Buffy ,'Help'
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
At least in the last few centuries, beauty was completely worthless next to the possibility of increasing wealth. A woman's value was the wealth of her family far more than her looks.
I think it's a tough distinction to make, since standards of beauty have been almost always been historically defined as "what the upper class wants to look like." (And until relatively recently, money was equated with health, since if you weren't rich, you were probably starving.)
They're still valued for their beauty, its just a different standard of beauty.
It doesn't matter WHAT the standard is, beauty ends up being the #1 again and again.
Beauty as indicators of status or wealth or value to the family is, I posit, a practical definition and using physical traits as shorthand--we're back to dowry and ability to bear children expressed visually.
Ooh, I know what next week's cupcakes will be (assuming I more or less stick to the rest of my diet, which is the deal I've made with myself):
Ginger Pumpkin: Ginger cake with Pumpkin buttercream topped with Candied Ginger
Mexican Hot Chocolate: Spiced Chocolate cake with White Chocolate buttercream topped with Cinnamon Mini Marshmallows
Godammit, Brenda. Now you know I'm just going to have to make a trip down for cupcakes.
what about certain African cultures (and Polynesian too, I think) that find fat women the prettiest. Because fat has another meaning in those societies--healthy, from wealth, and probably good childbearing stock.
From what I've read, some of the Polynesian cultures are falling prey to Western advertising. Samoa is actually starting to see cases of, if not anorexia, extreme dieting and attempts to attain a more westernized standard of beauty, i.e. thin.
Tony v. Paul
That rocked.
Ginger Pumpkin: Ginger cake with Pumpkin buttercream topped with Candied Ginger
MMMMMMM.
Hi again.
FLEAS! and not the mommy of casper kind.
Msbelle! Have you met him yet?
msbelle! Yay! And, um, boo for fleas of the not-Casper sort.
no. tomorrow. Although the last 2 days our flights have been delayed by many hours, so who knows.
I am dead tired and longing for raw veggies. I swear I am going to have the largest salad I can get when we get to London.