Beauty

All posts tagged Beauty

The Panniculus

Published May 14, 2023 by tindertender

I was today years old when I learnt that the part of the body we affectionately refer to as a pouch has a proper scientific name.

Ladies and gentleman, introducing the panniculus, “an apron of skin and fat that sags below the navel, particularly after pregnancy or weight loss”.

While I won’t be adding panniculus to my baby names list, I do think we should show it a little more love. Because despite what you might see on social media, having a pouch, or a panniculus on a Sunday, is entirely natural and normal. And to prove it, I refer you to the drawing attached.

This piece of art was created in 23,000 BCE, on the walls of a cave in what we now call France. Opinions vary as to whether it represents a woman in childbirth, or an appreciative ode to the female form, but either way her pouch is clearly visible, and she was important enough and interesting enough and beautiful enough to commit to rock for eternity.

It can be hard to feel good about our bodies after pregnancy and birth, and there’s no denying that we have been forever changed by the experience inside and out, but it’s even harder when we try to live up to unattainable and constantly shifting beauty standards.

That’s why this piece of art brings me such joy, the figure is undeniably and unashamedly female, lumps and bumps and all. And if a woman 25,000 years ago, whose life was undoubtedly much harder than mine, can handle this jelly, then so can I.

https://www.facebook.com/TheNaturalParentMagazine?mibextid=LQQJ4d

She Is Beautiful

Published May 2, 2023 by tindertender

When she was a little girl they told her she was beautiful but it had no meaning in her world of bicycles and pigtails and adventures in make-believe.

Later, she hoped she was beautiful as boys started taking notice of her friends and phones rang for Saturday night dates.

She felt beautiful on her wedding day, hopeful with her new life partner by her side but, later, when her children called her beautiful, she was often exhausted, her hair messily tied back, no make up, wide in the waist where it used to be narrow; she just couldn’t take it in.

Over the years, as she tried, in fits and starts, to look beautiful, she found other things to take priority, like bills and meals, as she and her life partner worked hard to make a family, to make ends meet, to make children into adult, to make a life.

Now, she sat.
Alone.
Her children grown,
her partner flown,
and she couldn’t remember the last time she was called beautiful.

But she was.
It was in every line on her face, in the strength of her arthritic hands, the ampleness that had a million hugs imprinted on its very skin, and in the jiggly thighs and thickened ankles that had run her race for her.

She had lived her life with a loving and generous heart, had wrapped her arms around so many to give them comfort and peace.

Her ears had heard both terrible news and lovely songs, and her eyes had brimmed with, oh, so many tears.

They were now bright even as they dimmed.

She had lived and she was.

And because she was, she was made beautiful.

~ Suzanne Reynolds, © 2019

Photo credit: Nina Djerff
Model: Marit Rannveig Haslestad

Beauty

Published January 27, 2022 by tindertender

Grace was in her steps, heav’n in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love.
~ Milton

Her eyes, her lips, her cheeks, her shapes, her features,
Seem to be drawn by love’s own hand; by love
Himself in love.
~ Dryden

Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
~ Keats

Without the smile from partial beauty won,
O, what were man! a world without a sun!
~ Campbell

Honesty coupled to beauty, is to have honey sauce to sugar.
~ Shakespeare

What is beauty? Not the show
Of shapely limbs and features. No;
These are but flowers
That have their dated hours,
To breathe their momentary sweets and go.
‘Tis the stainless soul within
That outshines the fairest skin.
~ Sir A. Hunt

The Letter (A Classical Maiden)
John William Godward (English, 1861–1922)

Beauty

Published September 2, 2020 by tindertender

Last night in the Astral I saw the woman who had an affair with my first love and ultimately married and had three children by him (she had died a few years ago). I was surprised, because there was no animosity … I SAW her BEAUTY, and it was good.

Photo: https://unsplash.com/@dizzyd718

Darling …

Published August 28, 2020 by tindertender

Darling, Darling
You’re beautiful,
You gotta keep your head up
Never let anything bring you down,
The sunshine will always come around

Stay strong, move on
You have such a beautiful soul
Let your energy radiate

Darling, Darling
You’re beautiful, you gotta keep your head up
Never let anything bring you down,
The sunshine will always come around

Stay strong, move on
You have such a beautiful soul
Let your energy radiate

Mmm, mmhmmm, hmmhmm, mmmhm, mmmhm, mmm …

Darling, Darling
Remember days will get much better

Darling, Darling
You can make it through the stormy weather

Darling, Darling
Please don’t ever give up

Darling, Darling
You gotta keep your head up

Darling, Darling
Remember days will get much better

Darling, Darling
You can make it through the stormy weather

Darling, Darling
Please don’t ever give up

Darling, Darling
You gotta keep your head up

Mmm, mmhmmm, hmmhmm, mmmhm, mmmhm, mmm…

Daily Inspiration for Women 6-10-2020

Published June 10, 2020 by tindertender

I am whole.

I am powerful.

I am divine.

I am enough.

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself. ~ Anna Quindlen

Many of us hold an image in our minds of who we think we should be, and we constantly compare ourselves to this imaginary version of ourselves. Anytime we fall short of this standard by not being pretty enough, successful enough, smart enough, or fill-in-the-blank enough, we judge ourselves harshly.

The truth of the matter is that we will always fall short of perfection when we compete against an imagined version of ourselves. You are perfectly imperfect, just as you are. Free yourself from the imaginary chains of perfection. You are the only one who can do so.

Photo: https://unsplash.com/@avasol

From “Warrior Goddess Wisdom” Daily inspiration for women by Heatherash Amara

Woman Finds An Incredible Bug Who’s Almost Too Beautiful To Be Real

Published December 10, 2019 by tindertender

BY STEPHEN MESSENGER PUBLISHED ON 09/27/2019

The other day, Margaret Neville was strolling through the garden on her farm in South Africa when something remarkable caught her eye.

There, on a branch in her lavender bush, was an insect unlike any she’d seen before: “I was amazed at first sight,” Neville told The Dodo.

And it’s easy to see why.

The beautiful bug almost looked like a delicate glass sculpture. Her wings of white and green were accentuated with an elegant swirl, while the rest of her body was adorned with tiny, purple flower-like structures.

Neville shared the photo with her friend, Kerri Martinaglia. She was equally impressed.

“When I saw her, I thought she was an exquisite work of art,” Martinaglia told The Dodo.

Neville and Martinaglia came to learn that the insect she’d found was aptly called a “Flower Mantis,” a type of praying mantis perfectly suited to camouflaging themselves in floral settings.

And thanks to that trick, the mantis Neville happened upon was clearly thriving. Before placing her back in the lavender bush, Neville gave her a name: Miss Frilly Pants.

“She has spent the entire month of September living on my lavender,” Neville said. “She is still there now.”

After Martinaglia shared photos of her online, the remarkable mantis has earned plenty of admirers from people stunned to learn such an animal is real. But not all of her new fans are human. 

Recently, Neville spotted Miss Frilly in the company of a suitor:

Though mantis relationships are notoriously short-lived (as are, in some cases, the males involved in them), with any luck, this one will result in many more Miss Frillys adding their beauty to the world. 

And the prospect of that alone is enough to be grateful for: 

“What a blessing,” Neville said.

https://www.thedodo.com/in-the-wild/woman-finds-incredible-bug-flower-mantis?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dodo

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