Beauty

It is sometimes the case that certain women are recognized universally as being beautiful. This is a shame. Their beauty is purely plastic and external. The most fundamental type of beauty is the disputed type. Let us say that I find someone very attractive. Hypothetically. It is more of a testimony to my affection that others I know do not find her as attractive. She is attractive to me. She is not so much beautiful on her own. She is beautiful in respect to me. My love makes her beautiful. Lest you think that I’m saying beauty is relative, I’m not. Beauty is not something that is indefinable, but it is personal. Others might not find her laugh infectious. But it infects me. Others might not get lost in her eyes but eye do. The standards do not change. Men do. If others found her as attractive as I do, I would doubt my feelings. I would think that they were superficial. But she has a disputed beauty. Yet she is indisputably beautiful to me. Hypothetically.

-William Bernard Martin
Selected Shorter Writings