Sonnet CXXX

Shakespeare's Sonnet CXXX is his anti beauty sonnet. He begins to compare his lover to beautiful things, saying she is not similar to them. Her eyes are not like the sun, her lips are not red but orange, her breasts are black not white, her hair is dark not blond, her cheeks are not rosey she does not smell nice, and her voice is not musical. These are qualities that are thought to be classically and conventionally beautiful. What a beautiful woman is supposed to be is exactly what the woman he loves is not- but this does not affect him. He loves her because she is real and in the third quatrain he explains he has never even seen a goddess, or a woman that possesses all of those qualities. This questions the existence of such a person. His love, with all her outward flaws and everything, is real. She is a real woman who he can really hold and touch and share feelings with. Shakespeare says that these standards that society hold for what beautiful is not real, because no one meets the standards of "beautiful" and we should see beauty for what is on the inside.