The power of beauty.docx

The power of beauty
Have you ever wondered why women are so concerned about how they look? Why they aim to look like the beautiful women they see on the television and in magazines? That's because beauty is power!
There’s a beauty that makes the heart ache. A beauty that transforms and inspires, that brings us closer and closer… to what? To a lover, to our selves, to nature, to the whole of life, to the divine – does it matter? To some degree it is the “closeness” that matters – the sense of expansiveness, vulnerability, intimacy and tender belong that is so often awakened by a genuine encounter with beauty.
In the west, this kind of beauty has e lost within a tyranny of “attractiveness” and the terrible pressure placed on women – and all of us – to look a certain way. While women have gained so much power in the outer world, we have also let patriarchal ideals about what is beautiful undermine our own ability to see, feel, and embody the real power of beauty.
But beauty is an essential quality in all life – many have called it a divine quality. As we have lost touch with beauty, we have lost touch with our own selves at this deep and sacred level. This is a tragic aspect of our patriarchal culture – it has contributed to our forgetting of the living beauty at the core existence.
Beauty has long been recognized as feminine both in the world of cultural norms, which link wo