On beauty

This Washington Post article is much more thoughtful than the vapid repackaging of "people are different so let's all be happy with what we look like" refrain that I expected.

Here's an interesting intellectual/philosophical exercise.  How about thinking of this in terms of Pope John Paul II's personalist ethic.  I seem to remember from "Love and Responsibility" that he described a man's response to a woman he perceives as beautiful as "perceiving that she is a good to him."  What does good consist of?  What in her appearance symbolizes/signifies this good or goods? 

Of course this works the other way, too, but that is not the way I am accustomed to thinking, and I am writing this.  It also accounts for why men have a different response to masculine good looks, and all the other combinations that it would be redundant to enumerate for you.