Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder?
When you think of someone who is beautiful, who do you think of? Maybe you think of famous models like Cindy Crawford or Sofia Vergara. Or, maybe you think of actresses like Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman. Maybe singers like Ariana Grande or Taylor Swift. Why do so many people associate these woman with beauty? In our society, people usually only associate beauty with physical attractiveness, what is appealing to them, or something that catches their eye. Both men and women are guilty of associating a beautiful person with how they dress and if they are wearing the right foundation for their skin tone. However, beauty has a more in-depth meaning. Although beauty is usually defined as only physical, it also can be described as internal, and emotional.
Physical beauty is found in appearances and what is external. The word beauty is mainly used to describe a woman, but it is not exclusive. Women typically worry more about their physical appearance than men. Women constantly try to fit in to look beautiful. They spend so much time making sure their makeup, hair, and outfit are perfect. Some people wear makeup to appear beautiful by achieving the proper proportions of their face. The article “Numeric Expression of Aesthetics and Beauty” by B. S. Atiyeh and S. N. Hayek explains how the proportions of the face determine whether someone is viewed as beautiful or not. The golden ratio is a number, quantified by the symbol Φ. “The symbol
The author also describes how much appearance is important to us. In what point of time did we allow our society to tell us what is and is not beautiful. People worried about what others would say or losing friends because their teeth are not perfect or they are not skinny enough. Your appearance should not take away from the person you are on the inside. We entrust dentist and plastic surgeons to cause pain to our bodies to meet societies expectations of beauty and spend thousands in the
Beauty is a combination of qualities, such as shape, colour, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight. Brutality is savage physical violence; great cruelty. The human race can be beautiful a brutal since it balances the complex character which humans are, we see this in The Book Thief with the characters and how war makes them react. Compassion is beautiful since the caring nature which human can bring comfort for those who are sad and conflicted.
I love that the reference of ideal beauty was mentioned. I think everyone in the world has their own ideal beauty. Whether that is in the present day, the past or I’m sure even the future. Specifically, back when this figure was carried in the pocket of a person for that specific time and a woman who was fat or had a big belly was thought to be a great thing since food was so scarce and it also was associated with fertility. That was their own type of ideal
In the essay What Meets the Eye, Daniel Akst argues that look or beauty does matter in the daily life, that is, people’s life can be largely influenced or even controlled by look. Through reading Akst’s essay, I completely understand how people have different perspectives of others, as many people pay attention to and worry about how they look in the daily life. And people tend to judge others by their beauty or looks to a large extent. Akst’s ideas quite conform to and reinforce Paglia’s points that pursuing and maximizing one’s attractiveness and beauty is a justifiable aim in any society, and that good surgery discovers reveals personality. Both of them hold the idea that beauty plays an important role in people’s life and it is significant to enhance one’s beauty and attractiveness.
In the book “Two or Three Things I Know for Sure” by Dorothy Allison the theme of beauty is brought to light in a way that is intersectional and develops the story to new heights. Beauty is discussed throughout the book and is one of the main themes. Allison talks about beauty when referencing her family and herself, and the idea of what it means to be beautiful in her mind based on how she grew up and where she came from. Normatively, beauty is associated with outward appearance and one’s identity, however beauty should be recognized as intersectional and include everyone, based not only on their outwards appearance but based on the beauty of their personality and thoughts because every human is beautiful in their own way. Dorothy Alison transforms
What do you think is beautiful? Our cognition of beauty depends on several factors. How we were raised being one of them. We find Stephen as a young man, really still a boy, working at the local pulp mill with his father and all the other men in town. Stephen, whose father seems to be of influence to him, is not sure what is beautiful.
Beauty does not define who we are, I disagree with his mom as well as George Jackson does because like he said, "the truly ugly thing is the pretending, faking it", It looks ugly to try and be someone you are not. People are constantly trying hard to be able to be that someone that it results in making a fool out of yourself. The only true beauty is the one everyone holds within themselves because it shows who you truly
The media portrays these unrealistic standards to men and women of how women should look, which suggests that their natural face is not good enough. Unrealistic standards for beauty created by the media is detrimental to girls’ self-esteem because it makes women feel constant external pressure to achieve the “ideal look”, which indicates that their natural appearance is inadequate. There has been an increasing number of women that are dissatisfied with themselves due to constant external pressure to look perfect. YWCA’s “Beauty at Any Cost” discusses this in their article saying that, “The pressure to achieve unrealistic physical beauty is an undercurrent in the lives of virtually all women in the United States, and its steady drumbeat is wreaking havoc on women in ways that far exceed the bounds of their physical selves” (YWCA).
One of the categories in being the ideal woman is being conventionally beautiful because, according to the media, a significant portion of a woman’s self-worth rests in appearance. This can be seen through women’s magazines in particular, which promote altering one’s appearance leads to the significant improvement of one’s “love life and relationships, and ultimately, life in general” (Bazzini 199). Therefore, the media presents a direct relationship with beauty and success: the more attractive a woman is, the better her life will be. Thus, a woman must the take initiative to look beautiful in order to be successful. Through the repetitive exposure of the same type of image in the media, what society considers beautiful often resembles a definitive checklist.
In 1.6 of Enneads, On Beauty, by Plotinus discusses the common questions surrounding beauty. Such as, what is it? Why are we, as humans drawn to it? Why are some things thought to be beautiful while some are not? And, how do we know when we see beauty, or something ugly?
When one first meet her, one has to admit, first thing they notice is her looks. Right? “wow she have it all” or maybe the opposite. Beauty for women may be easier for them, like getting out of an officer giving them a ticket or walking into a restaurant without a reservation. Beautiful women could get more smiles, more handsome men, and better treatment sometimes.
Beauty in Beauty in the Beast is also known for her beauty not only in her family but in people that knew her. In the classic tale Beauty is the youngest sister and she is described as “far prettier and cleverer than they were” (pg. 3 Villeneuve). In Cupid and Psyche, Psyche’s beauty is also known and is often
Society 's Beauty Standards Hawkins (2017) stated that the definition of beauty has been shaped by society 's standards instead of what people actually look like. It signifies that the society sets up expectations of how we define beauty by manipulating beliefs of people to recognize that body shape, skin color, race, ethnicity, or anglicized features are what makes a person distinguish their beauty instead of what people actually look like in reality. This makes people believe that the beauty that they see, especially in films, is something that they need to attain in order to be considered as attractive. Unrealistic beauty standards affects physical and mental health Vitelli (2013) stated that content analysis of female characters
If I were to praise this concept of beauty, this would be like saying that everybody should have surgeries and as such to make themselves beautiful. This is what people would understand from my opinions about the concept of beauty. Everybody has their own definition of beauty. It is a concept that varies with place to place or even time to time.
However, what one may see as beautiful may not be so through another’s gaze, which leads me onto my next point about beauty and desire. Beauty & Desire Firstly, if something is considered good, it does not mean that it is beautiful or that there is a desire for it. As Umberto Eco states, we can enjoy something for what it is and not desire it. Therefore, beauty and the good are subjective, clarifying that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, a term coined by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford in her text Molly Bawn from 1878.