Of John Stuart Mill and nude women in Renaissance paintings

Mill's one of the favorite thinkers i have read thus far, just cos some of his arguments in "On Liberty' are just so well put... shall share some snippets i like.. =)
On following customs..
"He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best. The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used"
then, "he who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation"
On individuality...
"even despotism does not produce its worse effects, so long as Individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism...."
And lastly, one of my favorite parts in this piece,
"We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavorable opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours. We are not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have a right to avoid it (though not to parade the avoidance), for we have a right to choose the society most acceptable to us. We have a right, and it may be our duty to caution others against him, if we think his example or conversation likely to have a pernicious effect on those with whom he associates.... a person may suffer very severe penalties at the hands of others, for faults which directly concern only himself; but he suffers these penalties only in so far as they are the natural, and, as it were, the spontaneous consequences of the faults themselves, not because they are purposely inflicted on him for the sake of punishment.....he who pursues animal pleasures at the expense of those of feeling and intellect- must expect to be lowered in the opinion of others, and to have a less share of their favorable sentiments, but of this he has no right to complain...."
so dead right, but not something i can claim to dare to live by...

hmm ok this has been a really long post, but i really want to add something on a video i saw in my Art class today... the art expert was saying how in Renaissance paintings, nude women were painted in such a way to appeal to their male spectators... and so according to him, these women were often looking out of the pictures, even if they were engaged in some scandalous poses with the men in the paintings ; that they were in languid poses, lying around...i guess in a way to boost the male ego subconsciously... and of the thousands of painters who painted nude women, perhaps only a handful depicted women and their bodies as they were... others manipulated their images in some way... i never really thought of these paintings in this manner and i wonder how true it is? but then i guess cos i am not particularly enthusiastic about Renaissance paintings... it's something to ponder over... if i go Italy and visit musuems again... =P