Grocery stores put things by the cash register to educe impulse purchasing. It's smart marketing and sometimes fun. Yesterday I bought the new Tricycle. I love magazines. I have purchased Tricycle in the past, usually because there's something I want to read in it. This was all about the cover. The peace and tranquility in that face captured my imagination.
The bagger made a comment about it and a funny conversation ensued. I wish I could quote it verbatim but it was fast and frenetic. The gist being that a Buddhist magazine had effectively marketed to me. And they used the same technique that magazines often use. They used beauty.
The bagger suggested that the young man has an erotic look and, yeah, he does. We only see his face and a bit of his shoulders. He is in recline. One arm is above his head and the other is at his side. He has a slight smile. Uh ... yeah. Erotic possibility. And that might have been what caught me. But not consciously. What I thought I was reacting to was the beauty of tranquility.
Beauty is an important part of my life. I posted a picture of my breakfast last Sunday because it looked so beautiful.
I don't always take the time to make my meals look beautiful but I often do. I always do when I'm cooking for someone else. And sometimes things look beautiful to me even when I put them together casually.
I bought more tangerines and made extra effort to find the ones with leaves.
All of this made me think about beauty and fat people, including myself. Sometimes people will talk to me about size acceptance and say things like people should people shouldn't be judged by their appearance. I don't agree. Judge me by my appearance. Just try to think about your judgments. Any knee jerk reaction to appearance is suspect. My hope is that people look at each other with an open and receptive mind and heart and then become active in the process of reacting. Of course, given that we live with a media drenched idea of beauty I don't have much hope.
But I do have some.
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