In their Christian graces

no one virtue should usurp the sphere of another,

or eat out the vitals of the rest for its own support.

Affection must not smother honesty,

courage must not elbow weakness out of the field,

modesty must not jostle energy,

and patience must not slaughter resolution.

So also with our duties,

one must not interfere with another;

public usefulness must not injure private piety;

church work must not push family worship into a corner.

It is ill to offer God one duty

stained with the blood of another.

Each thing is beautiful in its season, but not otherwise.

-Charles Spurgeon-

~Brittany

The Death of Pretty

Found this excellent article by Pat Archbold.

This post is intended as a lament of sorts, a lament for something in the culture that is dying and may never been seen again.

Pretty, pretty is dying.

People will define pretty differently.  For the purposes of this piece, I define pretty as a mutually enriching balanced combination of beauty and projected innocence.

Once upon a time, women wanted to project an innocence.  I am not idealizing another age and I have no illusions about the virtues of our grandparents, concupiscence being what it is.  But some things were different in the back then.  First and foremost, many beautiful women, whatever the state of their souls, still wished to project a public innocence and virtue.  And that combination of beauty and innocence is what I define as pretty.

By nature, generally when men see this combination in women it brings out their better qualities, their best in fact.  That special combination of beauty and innocence, the pretty inspires men to protect and defend it.

Young women today do not seem to aspire to pretty, they prefer to be regarded as hot. Hotness is something altogether different.  When women want to be hot instead of pretty, they must view themselves in a certain way and consequently men view them differently as well.