My understanding of beauty is a traditional one that, I think, is widely dismissed today. It would go something like this:
Rightly understood, the beautiful is a category of reality. This means that something could be beautiful even though hardly anyone recognized the fact, and, conversely, that something might not be beautiful, even though most people said that it was.
I understand the beautiful, in a loose sense anyway, in Platonic terms. The beautiful in its essence is something permanent, outlasting the decay of the beautiful shapes and colors that our senses perceive. No thing that our senses perceive can be
definitively beautiful or
exhaustively beautiful. Thus, for example, the limpid clarity of blue eyes and the warm darkness of rich brown eyes are both beautiful, but something can't be beautiful in both of these ways at the same time.
It would be better to say that
taste rather than beauty is "in the eye of the beholder," when "in the eye of the beholder" is an expression meant to convey that, well, everyone has his or her likes and dislikes, and there's no point in arguing about these differences, etc. Taste might sometimes not be only a matter of one particular person's liking, but of a culture's. Thus, in medieval Japan the taste was for high-status women to blacken their teeth artificially (as seen in Kurosawa's movie
Throne of Blood). In the baroque period, artistic taste, perhaps reacting against the austerity esteemed in the medieval period, was for portraits showing billowing masses of flesh. I don't, myself, think that it's correct when we say that such things show that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." These and many other examples that could be cited are instances in the history of taste.
Conversely, a taste for the beautiful may need to be inculcated. (This is something that, I suppose, the schools and universities have largely defected from.)* Otherwise, something beautiful might not seem to be so. There's an Arthur Machen story, "7B Coney Court," that suggests this:
ebooks.adelaide.edu.au
Now, to come around to the question posed at the beginning of the present thread, about alien babes:
The issue is that the "alien babes" are
really human beings -- whatever they are supposed to be. They are the same type of creature as the old fairies, who were as big, or maybe a bit taller even, than human beings, but beautiful and perilous.
If I might quote an old ballad in support of this point:
True Thomas lay on Huntlie bank,
A ferlie he spied wi' his e'e,
And there he saw a lady bright
Come riding down by the Eildon Tree.
Her skirt was o' the grass-green silk,
Her mantle o' the velvet fyne.
At ilka tett o' her horse's mane
Hung fifty siller bells and nine.
True Thomas he pull's aff his cap
And louted low down to his knee:
“All hail, thou mighty Queen o' Heaven!
For thy peer on earth I never did see.”
“O no, o no, Thomas,” she said,
“That name does not belong to me;
I am but the queen of fair Elfland
That am hither come to visit thee.”
“Harp and carp, Thomas,” she said,
“Harp and carp along wi' me.
And if ye dare to kiss my lips,
Sure of your body I will be.”
“Betide me weal, betide me woe,
That weird shall never daunton me.”
Syne he has kissed her rosy lips
All underneath the Eildon Tree.
“Now ye maun gang wi' me,” she said,
“True Thomas, ye maun gang wi' me.
And ye maun serve me seven years
Thro' weal and woe, as may chance to be.”
She mounted on her milk-white steed,
She's ta'en True Thomas up behind.
And aye whene'er her bridle rung
The steed flew faster than the wind.
O they rode on and farther on,
The steed gaed swifter than the wind,
Until they reached a desert wide
And living land was left behind.
“Light down, light down now, True Thomas
And lean your head upon my knee,
Abide and rest a little space
And I will show you ferlies three.
“O see ye not yon narrow road
So thick beset with thorns and briars?
That is the path of righteousness,
Tho' after it but few enquires.
“And see ye not that braid, braid road
That lies across that lily leven?
That is the path of wickedness,
Tho' some ca' it the road to heaven.
“And see ye not that bonny road
That winds about the fernie brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland
Where thou and I this night maun gae.
“But, Thomas, ye maun hold your tongue
Whatever ye may hear or see.
For if you speak word in Elfyn land
Ye'll ne'er get back to your ain countrie.”
Syne they came on to a garden green,
And she pu'd an apple frae a tree:
“Take this for thy wages, True Thomas
It will gi' ye the tongue that can never lie.”
“My tongue is mine ain,” True Thomas said,
“A guidly gift ye wad gie to me!
I neither dought to buy or sell,
At fair or tryst where I may be.
“I dought neither speak to prince or peer
Nor ask of grace from fair ladye.”
“Now hold thy peace,”, the lady said,
“For as I say, so must it be.”
He has gotten a coat of the even cloth
And a pair of shune of velvet green,
And till seven years were gane and past
True Thomas on earth was never seen.
--What the poet, like his (or her) successor the sf author, has done, is to combine the allure of superlative human beauty with the allure of the strange and marvelous.
So if a science fiction writer wants to write about a truly nonhuman beauty, he or she may do so, but the possessor of that beauty will not be a "babe." Ladybug beetles really are beautiful, but without being sexually alluring to humans. That's a consideration that might help the sf author.
*
Guest Post: Machen’s “The Glitter of the Brook” and Poetic Knowledge by Dale Nelson
