Going for Baroque

    Who decides beauty?  When does the ideal of beauty change from being called traditionally beautiful to just plain horrid? I always say I would have been the Angelina Jolie of the baroque period. You know the period in time when chubby little cherub babies and chubby, round faced women with robust bosoms were considered beautiful. There are plenty of paintings in this style depicting us curvy women draped sensuously over a velvet settee with milky white skin, a rosebud mouth and eyes looking off to a far away place longing for our lover to return.  I want to be in THAT time period!  Instead, I am in this time where extra flesh is frowned upon, not a thing of beauty to behold or, even considered.  No, I am put into a class or mould if you will of a slightly overweight woman.  By today's beauty standards anyway.   So the question I ask again is "who decides when and if we are beautiful?" Is there a set rule?  In the bible, David, God's soldier, slayer of Goliath,
beloved king and ruler of God's people saw Bathsheba bathing on a rooftop. The Bible says  "She was very beautiful."  Her beauty caused him to sin, to fall from God's grace. The bible doesn't describe Bathsheba,  it just says she was beautiful.  Perhaps she was a thin, svelte beauty, or, perhaps she wasn't thin at all! We will never know. Ideals of beauty have changed over centuries, like fashion. There is no such thing as a classic beauty.  By today's standards Marilyn Monroe was too chubby! When I look in the mirror I see a woman who is heavier than today's fashion icons, I am not blonde and my lips aren't plumped out like Kylie Jenner.  No, I am more than that.  I have a classic beauty that doesn't come from a tube or a needle or even good genes.  It is the beauty of a kind compassionate soul who tries to see the good in everyone.  Beauty, I believed cannot be defined as a person's outward appearance, but what radiates from within.  I think we should work on our internal beauty and the external will take care of itself.