Yesterday the two people I admire most were talking about modeling. The question was raised: "How has modeling nude changed your view of yourself?"
The answer was: "It has made me feel more beautiful, but less perfect."
This struck me as an astoundingly profound response, not just about the experience of being a model, but of the nature of beauty itself.
Beauty is not a balance sheet. One does not tote up the good features and the flaws and arrive at some aggregate value of beauty or lack there of. Beauty defies perfection, just as it defies verbal definition or mathematical measurement, but it is very real and quite concrete nonetheless.