“Big Bessie’s feet hurt like nobody’s business, but she stands—bigly—under the unruly scrutiny, stands in the wild weed. In the wild weed she is a citizen. Gwendolyn Brooks
“Shall I wasting in despair Die because a woman’s fair? Or make pale my cheeks with care’Cause another’s rosy are? Be she fairer than the day, Or the flow’ry meads in May, If she be not so to me, What care I how fair she be? George Wither
“He [President Abraham Lincoln] has a face like a hoosier Michael Angelo, so awful ugly it becomes beautiful, with its strange mouth, its deep-cut, criss-cross lines, and its doughnut complexion.Walt Whitman
“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly.Laura Mulvey