Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4: Sexual Selection In ManEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4: Sexual Selection In Man
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
attached to the neck in a delightfully well-proportioned manner.
The belly, the flanks, and the secret parts are worthy of the
chest; the hips are large and rounded; the thighs, the legs, and
the arms are in just proportion. The breadth of the shoulders is
also in the most perfect relation to the dimensions of the other
parts of the body; the feet, of medium length, terminate in
beautifully arranged toes." (Houdoy reproduces this passage in
_La Beauté des Femmes_; cf. also Stratz, _Die Schönheit des
Weiblichen Körpers_, Chapter III.)
Gabriel de Minut, who published in 1587 a treatise of no very
great importance, _De la Beauté_, also wrote under the title of
_La Paulegraphie_ a very elaborate description, covering sixty
pages, of Paule de Viguier, a Gascon lady of good family and
virtuous life living at Toulouse. Minut was her devoted admirer
and addressed an affectionate poem to her just before his death.
She was seventy years of age when he wrote the elaborate account
of her beauty. She had blue eyes and fair hair, though belonging
to one of the darkest parts of France.
Ploss and Bartels (_Das Weib_, bd. 1, sec. 3) have independently
brought together a number of passages from the writers of many
countries describing their ideals of beauty. On this collection I
have not drawn.
When we survey broadly the ideals of feminine beauty set down by the
peoples of many lands, it is interesting to note that they all contain
many features which appeal to the æsthetic taste of the modern European,
and many of them, indeed, contain no features which obviously clash with
his canons of taste. It may even be said that the ideals of some savages
affect us more sympathetically than some of the ideals of our own mediæval
ancestors. As a matter of fact, European travelers in all parts of the
world have met with women who were gracious and pleasant to look on, and
not seldom even in the strict sense beautiful, from the standpoint of
European standards. Such individuals have been found even among those
races with the greatest notoriety for ugliness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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