What Makes a Woman Beautiful?

What Makes a Woman Beautiful?

 It occurs to me that I have titled this blog "Beautiful Women" without defining the term "beautiful." (I am assuming that "women" is pretty self-explanatory.) Obviously, I am using the word broadly to encompass all the women I love. But what makes these women beautiful?

 

Obviously, beauty is related to appearance and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) provides such a definition first. According to this most trusted dictionary, beauty is "such combined perfection of form and charm of colouring as affords keen pleasure to the sense of sight."

 

So beautiful women are nice to look at.

And I do wish to point out that this is not a blog devoted to women who are beautiful on the inside but not on the outside because it simply is not true. I believe that EVERYONE, even those of us not satisfied with our bodies, can find something positive to say about them. I have already listed all the things I don't like about myself in previous posts, but what about what I appreciate about my appearance? I have an attractive smile and, as weird as it sounds, I think I have nice hands. I also have a very expressive face which I like about myself. It lets people know that I'm listening to them (or that I'm not) and that I care about what they're saying, even if I don't know how to respond.

But, of course, my primary interest in creating this blog is to change my focus away from my physical appearance to the things that really matter about myself. So the OED's second definition of beauty is of much greater interest to me.

Beauty is "that quality or combination of qualities which affords keen pleasure to other senses, or which charms the intellectual or moral faculties, through inherent grace, or fitness to a desired end."

According to this definition, women are beautiful when they have pleasing qualities. So beautiful women are clever, funny, kind, happy, graceful, goofy, loving, hard-working, brave, strong, good listeners, carefree, organized, sympathetic, creative, etc., etc., etc.

Now I can be highly grumpy and unpleasant when I'm stressed (which is pretty much anytime that I'm in school) but I do not know anyone who can be unpleasant ALL the time.

So, according to the most trusted dictionary in academia, every woman is beautiful!