Here’s my final piece to cap off my Aesthetics Week contributions.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Women are beautiful, they are the most beautiful thing in the world. Why? Because Woman’s intrinsic biological purpose is the highest aim of mankind: to reproduce. Woman brings forth and nurtures life; her intrinsic purpose is to create the Imago Dei anew, again and again.
The function of Woman is to create new life, an intrinsically transcendent task. Her form signals her reproductive capabilities. Her beauty is a product of where her form and function points to this purpose.
Man is not beautiful, he can not be beautiful except through warped physical feminization, for his intrinsic biological purpose is not transcendent. Man’s intrinsic biological aim is to subdue the earth, an intrinsically material task.
Man may be attractive, handsome even, when his form signals high capabilities for subduing the earth or quality genetic material for helping Woman make life, but beauty is not his to have.
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This is why attractiveness in women is prized by men. An attractive woman is signalling fertility, that she will be successful in this most transcendent of purposes.
This is where here becomes a difference between the beautiful and the hot. The beautiful woman signals that not only is she fertile, but she has the inner qualities which would make a good wife and mother to raise the resulting children. She signals that she would have high capabilities to the transcendent task of making a home. The hot woman signals fertility, but she does not signal motherly qualities. Hence, the the difference between hos and housewives. Men use hos, but make homes with housewives.
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This is also why to most men think their particular wife is the most beautiful woman in the world, even though she is likely not the most attractive, she is probably only average. He may even recognize, on an objective level, that she is not the most attractive. Yet, despite this, she is beautiful, the most beautiful, because she is particularly transcendent to him.
As defunct blogger Solomon II wrote (Proverb 28) of the musings of an older man:
Listen to me. A good woman ages beautifully. When I look at my wife, I see the most gorgeous woman in the universe. Her wrinkled hands got that way by keeping up with my two boys and working hard for them while I was on the road. The lines under her eyes are from years of shedding tears for me when I was at war, and those wrinkles on her brow are from decades of worry for me and my two sons. It was her legs they held on to when they were learning to walk, her lap was where they learned to read, and her breasts were their first nourishment. The first kiss those boys ever received was from her lips, and God willing, my last kiss will be from her lips.
You two don’t know what you’re missing – or maybe you do. But all I know is that she’s as beautiful, desirable, and lovely today as the day I met her, and I wouldn’t trade one second with her for a lifetime of rowdiness with one of those harlots you guys have waiting for you back home.
You two don’t know what beauty is. In a way, I feel sorry for both of you.
A man’s wife’s form might not particularly signal transcendent functionality to most men, but to him she is the one that brought forth his children, that made life not just in the image of God, but in his own image as well. She is the one that nurtured and raised his own particular instantiations of God’s image. No mere objective attraction, objective beauty, can possibly match that beauty such as that.
Good stuff. Many women spend tremendous money and effort trying to keep their youthful attractiveness into their 30’s, 40’s, and beyond. And fail. But if she marries young and gives her most attractive years to a single man, he’ll see her that way for the rest of their lives together.
Great way to cap off the week. Thanks for producing this.
Good post FN. Very interesting.
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Many women spend tremendous money and effort trying to keep their youthful attractiveness into their 30’s, 40’s, and beyond. And fail.
Some fail, some succeed. I’ve seen it done successfully. It largely depends on how the woman has lived during her 20’s. Meaning “the wall” comes at or before 30 IF the woman has lived an unhealthy and dangerous life (aka, promiscuous, alcohol, drugs, bad nutrition / processed food diet, smoking, laying out in the sun, etc, which bring about PREMATURE aging). It comes much, much later to women that make different choices. I’ve seen it first-hand. You only don’t see many women get to 30 with their youthful looks intact because most women live so badly these days. As a now-30 year old that frequently gets mistaken for being a 19-21 year old (and just last month, even as being too young to have a job), and who hasn’t done many things that my peers have done, I can testify to this.
That was… Beautiful.
“Some fail, some succeed”
Maybe so. Everyone knows a woman or 2 who aged well and looks attractive in middle age. Even with these women, the facts remain:
– They’re rare and a lot of it is just luck. No woman should count on being able to pull this off even if she lives a healthy lifestyle. There will always be thirsty guys willing to take a well-preserved 37-year-old to bed but by that age her odds of landing marriage with a quality guy are basically nil.
– She may look better-than-average in her 30’s/40’s, but she still looked better in her 20’s. And even if she does look good her fertility will still decline rapidly in her 30’s.
– No matter how she looks, a man should be cautious about marrying a woman over 30, especially if he wants to start a family. By that age women who are serious about becoming wives and mothers have already done so. Unmarried 30yo women are likely to either be career-obsessed, loaded with past relationship baggage, or both, and in any case you’ll have to live with the fact that she gave her hottest years to someone else and you got the leftovers.
The point stands that for women who want to marry and have kids, the best strategy is to do so at the peak of her attractiveness when men will be most willing to commit to her. This means giving up the option to play the field and string lots of guys along, but protects against the worst-case outcome of aging out of the “wife material” category without a ring.
As FN says, a woman’s beauty is incredibly powerful, but God took pity on men and made it fleeting. She’s inevitably going to lose her looks sooner or later, but if she stays with one man she’ll always benefit from the considerable power of wife goggles.