Beautiful?

What is beauty? An untouched landscape? The stars above? A beautiful woman that a man is in love with? Throughout history, people had different ideas of beauty. The Chinese thought that women with small feet were beautiful. Women have tried many methods to achieve the ideal principle of beauty. Some have died to reach that goal. Art is no exception to the expectations of beauty. Ideas of beauty in art have changed over the years. Over the years, people thought that the statues from Ancient Greece and Rome were beautiful. But in the sixteenth century, Quentin Metzys painted a different kind of beauty called the Grotesque Old Woman.

When I first saw the painting, Grotesque Old Woman, I was blown away. I, like most people, would find the woman completely hideous. She looks like a man in drag in the painting. I thought on the movie, The Goonies, when I saw her. The woman to me looks like an ogre in a dress. I can’t really see the beauty in the painting and her at all. It didn’t really change my perception at all. But, I do agree about how kind the eyes look. The woman’s eyes do remind me of a grandmother’s in a sense.

The “ugly” in the painting is like a car accident. One doesn’t want to look, but they can’t turn away. It’s just that powerful. I want to look away from the woman, but I keep coming back to her. One is led to wonder how something so “ugly” can draw so much attention to it. Maybe it is to show the truth and human beings don’t want to see it. Maybe it is to remind us that everything is not always model perfect. Grotesque Old Woman is left open for interpretation.

The world has different ideas about beauty. The modern man loves curves. Some men love women to be thin. Blondes seem to be at the top of everyone’s list of beauty. The Chinese loved women with small feet in the old days. Plenty of guys love women with big breasts. Many guys love the big booty in the back. The Victoria Secret models hold the best example of beauty. Race also plays a role in beauty as well. Black and Asian women seem to be popular with the men. Age also plays a factor in beauty as well. Almost all men love younger women. Many older women try many painful and expensive ways to stay young. The woman in Grotesque Old Woman has big breasts in the painting. She looks healthy looking with a plump body. Her eyes do look like a kind grandma’s. The woman’s beauty seems to lie in her face. She seems to be a kind old woman. The woman is both ugly and beautiful at the same time.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes, beauty isn’t what one always expects. Grotesque Old Woman proves that perfectly well. The woman in the painting is beautiful not because of her looks, but because of the warm sense of caring she gets to viewers. She truly is a “lovely old woman with kind eyes.”