Criteria, Rules and Standards

How do I select the women whose pictures grace this blog?  It's not that easy.  Like anyone else, I have standards, and like anyone else's standards, mine are flexible. But here are the rules I more or less follow in choosing the beautiful women I celebrate here.

Rule 1: I strive to choose only living women. That leaves out Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner, and obvious choices for a list of the most beautiful women of all time. But this blog doesn't aim to celebrate the most beautiful women that ever existed - just the ones that exist today. Call me crazy, but I've never bothered much with the physical appeal of dead people. What others would call idol worship, I call necrophilia. So there's none of that here.

Occasionally, though, I may have depicted a woman who may have died without my knowledge, and I may also have depicted a woman who was alive at the time I posted her picture(s) but who has died since.  In both cases, the original posts remain but I do not present pictures of such subjects going forward.

Rule 2: Women who were famous for their beauty in their youth but are now in late-middle age or advanced age today are included. Many of them have remained attractive into their later years - does the name of Catherine Deneuve ring a bell? - and it would be unfair to leave them out just because they're not in their twenties anymore. Of course, I show past and present pictures of them.

Rule 3: Famous women (and some that aren't so famous) from any field (except for one: see Rule 4) are featured, because it's only right to acknowledge the beauty of women who are not entertainers and fashion models.

Rule 4: As of June 2019, no politicians. After featuring a few women in politics, I decided that a) featuring women in politics only polarizes people at a time when America has gotten too polarized, and this is not meant to be a political site, and b) women in politics whom I have featured have disappointed me.  Which is what I should obviously expect from any politician.  And I'm not going to feature non-American female politicians any more, either; that can be just as troublesome.  Any women in politics I already have featured, though, will remain.    

Rule 5: While I regularly feature broadcast journalists, like CNBC's Julia Boorstin and NBC's Savannah Guthrie, I have two rules on this subject: No Fox News anchorwomen, and no anchorwomen or news reporters from the local news programs of Fox broadcast affiliates. (However, female Fox sports reporters, like Pam Oliver, are allowed, because there's no partisan way to report an interception or a score.) My distaste for Rupert Murdoch and his broadcasting empire - and especially his right-wing cable news channel - is too great for me to include any Fox-affiliated female anchors and news reporters, most of whom are journalists like I'm a jet pilot. So, if you've come here expecting pictures of Martha MacCallum, you've come to the wrong place.

Rule 6: All subjects have to be at least eighteen years old.  This blog is called "Pictures of Beautiful Women," not "Pictures of Beautiful Girls."  Child actresses who continue to continue their careers into adulthood are only eligible once they reach the age of eighteen - but adult actresses who started their careers as minors will only have their adult pictures shown here, not their childhood photos.

Rule 7: There are some famous women I will never feature on this blog - or even name - for one simple reason: I just don't like them. I think you can figure out whom I don't like if you've followed my blog long enough.

Finally, Rule 8:  All women I depict are eligible to appear again in retrospectives, so long as they meet the criteria above.

Also please note: Statistical charts periodically displayed here to show the ten most popular posts of "all time" in fact show only statistics for the ten most viewed posts since May 2010, because that's the month Blogger.com began keeping such records for all blogs on its service.  This blog began in September 2006.