Beauty

It's an old saw, but very true: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What you and I think is beautiful more than likely differs considerably.

I think spiders are gloriously beautiful; so many arthropods are. Snakes and lizards are lithe and lovely. Almost anything imaged by a scanning electron microscope is marvelous.



I think big noses are magnificent. Had I been Roxanne, Cyrano would have had no need for de Neuvillette to front for him.





On 9-26 Cicada, of Bioephemera fame, posted this painting and speculated upon the live girl's size and lack of cellulite.

My first impressions were "cool skeleton" and "beautiful hands." Hands are darn hard to paint. I suspect (looking at her perky bosom) that the live model was probably a teenager which would explain the lack of dimples and ripples on her glowing flesh.

Being less than svelte myself, I've done a good bit of thinking about size and beauty. Except for the slender figures in Egyptian art, seems to me that historically most Western females have been pretty robust. I would suspect that, back when food was harder to come by, a "strapping" figure was not only a sign of health, but also a sign of wealth. And what could be more attractive than that combination?

It hasn't been so terribly long since tastes in this country changed. These women were, and still are, considered some of the sexiest, loveliest ever to have lived.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.
.

.

.

.
.
.
.
.

Even today, Japanese men hyperventilate with lust at the thought of Marilyn Monroe.

These ladies could hardly be called thin, but they surely are all woman.

Then in 1967 a British model called Twiggy arrived on the scene, and it hasn't been the same since.
Darn it all!

The dust mite micrograph was downloaded at http://www.housedustmite.org/ , the picture is courtesy of Electron Microscopy and Audio Visual unit of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Beauty Stalks on Eight Legs

I'm in one of those weird moods tonight when nothing seems to come together, so I surfed through some of my photo archives looking for inspiration. I have lots of pictures, some good, some bad, some pretty, some not pretty. But what makes pretty? Flowers are pretty.I really like spiders. I think they're lovely. I don't understand why some people are afraid of them.

When I lived in the dormitory, one of my male friends owned a red legged tarantula. When anyone knocked on his door, he would put the spider on his shirt before answering. I was one of the few people who knocked a second time, but that's because he let me hold Gracie. I loved the way she seemed to pause and think about it before she lifted a leg. But when she was hungry she could pounce on a cricket faster than I could see. To me Gracie was a thing of beauty. Not many things are handsomer than an orb weaver. They would often spin their webs around the doorway of my duplex in North Carolina. It was an easy way to wake up to a plentiful breakfast of night flying bugs drawn by the porch light. The orb weaver's long magnificently articulated legs move so precisely when swaddling prey in silk


Jumping spiders make me laugh. They're so little and they jump so big. They are the Jack Russell terriers of the arachnid world.




.
.
..
.
.
.
.

Even tiny spiders are ferocious hunters, lurking to leap upon unsuspecting insects. The gardener in me loves seeing aphids get chomped.

This little guy is not as big as one of those hard silver sugar balls that my Grammy used to put on Christmas cookies. He is a wonder in miniature with his striped legs and diamond patterned abdomen.

.

.

.

.

.

Long, lean Fred Astaire spider is not much larger, but looked so elegant dancing with himself on my mirror.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

How could anyone not like spiders?