Modern Association With Physical Beauty and Youth
An extremely attractive, youthful male is often called an Adonis, often with a connotation of deserved vanity: "the office Adonis." The legendary attractiveness of the figure is referenced in Sarrasine by Honoré de Balzac, which describes an unrequited love of the main character, Sarrasine for the image in a painting of an Adonis and a castrato. The allusion to extreme physical attractiveness is apparent in the psychoanalytical Adonis Complex which refers to a body image obsession with improving one's physique and youthful appearance.
Bodybuilders use the expression "Adonis belt" to refer to the two shallow grooves of the surface anatomy of the human abdomen running from the iliac crest (hip bone) to the pubis. Also, the Golden Ratio of a tape measure of shoulder-to-waist ratio is called the Adonis Index.
Read more about this topic: Adonis
Famous quotes containing the words modern, association, physical, beauty and/or youth:
“In the deeper layers of the modern consciousness ... every attempt to succeed is an act of aggression, leaving one alone and guilty and defenseless among enemies: one is punished for success. This is our intolerable dilemma: that failure is a kind of death and success is evil and dangerous, is—ultimately—impossible.”
—Robert Warshow (1917–1955)
“An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“How many young hearts have revealed the fact that what they had been trained to imagine the highest earthly felicity was but the beginning of care, disappointment, and sorrow, and often led to the extremity of mental and physical suffering.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“Man, she looked as though she’d been thrown off the crummiest freight train in the world. Yet, in spite of this, I got the impression of beauty. Not the beauty of a movie actress, mind you, or the beauty you dream about when you’re with your wife. But a natural beauty. A beauty that’s almost homely because it’s so real.”
—Martin Goldsmith, and Edgar G. Ulmer. Al Roberts (Tom Neal)
“Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A Youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown,
Fair Science frown’d not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy mark’d him for her own.”
—Thomas Gray (1716–1771)