In the constitution of our ideals of masculine and feminine beauty it was
inevitable that the sexual characters should from a very early period in
the history of man form an important element. From a primitive point of
view a sexually desirable and attractive person is one whose sexual
characters are either naturally prominent or artificially rendered so. The
beautiful woman is one endowed, as Chaucer expresses it,
"With buttokes brode and brestes rounde and hye";
that is to say, she is the woman obviously best fitted to bear children
and to suckle them. These two physical characters, indeed, since they
represent aptitude for the two essential acts of motherhood, must
necessarily tend to be regarded as beautiful among all peoples and in all
stages of culture, even in high stages of civilization when more refined
and perverse ideals tend to find favor, and at Pompeii as a decoration on
the east side of the Purgatorium of the Temple of Isis we find a
representation of Perseus rescuing Andromeda, who is shown as a woman with
a very small head, small hands and feet, but with a fully developed body,
large breasts, and large projecting nates.[134]
To a certain extent--and, as we shall see, to a certain extent only--the
primary sexual characters are objects of admiration among primitive
peoples.
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