Erica Redling by Christian Moser.

The Venus de Milo is one of the most beautiful sculptures in the world, in spite of the fact that someone long ago chopped off her arms. In fact, there are a great many Greek and Roman statues which survive to this day all of which are missing heads and/or limbs. A visit to your local museum should turn up one or two of these treasures for you to verify this fact.

It seems there's a kind of mentality in some men which is incapable of seeing human beauty or nobility, or rather, a mentality which can see it just fine, but which reacts to it with blind and furious hatred. For instance the Vandals were a band of ancient barbarians famous today for destroying much of the art of 5th Century Rome.

Just as the Vandals were incapable of respecting the nobility of man represented in Greek and Roman sculptures so their modern equivalents, today's 'spiritual vandals' are incapable of seeing the spiritual side of physical beauty and repsond to noble types of nudity by hacking off the subject's spiritual head and arms.

For example, the last issue of French Elle featured model Erica Redling nearly naked on the cover, her breasts exposed with nothing but some sea-soaked drapery covering her lower half, much like the Venus de Milo herself. Yet rather than being hailed as one of the greatest landmark achievements in the modern female beauty world, the fashion and beauty pundits have panned the work, choosing instead to hack away at its extremities - its most irrelevant qualities. (Notice however that they do not fail to recognize its beauty and make sure to reproduce the image or a link to it on their sites!)

Looks like fashion magazines are crossing over the line that keeps them away from men's magazines. Check out the cover of the new French Elle. Yes, it looks like she has implants and it has nothing to do with fashion. But she is a beautiful woman wearing a wet, sheer top. I can hardly discourage this type of behavior. - (Click here for source.)

Here's another:

Then we have Elle france (today is Monday) with a striking cover, a model half nude under wet sheer (see pic above). What's striking is the vulgarity of both the pic and the bust. Her tits are obviously siliconned [sic], and we're talking big implants here. To be certain we got the message, Erica (that's her name) is photographed with a wet see-thru Christian Dior sheer dress. The girl has a cute face, but her tits look like those in the Russ Meyer parodies. And this is of course the prelude to the usual feminist stuff of Elle France, Afguan women, embryo cloning etc.(Click here for source.)

And from the same source:

We were talking yesterday about Erica's tits, and here they are now on every sidewalk of Paris, courtesy Elle ads. I like them even less in grandeur nature.(Click here for source.)

What the modern vandals of the spririt miss is that this photo on the cover of French Elle is also blurring the difference between fashion photography and classical Greek and Roman sculpture. It's presence on near life-size ads in public represents one of the rare occasions that a nude version of the latest ideal of feminine beauty has been allowed into public since the fall of the Roman Empire. Sure we have naked sculptures all over the place, but have you ever noticed that they all look like they come from ancient civilizations and not from our own? They embody their ideal, not ours.

This is why Erica Redling on the cover of French Elle is a major modern achievement, artistically, and politically.

Don't take my head off for saying so.

To have a look at the Venus de Milo visit the Louvre website here.

To read more about the Venus, click here.