"i'd assumed charles was kidding, so i teased him back. but if not, i'll say this: it's the classic thing that men in my classes say when we talk about why women's bodies are more prominent in various media than are men's. OF COURSE! it's because men are naturally ugly while women are naturally beautiful. men are dirty and stinky, as well! heh. criminy!"
It does not follow, from saying that women are beautiful that 1) they are not anything else or that 2) men are ugly. Beauty (not necessarily in the sexual sense) is simply one of the essential qualities of women. I, as a woman, am not even hard-wired to be sensitive to it, and yet I recognize it and am sometimes bowled over by it.
Just because the advertising industry uses that quality to market everything doesn't mean that the beauty is false. Or, as my thirteen year old son wrote in a school essay: "All girls are beautiful. Even ugly girls are beautiful."
All ascetics, including most post-modern theorists, are deeply suspicious of beauty. I wonder why.
Joanna