Of course, it wasn't required of beauty that it perform a social function. The Venus de Milo screamed 'No!' at evil, whereas the Spandex stretch pant, the macrame plant holder were compliant with it. In a sense, beauty was the ultimate protest, and, in that it generally lasted longer than an orgasm, the ultimate refuge. And the very presence in life of double-wide mobile homes, Magic Marker graffiti, and orange shag carpeting had the effect of making ills such as poverty, crime, repression, pollution, and child abuse seem tolerable. The prevalence of social ugliness made commitment to physical beauty all the more essential. How could persons of good conscience pursue the beautiful when there was so much suffering and injustice in the world? Ellen Cherry's answer was that if one didn't cultivate beauty, soon he or she wouldn't be able to recognize ugliness. To most of her peers, 'beauty' smacked of the rarefied, the indulgent, the superfluous, the effete. The masses had been desensitized to it, the intelligentsia regarded it with suspicion. The happiest people I know are those who lose themselves in the service of others.“Beauty! Wasn't that what mattered? Beauty was hardly a popular ideal at that jumpy moment in history. I do not rescue, but instead help others to find their way to shore, guiding them by my example.
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