I used to think attraction to physical beauty was something we were supposed to outgrow.
That caring about how we look meant we hadn’t done enough inner work yet. That wanting to feel confident in our skin was vanity.
But that isn’t what Diotima says.
Diotima was a woman philosopher and teacher whose ideas appear in Plato’s Symposium. In a text dominated by male voices, she’s the one who teaches Socrates about love. In her teaching, noticing physical beauty or being attracted to someone isn’t shallow; it’s the first rung of love. It’s where attention awakens, desire begins, and the body says, something here matters.
Love, in Diotima’s view, is meant to climb.
As we move upward on Diotima's ladder of love, beauty expands from attraction to bodies, to character, to shared values, to wisdom. At the top of the ladder is what she describes as true beauty: not tied to youth or form, but to vitality, coherence, and a deep sense of alignment and wholeness.
The problem isn’t starting with the body.
The problem is being told that’s where the story ends or that we should feel shame for beginning there at all. It's ok and normal to start at the first rung.
In my work as a nurse practitioner in medical aesthetics, people often arrive in my treatment chair through that first rung. They notice a change in their skin, their energy, their sense of themselves. They want to look and feel better. They want to recognize themselves again. That isn’t vanity. It’s information.
When that information is listened to (by you and by your treatment provider), rather than dismissed or shamed, it opens the door to deeper questions: about sleep, stress, hormones, identity, and what it means to feel at home in your body.
The body isn’t an obstacle to a meaningful and beautiful life.
It’s the entry point.
If this resonates, I explore Diotima’s Ladder of Love more fully, and how this woman-centered framework helps us rethink beauty, health, and becoming, in my newest piece on Milford Med Spa's blog.