Cultural Concepts Of Beauty: The Cultural Impacts On Beauty

The Cultural impacts on Beauty

The beauty concept in a culture is never fixed eternally. It varies over time, mostly along with the change of culture itself. European notions of body beauty, for example, alters many times with the transition of thoughts, ideologies and beliefs. (Yang, Celestino&Koeppel, 2015) In general, our concept of human beauty is a product of cultural perception. The aesthetical ideas ingrained in one area are largely shaped by cultural forms in terms of religions and arts.

As religions usually present a desired world with things people view as sacred, the images of god or goddess in the belief can largely impact the ideal beauty in the sensual world. In ancient Hindus, for instance, the figures of Yakshi-nis (earth spirits) and Shalabhanjikas (tree spirits) are luxuriously decorated with jewelry, which believers view these ornaments as sacredness and beauty (Greenberg,2008). With this religious impact, modern Indian women adore delicate jewelry especially made of gold, even though millions of them are under the poverty line (Nagesh, 2013). In another religion of Buddhism, the lotus is highly appreciated as a sign of purity, under whose influence Chinese girls began to cherish costumes and shoes with lotuses after Buddhism’s dominance in China (McMullen, 1987). In this regard, a relic initially used for religions becomes a generalized beauty emblem subsequently. Some analysts, therefore, note that various forms of religious beauty could become measures