Beautiful women: Robin And Emma
I saw that my daughter Emma put this photo up on her Facebook Page, I asked her to send it to me, and she did. I was touched to see these two beautiful women. I am no expert on beauty, I’m not sure what it is or what it means. I know it has often been used to define and stereotype and diminish women.
Not being “beautiful myself,” it is an abstract idea to me. Beauty to me is in the spirit, the emotion, the goodness of a human being, it really has little to do, at least for me, with one’s body type or build or what marketing people put on a slick magazine cover.
Too often, men have defined what beauty means, and that is the problem, I think. Women are now beginning – or continuing – to define themselves. New notions of beauty are spring up everywhere. It is about time.
I appreciate photographing what I call strong women, women who are comfortable with themselves and look the camera right in the eye. Beauty is an internal thing to me, not an external thing. Photographs capture the soul of people, and that is what is beautiful for me.
Maria is very beautiful to me, I believe because of her loving spirit and her creative spark and empathy.
Her beauty is her radiance.
Emma has always been beautiful to me, she has a wise and ironic and telling look that has always seemed beautiful to me. People love to use the term “cute” or “adorable” when it comes to babies like Robin, and I’m not sure what that means either.
When I was young, I tried to look at the magazines I found in my father’s closet hidden away. He never once mentioned sex to me in any context, but he seemed to like these magazines with photos of nude women. Sometimes I got excited by these images, I was beginning to explore my own sexuality and there was no other place to go.
But the women never seemed “beautiful” to me, I knew nothing about them or what they felt or believed. I can’t remember one of them, and couldn’t five minutes after I looked at them. That was never what I wanted or looked for. At times, I thought I must be gay. I could never join in the conversations other men had about women and their ideas of beauty, I mostly stayed away from other men.
After a year or so, the magazines seemed creepy to me and I left them behind. I realized I had to find my own notions of beauty and sexuality. That is not a simple thing to do for young men in America, and it seems to get harder and more complex all the time.
Maybe I am, as I suspect, just a freak. But I started finding beauty in some of the women I knew and met, and it was never about the size of their breasts or how they looked. It was how they were.
When I see Robin, I see this quality of thoughtfulness and contemplation, that’s what touches me. When I saw this photo I saw two beautiful women, two more beautiful women in my life. Emma does not much care to be photographed, nor do we discuss varying ideas of beauty.
But I was pleased she put this photograph up on her page, it is rare for her to do it. it was a very beautiful photograph to me, and very beautiful. Robin, as usual, seemed to be wondering what was happening, Emma seemed to grasp the irony of all of it. Her spirit is very beautiful.
I see myself as being surrounded by beautiful women, and none of them would wish to be on a slick magazine cover, not at gunpoint. None of them permit other people to define them, or submit to men’s ideas of what beauty is.
That is one of the many beautiful things about them.