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".
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!
I have only now learned to be in touch with the sense of my own beauty (physical) and it took a lot of emotional maturity to get here.