On male beauty
"Men used to value their own beauty"
“Women do want men to slay the dragon. But not only that: A man should do it beautifully.
Yes, a man who defeats a dragon is more desirable than a man who cannot. But most desirable of all is a man whose sword carries the grace of his soul – a man who conquers with gravitas and élan.
It is not only the treasure at the end that matters – whether it be riches, status, or great works birthed into being. It is the manner in which it is earned, whether that manner reveals an inner beauty.
Have you heard ‘The Log Driver’s Waltz’? It goes like this:
If you ask any girl from the parish around
What pleases her most from her head to her toes?
She'll say, "I'm not sure that it's business of yours,
But I do like to waltz with a log driver.
For he goes birling down and down the white water
That’s where the log driver learns to step lightly
The log driver’s manner of work makes him more beautiful, more capable of pleasing a woman. Does yours?
From Ancient Greece to Samurai Japan, from Mughal India to Renaissance Europe, men used to value their own beauty. They knew that to be beautiful was not weakness, but the highest strength: ‘Watch me be beautiful while I be competent. I can *afford* that. I can afford to not disfigure my soul while I protect what matters, while I do the impossible.’
Now there are no men left to teach you how to be beautiful. Why did this change? Maybe industrialization is to blame. Maybe its gears ground the flourish out of labor. Maybe the death of warrior culture into soldier culture is to blame. Maybe a man need not be beautiful as long as he can aim a rifle from afar. I don’t know.
What I do know is that there is an opening now, a chance for men to reclaim their beauty, to toil not as soldiers would, but as warriors will. There is an invitation in the air, I can feel it. Can you feel it too?
Come. Shake off the steel that binds your bones. You’ve strained so hard for so long. Be beautiful for me now. Fight beautifully. Win beautifully. Don’t think. You already know how.”
(Editor Tyler: Women, is this true?)
I have a small theory. Perhaps it's that the more a given culture loses its vitality and virility the more it gets obsessed with it and with regaining it, and in the twisted understanding of what masculinity is, interest in beauty is absolutely off-limits. Of course, the warriors of old would scoff at that. Just look at how Renaissance princes looked. The mostly manly men, the warrior-nobles of Old Poland-Lithuania, dressed so opulently that if a modern man dressed like that everybody would scoff at him as "feminine".
this is beautiful!