Between the Lines: Beauty

Well, unfortunately, my computer has been having some technical difficulties, so I'm starting a bit late on this class discusion.

Last class, we were discussing the overall topic of beauty. What is it technically? If we spend our time paroozing through celebrity magazines, we are bombarded by women who appear to be 5'10 and 110 pounds. If we are too caught up in this cookie-cutter images, we loose our ability to define true beauty, which is a beauty more based on lines and what makes up a person.

In our book, the characters are scrutinized with their body images and whether or not they are beautiful. It is interesting to compare these images in relation to thier social class.

Howard, while upper class, is extremely condescending toward Kiki during Mozart's Requiem.

Imagine if all of us had never heard of Mozart before. What if he was just a man playing for pocket change on the street? Would we all idolize him so much? We put people like this on a level of bardolotry. Here's the problem: the bard is always a man. There is this "Great Man Theory" that is plaguing us. There has yet to be a "great woman." Thus far in our history, there is no woman.

Pg. 118-120: It is hard to say why Howard had an affair with Claire. Claire is more on Howard's level intellectually. Claire is caucasion, thin, fit, and tan. She is the complete opposite. I can imagine that Kiki would be upset because of many things, but physically, it must be extremely disheartening to look at her husband having an affair with a woman of Claire's type. Claire is the social description of "beautiful." She is probably more aethetically pleasing than Kiki is. It must also hurt Kiki because of the intellectual gap between she and her husband and then seeing how Howard gravitates toward Claire. Claire is more well-rounded education-wise. Overall, Claire is the exact antithesis of what Kiki is.