About That Beauty thing,...

    Over the nearly 3 years that I've been doing the Attire's Mind blog on Facebook, and Blogspot, I've come to understand something; something that all of you have taught me.  When I post things that are edgy, uber-modern, and avant garde, I can expect to experience a fusillade of negative comments.  And when I tell you that, I'm not trying to dismiss, or diminish your commentary.  Far from it.  Bear with me a bit, and all will come clear.

    Conversely, when I post an image of something that conforms in every respect to our hard wired concepts of beauty, based on inbred ideas of proportion, color balance, and textural harmony, I am flooded with simple praiseful remarks. 

    What this has taught me is, that what I had known to be true, that we are profoundly affected by the deep seated programming we bear regarding how we view the world, doesn't go far enough.  That programming is more powerful than I had heretofore thought.  It seems we find it nearly impossible to step outside of that set of ideas, and look at things differently.  I have to admit that, since it's a stated purpose of this blog, and of my work here as a whole, to help people see more broadly, to encompass more, it's sometimes frustrating when people refuse, it seems, to even try to stretch themselves.
    But, all that said, what it brings to me in the end, is that I'm right about all this stuff.  We are massively, and essentially affected by this Attire language, and things like these experiences only serve to confirm that.  We carry within us, not only the social rules and regs, but the inborn understanding of color, line, volume, and structure that forms the foundation upon which Attire is built.  And every time we are either seriously challenged by apparel that does not fit our preconceptions, or supported by those clothing items that do, we more deeply incise the message into our psyches, till it becomes to us, an incontrovertible truth, that cannot alter.

    Of course what makes me smile about that mechanism is that over the many millennia of Homo Sapiens history, we have altered, substantively, our beliefs, and approach to human beauty, again and again.  Surely there are certain constants that we are born with, but we set them aside, routinely, in the service of whatever thought of the moment seizes us.  So, we find ourselves saying yes to endless, variations of apparel that we later deem ridiculous.  I will refer to Oscar Wilde here.  "Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable we have to alter it every six months".
    The inner point though is this one.  We do indeed come with bundled software that tells us what we should like, and why we should like it.  And though we might be dazzled temporarily by super broad 1980s shoulder pads, or we might find drop crotch pants completely cool, we will just as soon dismiss them.  Because, end point?  They do not conform to what we know in our guts is right for us. We know intrinsically beautiful when we see it. It resonates. It actually makes us feel good inside. There are graphible changes in our brainwave patterns, that indicate that we are in a state of peace and pleasure when we are looking at things that work within the guidelines of attractiveness with which we are born.

    So when I recently posted to the facebook blog, a ball gown from the early 1900s, it's still getting positive remarks, and the two male models in pink, are continuing to get dissed.
    My final remark is this.  Don't sell yourself, or the world short. Take the time to really examine things that are beyond the easily understood,   Expend the mental and emotional energy to really start to see the greater breadth of human beauty.  It goes further afield than we think, and could bring us far greater joys, were we to let it in.