Yes, Nero, beauty is important. How important? Depends on the beauty. Physical beauty I feel really must take a back-seat to emotional and spiritual beauty.
We've spent 4000+ years dealing with male-judged standards of beauty for women as a chain used to bind us. But, honestly, there was a beauty in Eleanor Roosevelt, Mother Teresa and Mirabai that also seems even more important than the contours of face and torso, legs and hips.
Do I appreciate, like most oif the posters above, that physical beauty is important to me. Why, of course. But, I also see traps there that can snare the person in a prison as tight as that into which many of us are born (GID.)
A tough balance to achieve. Yet, I'd like to think I am working on it.
I find that all three beauty-types I mentioned are incredibly important to many women w/ whom I interact. They are important to me as well and I try to manage all three. The best beauty seems to me to be the elusive combination of all three within a person.
Nichole