The Shakespearean sonnet, Sonnet 130, struck me more than the other three we read in class. It's blunt but I feel like it brings up a deeper meaning. The speaker says his mistress', "...eyes are nothing like the sun..." (line 1) and says her hairs are, "...black wires [that] grow on her head" (line 4). These examples aren't exactly compliments. Throughout the sonnet, he describes her as things she is not. He goes on to say that she treads when she walks and her voice isn't pleasing to the ears. Most women would find these types of comments offensive but he goes on to say, "And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare/ As any she belied with false compare" (lines 13-14). Here he is saying that he loves her regardless of the typical comparisons men usually make to women.
I think Shakespeare was onto something that still haunts people. Society, especially today, focuses on men and women looking a certain way. Pick up any Cosmo and you'll see exactly that. I agree with Shakespeare on this one; you shouldn't love some one because of the way they look or not love someone because they haven't yet conformed to society. Shakespeare also passed this idea on to the Transcendentalist, Henry David Thoreu. On a number of occasions, Thoreu refused to pay taxes or use the postal service because he didn't want to conform to society. He later went on to write books about doing just that. That was over a century ago, and while the modern world gradually takes steps away from the media's perception of lifestyle and looks, we still have this narrow mindset of the way things are "supposed to be". 
