Theory of beauty

It hurts me to look at you. Your beauty forces my eyes to drip with tears. I reach for my sunglasses in the glove compartment and only when your features become hidden in their dark shadow am I able to tune back into our conversation. "It's crazy that beauty must be so subjective," you're babbling idly. "For example, look at this building over there,--" and you point to this or that run down high rise we're passing, "its architect at the very least must've found it appealing once, or at least practical and not ugly... Or take the old paintings. Renaissance. The women they found beautiful in those days! It's crazy, I tell you." I nod so violently that my glasses fly into my lap and I have to readjust and secure them over my ears. "If what you're saying is that beauty is a constructed concept, I completely agree with you," I admit freely, finally reacquiring the ability to speak now that I cannot see you any longer. "It is determined in every age by certain social, economical, and political forces. As well as by the dominant ideology and the contemporary discourse of power." To be completely honest with you, I find this inability of yours to discern the beauty of the Renaissance women as comforting as the sunglasses on my nose.