JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ON CLEOPATRA'S NOSE AND CONCEPT OF BEAUTIFUL-UGLY - WHY THE GUARDIAN PUBLISHES SO MUCH EMOTIONAL SLUSH

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY RADHIKA SANGHANI IN THE GUARDIAN

Cleopatra had a big, beautiful nose. So let’s see it onscreen

There has always been what we might call the beautiful-ugly type.

We see it in faces and in architecture and in painting.

Usually with faces of this type, it is the spark of the eye and maybe glow of the skin plus movement of the features that is alluring. Some people just exude a kind of attraction despite having features which might, if seen motionless as in sleep, be unattractive.

I've seen an image of the coin before, but I have to say, it is a bit of jumping to conclusions to say much about her looks from this well-worn little image.

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Response to a comment which asked how you get such an article published in a national newspaper:

You write it for The Guardian.

A paper which is constantly on the prowl for trivial little squibs relating to people's looks, whether about fatness or skinniness, darkness or whiteness, ethnic or Anglo-Saxon, femaleness and maleness.

It not only serves as low-cost "filler," it's how the paper seems to claim its bona fides as progressive in the midst of a general stream of stuff which is actually often quite unprogressive, especially when it comes to world affairs and domestic politics.