Cute

The word cute is wholly inadequate for the dense, rich, splendid reality I will describe; but I don't have a better one. Words fail! Synonyms close to this reality are equally off the mark: precious, adorable, lovable, lovely, endearing, childlike, delightful...each has a rather specific and different meaning from the inner form, the profound reality that we refer to as cute. In common usage cute means pleasing, pretty, childlike in a petite way. The word has a sweet, sentimental, superficial and maternal flavor to it (bunny rabbits, Disney critters). This essay will describe a metaphysical, masculine and mystical phenomenology of cute in its depth and splendor. Metaphysical What we encounter in an adorable child, an endearing old person, a precious woman is a coalescence of: the True as smallness, fragility, vulnerability, and weakness; the Beautiful as pleasantness, harmony, proportion; and the Good as innocence, freshness, purity and childlikeness. Being, as True-Good-Beautiful self-presents, enchants, and captivates in an extraordinary, really heavenly manner. All created being is fragile and finite; all created being is inherently and deeply good, without deliberation, choice, effort or agency; all created being is delightful. But The Cute is the quintessence of creatureliness in its contingency, fragility, smallness and vulnerability. God is not cute, but He created us cute and sees us as cute: delightful, needy, not threatening. God of course became cute in the infant Jesus, but that was gratuitous on his part; cuteness as we experience it is not inherent to Divinity. Masculine The word is used more frequently by women. A normal woman can hardly see an infant, crying or laughing, without gushing "O how cute!" The masculine perception is quite different. I have always viewed the infant, for most of the first year, as ugly, distasteful, awkward, distressingly fragile and pathetic. Above all the infant is boring: lacking in intelligence, intensity, attention, enthusiasm. You cannot even do "this little piggy" or "roundy ball" or other fun things with her. My oxytocin does not kick in until the first birthday. I recall my Grandaughter Maggie who was (and always will be) a beautiful creatue but did not greatly interest me until one day around her first birthday I looked into her eyes and I saw...intelligence. I could see in her eyes that she was exquisitely aware. I was infatuated: she seemed so amazing, so fascinating. Exactly one moment later I saw a new radiance in her eye and face: she loved me. I could feel, intuitively but definitely, the affection she had for me. It was a transcendent, a mystical moment...unforgetably deep, peaceful, joyous. That moment will live forever. I have powerfully experienced some version of that with all my children and grands and sometimes of other's children. Male engagement with cute involves play, teasing, humour, laughter, intensity, attention, competition and mutual fascination. All this requires intelligence: above all I delight in the emergent intelligence of the toddler. At least since adolescence I have enjoyed an exquisite sensitivity to the cute. When I was in high school my two youngest sisters were 2-5 years old: the highpoint of cuteness. They were "to die for cute"...and I mean that literally. My freshman year at college seminary I was homesick and would sit in the darkness of the chapel alone at night and if I thought of Margaret and Anne my eyes would flow like a faucet with tears. Now I am not a weepy guy; if anything I am probably insensitive: from the age of 20 to 50 I could count with my fingers the number of times I have shed a tear. But they were both... to die for cute. The masculine response to the cute...which includes this dimension of intelligence that is so lacking in the infant...is delight, fascination and a profound urgency to hold, tease, interact, protect and provide. In other words, engaged with the cute, all the wild masculine energy, strenght and agressiveness becomes tender, humble, grateful, gentle, generous as well as heroic and magnanimous. There is another way in which the cute operates differently in femininity and masculinty. As I noted in a prior essay ("The Trifecta of Feminine Charm"), vulnerability and petiteness are intrinsic to feminine charm, but not to virility. Yet, a woman will refer to a man as cute. It is a complement: he is attractive, appealing, pleasing. It is physcial and romantic, but not quite the same as "sexy" as it is more gentle and tender. It has a maternal flavor and can diminish virility as strength. So to the masculine ear it is not entirely flattering. Cute entails smallness, weakness and vulnerability; but virility requires stedfastness, fortitude, gravitas, and virtuous character. The two are not absolutely contradictory, but the energies are in opposed directions and entail tension. Okay: Brad, Leonardo, Cruise and Walberg are all cute, yet manly. They are special. Would an earlier generation called John Wayne, Yul Brenner, Burt Lancaster or Jimmy Cagney cute? Although James Dean, Sinatra and the young Brando were all cute but manly. This cute stuff is quite mysterious: defies clear, logical analysis! Mystical The Cute is a transcendent experience, it is a taste here on earth of the heavenly and the eternal. It is an ineffable, efficacious sign of God's existence. In the cute we transcend ourselves in ecstatic delight at the innocent, the lovely, the fragile. We are lifted above mortality, finitude, suffering, longing, guilt and anxiety. We are, for a moment, actually in heaven...in perfect delight...in eternal life. Contrast it with sex, which is SO overrated! Sex is: frustrated almost all of the time; is transitory as we are attracted one moment and repulsed the next; when satisfied it exhausts itself and relaxes into a death-like quiet; ofter awakens guilt, shame, fear; diminshes with time but retains toxic elements. By contrast, delight in the cute is: innately and permanently satisfying; persisting in memory; opens out to a stable future of enhanced delight; never exhausts itself but is self-enhancing; diminishes anxiety and fear and leaves serenity and stability; gets better, deeper, stronger with time. It has been asserted, erroneously, that "cleanliness is close to Godliness." A stronger case is made here for: "cuteness is next to Godliness." Or, to be more metaphysically precise: "Cuteness, as creatureliess in its smallness and not-Godness is, paradoxically and mysteriously, a Godliness, but of course not univocally or equivocally, but analogically." Etymology and History A secondary current use of the word means: clever, facetious, manipulative, devious...as in "don't be cute with me" or "he is too cute for me." This usage suggests intentional or contrived cuteness. Essential to cuteness is innocence, transparency and candor: any effort completely ruins the reality and becomes repugnant. For example, most presentations of children on TV comedies are so contrived as to be repellent. Historically, however, the early etymology of the word comes from the word "acute" as shrewd or clever. Our usage as pretty-appealing developed later in the 1830s. This essay has possibly brought unprecedented ontological density to the word. It is hard to believe that, say, Balthasar never addressed the form, but maybe he didn't spend much time with toddlers or darling young women. Life Cycle of Cute Happily there is a cycle to cuteness. The peak years are 2-6 (but 0-2 apparently for women). Adult men are not cute. But we return to cuteness in old age. I haven't been cute for about 60 years. But my baby pictures are clear that I was cute. My oldest daughter Mary wanted a copy of my high school photo because she says I was cute: I wish I knew it at the time. But lately I am getting cuter. As I approached and moved into my 80th decade of life, I have been pleasantly pleased that attractive women of child-bearing age smile spontaneously at me. That may be because I have lost my shyness and inhibitions but increased my appreciation for women so I am probably smiling at them first. But also, I think they see me as harmless, innocent and more vulnerable than powerful. I enjoy the affection as a compensation as I grieve the diminshment of my romantic, erotic, procreative prowess. My hope for the remainder of my life: that as my strength diminshes I may increace in cuteness and enjoy this affection.