Adonis - Modern Association With Physical Beauty and Youth

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:

    It was announced that the trouble was not “malignant.”... It was a typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it.
    Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)

    ... a Christian has neither more nor less rights in our association than an atheist. When our platform becomes too narrow for people of all creeds and of no creeds, I myself cannot stand upon it.
    Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)

    Be sure that it is not you that is mortal, but only your body. For that man whom your outward form reveals is not yourself; the spirit is the true self, not that physical figure which can be pointed out by your finger.
    Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)

    It was a thing of beauty and was sent
    To live its life out as an ornament.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    Why hast thou nothing in thy face?
    Thou idol of the human race,
    Thou tyrant of the human heart,
    The flower of lovely youth that art;
    Robert Bridges (1844–1930)