[Previous entry: "On the importance of listening carefully!"] [Next entry: "Imitation is the highest form of...? Plus...Haiku Madness!"]
02/13/2008: "Chocolate for the Eyes..."
Yesterday I had a conversation with a male friend about an attractive young woman he likes who is dating a “jerk”. He went into the whole diatribe about how good looking women never give “nice guys” a chance and always end up with men who are either rich assholes or muscle-bound jocks. One of those: “Why won’t they give a regular guy a chance?” kind of questions.
This argument is one that drives me (non-hot woman) insane. I see these “nice guys” who are regular looking and sometimes downright unattractive, chasing after women who are much younger and better looking than they are…even when there are an abundance of less attractive women their own age who would be more than happy to go out with them.
They won’t give these average looking women a chance, and yet they expect these exceptionally beautiful women to look past their surface deficiencies to their superior inner qualities…when they themselves are unwilling to do that.
I’m sick of the whole “men are more visually stimulated” argument, or how older men with younger women is only natural, harking back to hunter gather days. Wake up folks! We don’t live in caves anymore!
Being an artist, however, I am intimately aware of the power of youth and beauty. I railed against this poor guy and yet the vast majority of my own depictions of women are of youth and beauty. Why? Because even I find those qualities aesthetically pleasing. But what we choose to paint and who we choose to share our lives with, are not the same thing. Of course, I think my honey is a hotty (he is!) but I did not choose him for his looks, nor did he choose me for mine (trust me!).
It reminded me yet again of the woman at my last opening who asked me with an incredulous tone in her voice, why I chose to paint “thin” women, the implication being that I was obviously NOT thin and therefore should be painting overweight women.
I’m also reminded of a line in The Tao of Steve, where the main protagonist (Dex) is asked “Would you ever date a fat girl?” and he responds “No, I'm the worst kind of fatist, a fat fatist.”
Touché.