the death of pretty

Last year on a radio broadcast I heard the article below read and remember thinking, "this is great, I love it!"  I searched and searched the web & I just found it! I'm so happy to share it with you. :)

Where is pretty? I was born in Italy, a beautiful country with beautiful people, a place where the outward appearance is everything. After all Milan is the fashion capital of the world & even the homeless wear sharp shoes there. True! Ok, so it can be a bit overboard, but I do believe that a young lady should always look feminine and pretty (even more so, I believe that your prettiness is seen when the ugliness on the inside is repaired.)

Now, I'm not talking skirts vs. pants, I'm talking neat, clean, well kept. To me a beautiful girl looks. . .well, like a girl! :) Having 5 daughters has made this sort of dear to me. I have always impressed on our daughters to look as ladylike and feminine as possible. Not flashy or saucy, but just romantically beautiful and radiant. Femininity is a dead art. My girls like to get dirty too, there is a place for that,  but when out in public it is always emphasized that a lady ought to look like a lady. So, the Italians have it right in the sense that it is out of respect for others that they look neat and tidy.

Relatives come from Italy & they are flabbergasted at American casual fashion. PJ's, slippers, and all. :P We call it fashion, they call it deplorable. Even if money is scarce, keeping tidy is still possible.

There is something breathtaking about a lovely lady. It helps to have Christ on the inside, which adds to the loveliness. I'm not talking looks here, I'm talking about femininity. God made women beautiful, this is why Adam was so amazed & taken aback by Eve's beauty. Embrace your femininity!

The Death Of Pretty

BY PAT ARCHBOLD

This post is intended as a lament of sorts, a lament for something in the culture that is dying and may never been seen again.

Pretty, pretty is dying.

People will define pretty differently.  For the purposes of this piece, I define pretty as a mutually enriching balanced combination of beauty and projected innocence.

Once upon a time, women wanted to project an innocence.  I am not idealizing another age and I have no illusions about the virtues of our grandparents, concupiscence being what it is.  But some things were different in the back then.  First and foremost, many beautiful women, whatever the state of their souls, still wished to project a public innocence and virtue.  And that combination of beauty and innocence is what I define as pretty.

By nature, generally when men see this combination in women it brings out their better qualities, their best in fact.  That special combination of beauty and innocence, the pretty inspires men to protect and defend it.

Young women today do not seem to aspire to pretty, they prefer to be regarded as hot. Hotness is something altogether different.  When women want to be hot instead of pretty, they must view themselves in a certain way and consequently men view them differently as well.

As I said, pretty inspires men’s nobler instincts to protect and defend.  Pretty is cherished. Hotness, on the other hand, is a commodity.  Its value is temporary and must be used.  It is a consumable.

Nowhere is this pretty deficit more obvious than in our “stars,” the people we elevate as the “ideal.”  The stars of the fifties surely suffered from the same sin as do stars of today.  Stars of the fifties weren’t ideal but they pursued a public ideal different from today.

The merits of hotness over pretty is easy enough to understand, they made an entire musical about it.  Who can forget how pretty Olivia Newton John was at the beginning of Grease.  Beautiful and innocent.  But her desire to be desired leads her to throw away all that is valuable in herself in the vain hopes of getting the attention of a boy.  In the process, she destroys her innocence and thus destroys the pretty.  What we are left with is hotness.

Hotness is a consumable.  A consumable that consumes as it is consumed but brings no warmth.

Most girls don’t want to be pretty anymore even if they understand what it is.  It is ironic that 40 years of women’s liberation has succeeded only in turning women into a commodity.  Something to be used up and thrown out.

Of course men play a role in this as well, but women should know better and they once did.  Once upon a time you would hear girls talk about the kind of women men date and the kind they marry.  You don’t hear things like that anymore.

But here is the real truth.  Most men prefer pretty over hot.  Even back in 6th grade I hated the “hot” Olivia Newton John and felt sorry for her that she had to debase herself in such a way.  Still do.

Our problem is that society doesn't value innocence anymore, real or imagined.  Nobody aspires to innocence anymore.  Nobody wants to be thought of as innocent, the good girl.  They want to be hot, not pretty.

I still hope that pretty comes back, although I think its not likely any time soon.  For every Taylor Swift, there are a hundred Megan Foxs, or Lindsay Lohans, or Miley Cyruses etc.

Girls, please, bring back the pretty.

PAT ARCHBOLD