I must, I must, I must increase my bust.

Even I, who love museums, can get a bit tuckered out.  When Rick Steves says to plan for two hours through the Museo Capitoline, I plan for four hours.  And when there are five rooms full of busts, heads cut off, I get a bit bored.  BUT then I come across the bust that I wanted to see.  Trajan Decius, a Late Empire emporer fighting for power...and it shows on his face.  Showing his wrinkles is part of the veristic movement in Roman art; however, Trajan Decius chooses an artist that will express TDs anxiety at seeing the Empire fall.  He is one of my favorite pieces to teach.

 There are plenty of reasons, among the idealizations of Greco-Roman art and the thin, young men and women of Rome, to start to brood over my body image.  But then I find the goddess Aphrodite, and she helps me fall in love with my own body again.  Little history lesson—goddesses were always represented as ideal beings until the Late Greek period when they were cast as more human, more natural than idealized (of course idealization is still there, but everything is relative). So here Aphrodite is acting completely human, bending in the way women bend when they are trying to look under the couch for loose change (is that just me?).  And he curves, the way her body rolls, is beautiful.

And I am reminded of how fruitless it is to be vain about body image, or to hate my body image, because it is all relative.  The young WILL become the older and the older will look upon youth as only the wise can.