The beauty of a woman shines through two facets. On one side, there is elegance, that face of aesthetic perfection where the visage of a woman is likened unto a crystal or a star. An elegant woman carries herself as an actress playing someone more than can be realized without the backdrop of screen. For without this suspension of disbelief, elegance becomes too simple, too insubstantial to be worthy of reflection. Elegance is proud, high, cold, and aloof, and disappears before one can touch it.

The other face of beauty I'll call cuteness, though it is only an appropriation of the word. By which I speak of the beauty of a girl's innermost thoughts as they shine through the mask which all affect, most often unbidden, her rolly eyes, a blush, the awkwardness of a smile, the way she blinks a little too often when she is nervous. None of these have a place in depictions of angels, yet they are endearing for they are tokens emphasizing the beauty of being a creature born of the earth rather than of stars. Cuteness is intimate, vulnerable, and warm. Cuteness is vulnerable because aspects of cuteness appeal only to a few like a secret shared. Where all agree that a woman is elegant, even if her particular aesthetic is not to personal taste, a girl who is overly petite or too pale appeals to those select few who find these traits endearing but is open to redicule to those who may say that by deviation from the archetype of what a girl should like that these traces of personality make her ugly. The geatest cooption of cuteness is when quirks once looked on as a secret bond shared between the like-minded become washed into a new standard of beauty. Once it was that girls who wore glasses were undesirable save for the few boys who, in a secret told only closest friends almost apologetically, are now chic.

Cuteness without elegance is homely. Elegance without cuteness is shallow.