Libra is ruled by Venus, and Venus is the goddess of love and beauty.  Venus bestows the power of attraction, and this includes physical attractiveness as well as personal magnetism.  With Saturn in Libra, our ideas of beauty and our ability to relate to others are tested, and those of us with Saturn in Libra are tested in our individual lives.

I was disturbed by the Mad Men finale the other night in which Don Draper threw aside his carefully crafted veneer of intelligent pragmatism and fell hook line and sinker for what Jungians call a projection, an experience of “limerence” in which one meets a person in whom they see their idealized fantasy rather than a real person.   Megan, Draper’s secretary, is not only a stunningly beautiful woman – she’s smart, loving, great with his children, and most of all, seems to have no needs of her own.  The perfect fantasy woman.

Peggy Olsen, on the other hand, is smart, perky and cute.  She has had a crush on Draper since the beginning, but he is completely out of his league.  And when Draper tells Peggy of his engagement to his fantasy woman, he has the nerve to say to her: “She reminds me ofyou.”   But even though Draper admires Peggy, she lacks the fantasy component that inspires his projection of illusion and anima.

The concept of beauty carries a huge emotional charge.   My latest issue of More Magazine carried an article about Beauty Anger.  Women in particular are susceptible to resentment of other women that they perceive as having more beauty because superficial beauty is prized in our culture over other more substantial attributes.  

Now there’s an Iphone app that can reinforce our anxieties about the way we look.  The “Ugly Meter” will rate your photograph and photographs of your friends and tell you how ugly you are.  This product seems to fit right into Saturn in Libra’s criticism and anxiety over beauty.  

One of the things I love about getting older is the blurring of the distinctions between the smart women and the pretty women.  We are all seen for the people that we are, rather than the way we look and that is really liberating.