Believing In Her Beauty

The torso of my beautiful muse

I tell her she’s beau­ti­ful. Over and over again. As often as I can.

But she shakes her head, and says I only think so because I love her.

The front of my beautiful muse

It’s true. But would I love her any less if she did­n’t have those soft, inno­cent eyes? If she did­n’t wear her hair up, or down, or curly, or straight, or dif­fer­ent every time I saw her? If her body did­n’t curve so dis­tract­ing­ly when she lets her­self fall into me?

The body of my beautiful muse

It makes me won­der if any­one sees the same thing that I do.

How much of it is her beau­ty, and how much of it is the beau­ty I see in her?

To me, her beau­ty is obvi­ous, not sub­tle in any way.

The legs of my beautiful muse

So I tell her, over and over again.

Sometimes I think she’ll start to believe me if I say it enough.

9 comments

  1. Women worth hav­ing rarely seem to think they are attrac­tive, even when they are. It”s one of their most endear­ing — and mad­den­ing — traits. Perversely, when they do believe com­pli­ments, women seem to pay more atten­tion to those from strangers than to those made by their lovers.

    Good thing men don’t have any quirks!

  2. Let alone the pho­tos trans­port the mes­sage. They are beau­ti­ful. Not because of the craft­man­ship you can see in cre­at­ing these pho­tos. No its her atmos­phere, her invis­i­ble mix of unse­cu­ri­ty and strength and the love for her of the pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Tell her how beau­ti­ful she is, but not every day or hour but in the right moment, at the right time. Its more worth then to tell it every day.

  3. There’s an air of mag­na­nim­i­ty to her mouth and jaw line, yet she’s the unin­ti­ma­dat­ing girl next door with a well-bal­anced physique. She projects that sub­tle self-con­fi­dence that tells you she’s con­scious of all that. She’s beau­ti­ful alright…perhaps even dan­ger­ous­ly beau­ti­ful.

  4. @Michael — You hit the nail on the head. I think com­ments from strangers are tak­en more seri­ous­ly because they don’t have the bias of love, which is what makes our opin­ions less impor­tant since they’re less sub­jec­tive. The way I see it, it’s a some­what back­wards approach to the entire sit­u­a­tion.

    @Joern — I sup­pose there’s some­thing to be said about not overus­ing the word so that it means more on the rare occa­sions that it’s said. Unfortunately, it’s all I can think of when I’m with her. And com­ing from some­one like me, sti­fling self-expres­sion is very dif­fi­cult.

    @Uncle Joe — “Dangerous” is the per­fect word, in the oper­at­ic Carmen sense. I always like it when you give your views on a pho­to­graph. It lets me see them in a dif­fer­ent way, which I rarely get a chance to do.

  5. I’m always amazed that even beau­ti­ful star­lets don’t like them­selves enough. I recent­ly saw an expose e‑mail of women who are famous movie or TV stars, all pho­tographed in their cars or on the street, with no make­up or fan­cy gear., hair frizzy and unstraight­ened, & what­not. They all looked quite aver­age. Wish more women could see that e‑mail.

    The truth is, even the most beau­ti­ful ones are just peo­ple, and if they don’t know that they’re fools. And the truth for the rest of us is, youth alone makes 90% of us gor­geous and we nev­er, ever know it.

    I sat wait­ing for a the­ater per­for­mance to begin once and a lot of the audi­ence was in their late teens. I was over­whelmed by how good­look­ing ALL of them seemed. Because they had that unmis­tak­able fresh­ness, hap­pi­ness, chaot­ic unspoiled verve, untamed by suits and wor­ries and respon­si­bil­i­ties. I could not get over how even the less “good-look­ing” ones were glow­ing and seemed to have the world by the tail. They just seemed to have joy in them.

    And then I remem­bered some of my good friends I find attrac­tive, and that’s a lot of their attrac­tion too. They’ve retained their joy. If only young women knew this and stopped wor­ry­ing about straight­en­ing their hair, or diet­ing, or think­ing how poofy their lips are or aren’t. They would real­ize they’re real­ly real­ly stars.

  6. I find that it’s their inse­cu­ri­ties that dri­ves these beau­ti­ful peo­ple to be beau­ti­ful. If they were com­pla­cent, they would­n’t care so much about look­ing good all the time. I’m sure that even the stat­ue of David, if able to move, would have unflat­ter­ing pos­es. There’s an impor­tant bal­ance between inse­cu­ri­ty and com­pla­cen­cy that’s dif­fi­cult to find.

    Age cer­tain­ly has a hand in mak­ing us beau­ti­ful, although more for women than men, I’d say.

    Style has a way of mak­ing up for beau­ty as well, and I find that younger peo­ple use it to their advan­tage, even if they’re not aware of doing so. Theatre is also a visu­al medi­um though, and like mod­el­ing and film, there seems to be a “type” of (beau­ti­ful) peo­ple who are involved or relat­ed to a pro­duc­tion.

    Perhaps the biggest pro­jec­tion of beau­ty, as you touched on, is men­tal­i­ty, or as told to men, is “con­fi­dence”.

  7. this post reminds me of that Elvis Costello song, The Element Within Her.

    Really, you have to hear it.…beautiful song.

    t’s the ele­ment with­in her
    Something under her skin
    That is shin­ing out through the face of the girl
    Two sap­phires and cou­ple of rows of pearls
    It’s just a part of it
    Like your fine tress­es
    You know what my guess is
    La la la la la la la la la la la
    He was a PLAYBOY
    Could charm the birds right out of the trees
    Now he says ‘What do I do with these?’
    La la la la la la la la la la la

    This love in my heart
    Let no-one set asun­der
    Sometimes I won­der
    La la la la la la la la la la la

    But back in the bed­room
    With her elec­tric heater
    I say, ” are you cold?”
    She says, “No, but you are…’ la la la la la

    la la la la
    it’s the ele­ment with­in her.…

    lalala

  8. I’m keep­ing my ear out for this song, since I can’t seem to find it on YouTube. I like the fact that he does­n’t actu­al­ly men­tion her eyes and her teeth, but refers to them as jew­el­ery.

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