Prue Stent
sacred grail: letter to my friend
quoting
“Aging as if you haven’t aged at all doesn’t simply expose us to a standardized idea of beauty. It is a narrative that actively prevents us from understanding beauty in forms that do not correspond to the youthful canon. Consequently, the more we chase the Sacred Grail of youth, the more we blackout aging bodies, the less we see them, the less we can appreciate them.”
different forms
So says, Abigail T. Brooks, who Stefania Medetti interviewed for her wonderful blog, The Age Buster. See more here.
The interview is so dense with ideas, that I got one of my “buzzes” from it. It’s that buzz you get when you find almost too many things you want to follow-up on. But I’ve picked out a couple of ideas here, ideas I’ve been thinking about, and probably you have to.
Appreciating different forms of beauty is something I believe in, in almost a religious way.
I actually think that being able to appreciate different forms of beauty is a part of what might save the world.
I don’t know when it was that I first realized my fixation on the beauty of an espresso machine and how, to most people, that was a bit odd. It was then that I became aware that there was something to this sensibility, this skill, this “eye” I possess. But it was a quick ego check when I found others who had the same skill.
And then it was a hallelujah, I’m not alone!
getting it
So there were those people who “got it,” but then there were those who seemed absolutely incapable of getting it. You know some of those people, they’re the people who wrinkle up their noses when you point out the beauty of a rusted old building, hanging in the twilight of the cityscape.
They just can’t understand what anyone would see in the round, “lady bumps” of a