What Do Men Think About Beauty?

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I wrote Sheldon an email in which I expressed my thoughts about feeling beautiful. Sheldon took a long time tor reply to it, because he wanted to give it a lot of thought. This is one of the things I find most attractive about him--he thinks long and hard before he responds to things. I love how careful he is. Of course, this is also one of the things that gets on my nerves the most, because I am a snappy talker and thinker. I like a quick-witted response that chops along. I think that is one reason why I loved Improv so much. But I can sometimes be impatient with the way that he takes a few moments to gather his thoughts and answer a question. I have got better over time. Or maybe I am getting worse...hmmm...

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This is an excerpt from his email:

Dear LucyRose,

Thank you for writing this thoughtful and deep message to me. I've been turning it over in my mind for a while now. I didn't feel up to writing a response right away. You wrote about an assumption that we have control or responsibility over our beauty. Theres's an obvious sense in which this is true (See your own blog post about my hair). And I think you are smart to recognize the role appearances play in our ability to live well in our society. I think it's worthwhile to enjoy managing or appearance. 

But, as you predicted, it upsets me to hear you say that you can only feel beautiful if you perform in certain ways. I recognize that you were writing descriptively about how you feel. But I think we both know that it is not true.

At this point I have a dozen thoughts that I want to cram into this email. I want to try to explain beauty and attractiveness, though I don't understand them. I want to argue for beauty which is free from bondage to our inhumane visual culture, But my ideas are half-baked, and probably wouldn't be very helpful here.

What I can speak of with confidence is my own perception of you. I'm delighted by your beauty. I do care what you wear, how you do your hair, etc. I want to see your beauty shining it's brightest. But I don't see these things as the measure of your beauty. We both know that your beauty is not the measure of your value. There is so much more about you that is good, lovely, attractive, admirable. To name a few things, I love your thoughtfulness, talent, humour, and sincerity of faith.

Love,

Sheldon