Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Beautiful
Who decides what characteristics are attractive…Oprah?
I was recently the unwilling audience to a discussion between two of my colleagues. The topic of the controversy was the appropriate manner method, frequency and procedure for shaping and maintaining eyebrows. As you may have guessed the participants in this discussion were female and my opinion was solicited as the “male perception.” When my response indicated that the depth of which men concentrate on the eyebrows of women is the basic question and reply of, “Does she have two? That’s good enough for me,” my input was summarily dismissed as defective and not to be considered the norm for the average male.
As my mind is somewhat linear when it comes to processing, this encounter started me upon a journey to discover what justification do we actually have for what is considered beautiful.
Here are my observations.
The definition of beauty is fluid and easily distorted by society. Chinese women are a prime example. Years ago small feet were consider to be a trait of beauty. Therefor, in order to meet this perception of beauty Chinese women would bind their feet with tightly wound strips of linen. This, in turn, over time caused the bones of the feet to grow in a manner that created an extremely high arch and difficulty walking without pain.
Consider now the unattainable perception of beauty in western culture. Models are so thin scores of young girls and women have succumbed to illnesses such as bulimia and anorexia in an effort to attain that unnatural state of thinness.
A historical perspective.
In ancient Mediterranean societies a certain amount of fat was considered beauty. It indicated the person was well off enough not to have to work.
In Northern Europe during the Middle Ages, tanned skin was seen as being unattractive an course. Consequently the wealthy sought to be as pale as possible.
The Ohagura (a Japanese culture) felt dark teeth were beautiful and so dyed theirs black. A similar incident occurred in Europe when sugar became prohibitively expensive and so darkened (cavity) teeth were a sign of beauty.
In our time symmetry has become the gold standard. The greater the similarity between the right and left side of the face the greater the beauty attributed to that person.
Oh to be young and symmetrical.