In a world where a woman’s beauty is graphically described across a wide variety of songs, I’ve come to love
When extolling the virtue of the object of his affection’s beauty he chooses to sing “all tanned up and my kinda pretty”. It’s a powerful descriptor of beauty and how every individual has a different idea of what beauty is.“My Kinda Pretty” is definitely a concept that needs to gain more ground. It’s one that I work to foster by encouraging a “to each, their own” type environment as well as making it acceptable to state an admiration of an aesthetic that is not societally popular. I, personally, think it would be good for society to take one big step back from generalizing.
Practice Makes Progress
Reclaiming the acceptance of a variety of beauty is going to take calm assertions and non-defensive responses. Calmly asserting your admiration of a particular thing (Mmmm, I love shoulder-length hair on men) sets the stage that you find it more than normal and acceptable but desirable as well.
Predictably when you assert your admiration of something non-traditional, you’ll at some point be met with an “EEEEEW! GROSS!” or something similar. At this moment your response has the power to shatter stereotypes. A bit of friendly banter, a bit of laughter, and a “don’t be silly, just because it’s not your thing doesn’t mean that it’s not my thing!” will go a long way to educate people in a positive way. The unexpected reaction shows you have nothing to defend, and you don’t – beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.
Unexplored Beauty
A company in a pretty slick publicity move held a contest to find the world’s most beautiful vagina. What makes this more interesting is a separate group of scientists ran some analytics on the publicity contest, did some other science, and their results were quite interesting. You can explore the whole thing through the links but the tl;dr version is this: [The study] “provides evidence that both simple and more complex vulvas have a nearly equal percentage of admirers.” I would go so far as to say that in an environment where there is no predetermined social standard of beauty that variety wins the day.
As an aside that I found very interesting – “ pictures depicting contest entrants in a doggy style position obtained ratings 2 points higher on average (p <0.001) than others.” That’s statistically significant and the study had to drop all the photos taken in doggy. I suggest this evidences that it’s not what you got buy how you display that counts. Also, doggy is hot. 😉
Aesthetic And You
Recently I read a post of an individual decrying the quality of munches and the community in which those munches were hosted because said munches were not stocked with individuals that met this particular person’s aesthetic criteria. (First of all, these types of posts say more about the person posting than they ever will about the target of the post.) This person went on further to talk about, in detail, how un-aesthetically pleasing to them some of the munch guests were.
My advice to anyone in this situation is if having your aesthetic met is of high importance, go to a place where people that fit your aesthetic are. Why stand in the middle of the street and scream about how unappealing the tomatoes at Fred’s Grocery are to you? Just go over to Sally’s Supermarket and pick out your kinda pretty tomatoes.
The Great Beauty Equalizer
Ultimately everyone is beautiful just as they are. Whether or not you're someone else's (or someplace else's) kinda pretty is irrelevant. Your own beauty is undeniable. Never doubt this. Venues, magazines, people, etc. may crave or cater to different kinds of pretty. Just because someone or something seeks a particular kinda pretty doesn't mean that your kinda pretty is diminished.
Porn and kink are the ultimate equalizers. When it comes to porn and kink, there’s a place for everyone. I’ll leave you with this humorous yet poignant clip where Sam Morril summarizes this concept perfectly. Amy Schumer Presents Sam Morril – Positive Influence.
