ourselves, to regain our energy to use for the next day. However, I do not understand why we always equate sleeping with sex.
I have two friends: Mike and Sarah. I have never had a sexual relationship with Sarah and I do not want to either. My father says that friends of the opposite gender do not even have sleepovers because their genders are different. If I were to have a sleepover with Mike, my Dad would feel fine. Nobody would see it as sexual activity or that we are homosexual.
However, if I asked to have a sleepover with Sarah, Dad would not let me and Sarah would refuse. Why? For the sole reason that she is a girl. It does seem rather sexist.
Besides, even if I did intend such a sleepover to be sexual, so what? Teens go on dates which they intend to practice their sexuality. Yet, other casual friends exist of the opposite gender. Casual friendship is about what friends are like by their character and interests, not about gender.
Every single night, I sleep to rest myself, and I do not want people to tell me that I would be engaged in sexual activity if only a female, any female were sleeping in the room. People fall asleep on planes and buses anyway.
Sure, sleeping with or near someone of the opposite sex can be sexual. I would feel aroused if it were someone on whom I felt sexual or had a relationship, but someone like Sarah? I could never feel aroused by someone by whom I did not feel sexual in the beginning.
Several years from now, I do hope to marry, and when we do, our bed will become the most sexual place we could possibly be. Probably, another part of the reason why we sleep is so that we can spend some intimate time alone with our partners.
If I were to have a sleepover with Sarah, we would not actively be participating in sexual activity. We would merely have a presence of each other. Who is to dictate that by day, most people of the opposite gender are merely people, but by night, every single one of them transforms into a sex object? Let's take into consideration gender equality.
In my opinion, forbidding coed sleeping is like the Berenstein Bears story, 'No Girls Allowed' in which the boys make a club just to shut Sister Bear and the other girls out. If the people involved in the sleepover, are not intimately bonded, sex segregation is unfair, and unnecessary.
Should all dormitories be coed then? I would say not. We must respect other peoples' opinion of how they would feel about people of the opposite gender of a dormitory.
Would such a slumber party automatically, inevitably, and uncontrollably transform into an orgy party? Casual friends of the opposite gender do many things together: eat, play, watch movies, talk, go out; so, why not sleep? We only see two people of the opposite gender sleeping with each other as only sexual because that is typically the context in which people of the opposite sex do it.
If coed sleeping were only sexual, homosexual people would never be able to have a nonsexual sleepover, or sleep in a dormitory without people of their sex arousing them or their arousing people of the opposite sex. Describing coed sleeping as solely sexual violates equality rights between genders, and compromises principles which encourage other people, especially between friends, to evaluate a person from his or her inside.
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A great essay by David Hopkins that he wrote in high school.
NOTE: This link doesn't lead to a gallery. It leads to a portal full of beauty-supporting websites, websites that value and defend female beauty.
Superbeauty is a concept formed by Dwayne Bell, the founder of Body in Mind. It basically is a portal where beauty supporting websites are listed, along with some snippets about how beauty is admired/abhorred around the world.
You can go there to find more beautiful tasteful nudes.
Romania is a beautiful country that lies in Eastern Europe, it has a somewhat traditional atmosphere and is a place where religion is cherished. However, this religious atmosphere doesn't affect the freedom of its citizens or restrict the display of nudity. The local editions of Maxim, Playboy, and even Hustler are available at every newsstand, and you're more likely to see women wearing more liberating outfits there than in some Western countries. It's a country where love truly is in the air.
In 2002, three beautiful and amazingly graceful Romanian athletes - Lavinia Milosovici, Claudia Presacan, and Corina Ungureanu - decided to share their beauty with the world by performing their amazing gymnastics topless for a Japanese magazine. The settings weren't erotic and the video they did only served to show their amazing grace and the beauty of their muscles that were carved by hours of merciless training. What they did get in return for their generosity and courage though was a harsh 5-year ban from coaching.
I doubt that any male athletes who would do the same would receive a similar verdict. Why does showing one's body earn you a punishment, if you're female that is? I think that this was more of a punishment for being courageous. A form of a destructive witch hunt that is fed by the perverse idea that nudity is immoral. The judges probably got to boast about their self-righteousness for a while.
It is an old incident, but what is it that brought it to mind, why I should I mention something that took place almost 8 years ago. The reason is simple, that story isn't about ordinary people, it's about Olympic stars, people who were able to achieve great status through endless hours of hard work. People whose work brings pride to entire nations, nations whose citizens most probably contributed nothing to earning that pride. It was an instant of the crushing of the spirit of liberation for the sake of social hypocrisy that takes place everywhere every single day.
Why do we have to punish females, or anyone for that matter, for taking control of their bodies? for being courageous, beautiful, or outspoken? Is it a punishment for thinking and deciding not to follow the herd, a punishment for being independent.
I am glad that despite all of this pressure and beauty-hating campaigns, brave women like Hayley Marie Coppin still decide share their beauty with us. Their courage is a source of inspiration for all of us. That also goes for the beautiful Romanian gymnasts, who despite becoming scapegoats, will always earn my respect and remain a source of inspiration, for their amazing beauty and grace are and shall remain timeless, and their courage will always be remembered. Like true heroines, they will never be forgotten.
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