For those of you who don’t know this little tidbit about me, I’m a huge, HUGE mythology nerd. However, if you read Greek mythology, you’ll notice that 99% of the stories are mucho depressing and tragic- I mean Oedipus Rex? Who even comes up with that stuff?
One of my favorite myths is the story of Cupid (or Eros) and Psyche. Cupid is the son of Aphrodite*, the goddess of love and beauty. I would highly recommend that everyone read this story, even C.S. Lewis wrote a book on it (Till We Have Faces), but here’s the abridged version:
Psyche is a mortal princess, the youngest of three girls, and is so beautiful the kingdom starts to worship her as if she was Aphrodite. Aphrodite is obviously crazy jealous, and sends her son Cupid with his arrows to make Psyche fall in love with a monster. Cupid finds Psyche stunning, as she is so pure and innocent as well as beautiful, and accidentally pricks himself with the arrow. Cupid bribes the prophecy maker to fortell Psyche’s fate- to marry a monster-the monster being Cupid of course. The issue is, Cupid doesn’t let Psyche see him for fear of her not loving him for who he is, but instead for his godly beauty. This of course fosters some major trust issues- Psyche is married to a guy she can’t see and only comes to her at night, even though he gives her a lavish palace in the clouds with epic invisible servants (who would complain, right?) Long story short, Psyche gets tricked by her jealous sisters into believing that her husband is a real monster, so she brings a candle and a knife to bed, where she sees him, and where he wakes up. He gets mad because she didn’t trust him, she’s all like “I’ve made a terrrrible mistake,” and Aphrodite makes Psyche’s life miserable. Luckily Psyche is awesome and passes all of Aphrodite’s tests, and she is given immortality and lives happily ever after.
Hopefully after those brief sparknotes, you might understand the applicability of this story to the topic of beauty.
Firstly, no matter how intrinsically good beauty is, it fosters evil- jealousy. There isn’t a woman alive who hasn’t felt jealous of a friend, a movie star, a model, or even someone they see on the street. Beauty is something everyone wants, no matter how much they tell themselves that it doesn’t matter. As long as there is jealousy, beauty matters. If you think about it, and especially if you read Till We Have Faces, you will realize that the appeal of Psyche wasn’t just her beauty, but her innocence. Unlike Aphrodite, she wasn't tainted by jealousy. We can’t be beautiful ourselves if we’re fixated on the beauty of others.
Secondly, epic amounts of physical beauty can be destructive! I mean look at poor Cupid- he was too scared Psyche wouldn’t love him for his personality that he wouldn’t let her see him, even though they were married. That is TOUGH.
Finally, maybe not everyone is gonna be worshipped by throngs of people for their beauty. Heck, I’d think that would be pretty annoying actually. But no matter who you are, you should never settle for someone who doesn’t see and treat you as a goddess. Cupid was the son of the very jealous goddess of beauty, and he sure was sick of it. He fell in love with Psyche for her heart, however cheesy that may be, because her heart was beautiful. Also, last I checked, not too many of us are gonna be granted eternal youth anytime soon, so physical beauty is very transient. If any of you find a Greek-god boyfriend and wanna hook a girl up with some of that magic anti-wrinkle stuff, my name’s Lana- look me up :D
Lana is a junior at George Washington University majoring in History, focusing on ancient history and mythology. She’s the president and founding member of a Catholic-Christian sorority (Facebook.com/GWThetaSig) aiming to encourage self-awareness of beauty in all women, as well as practicing our faith together on a secular college campus.
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