Beauty… in the eye of the beholder

Which canvas has greater value?

One of the framed canvases above is valued at millions of dollars. The other is worth only the cost of the bare canvas and frame. Can you tell which is which?

(No, it’s not a trick question.) Obviously, the valuable one is on the right — Claude Monet’s masterpiece, “Le Parasol”.

But why?

Why is it so highly valued?

Surely, if you think about it, the blank canvas on the left has greater value? After all, it hasn’t yet been defaced like the one on the right. Nobody has plastered colour, lines, shapes, textures all over it and diminished its value. It’s pristine.

It makes no sense — not when you consider the value system of most of the world when it comes to judging beauty.

See for yourself.

Sit in front of a mirror with a photo of yourself in your teens or early 20s. Which image would the world judge as the more “beautiful”?

Almost certainly, the photographic version of you. The younger woman.

Why?

Because there are no lines, no wrinkles, no tiredness, no signs of age or gravity. In other words, it hasn’t yet been “defaced” in any way by the artistry of love and life.

Can you see the absurd contradiction here? The hypocritical double standard in “values”?

It represents a 180 degree about-face to say that the Monet masterpiece has more beauty than the unblemished blank canvas, then to claim that a woman in her 30s, 40s or beyond has less beauty than one in her teens or twenties.

Just as the blank canvas holds out only the mere promise of enhancement, so does the youthful visage. And, just as the masterpiece represents the culmination of skill, experience, passion, despair, love and laughter, tears and hard-won achievement over time, so does the mature face of a woman who has lived life, who has known love, joy and heartbreak.

In any other aspect of life, we’d call this contradiction in values hypocrisy.

It’s no less hypocritical here.

Be proud of those textures, colours, shapes and lines. Regardless of what the world in general may have been conditioned to think (like so many sheep), these are signs of true beauty and womanhood.

You are a genuine work of art.

In the eyes of those who understand and appreciate truth, you are beautiful because of those signs and what they symbolise… not despite them.

© 1997 John Counsel. All rights reserved.