Katie McAfoos
10/17/11
Ross
Beauty Is In The Beholder
For thousands of years beauty has gone through many different definitions, from the 15th century trying to obtain the largest forehead to present social standards. The present day social standards have inevitably lost their “standards”. By this one would describe present standards as aesthetically pleasing, but in reality beauty “standards” should be much more than that. Beauty may hold a different definitionto some, but real beauty is not just what you see. Beauty is not skin deep but a quality in an object or human that gives ones self pleasure or satisfaction and holds meaning, it is in the eyes of the beholder and can come in any shape or size belonging to emotion, characteristics, or personality.
The 20th century was the biggest era for plastic surgery, cosmetics, and fashion. As Louise Wood stated in her essay, “The fashion, cosmetics and plastic surgery industries have thrived on 20th century preoccupation with physical appearance”. The feeling to “fit in” or look “pretty” was beginning to take over the minds of woman across the world, and still to this day is. This is a plain and simple reason to redefine beauty, for the sake of human health. Beauty is continually overlooked in society. People tend to think beauty ismade up of very shallow and insensitive meanings. By shallow one would describe it as what something looks like without really researching further into it. And by insensitive one would describe as not paying attention to other qualities and aspects that contribute. It is not something that can be determined by merely walking down the street. You must get to know a person to determine if they are beautiful, and youmust look deeper into an object than the surface. Art, for example, cannot be judged by just glancing at it; you must look beyond the surface and find a meaning in it. To throw together a great mess of paint, in art, and not look into what real emotion or personality that the artist had when making the painting is giving it a shallow glance over and contributing to societies definition of beauty today…shallow and insensitive.
For many decades beauty has been seen by the majority of the population as how aesthetically pleasing you can make your outside appearance, which is wrong. Urban dictionary is a “new age” dictionary allowing people of all ages to go and submit the most current and up to date slang. According to Urbandictionary.com Beauty is defined as, “Beauty is a thing seldom seen. It is held by all within the soul it lies, waiting to come out to the surface, … Once seen, beauty never hides again.” (urbandictionary.com) This is the definition that should be known throughout the world. Woman, and men, of all ages should no longer be held to the modern day standards of a perfect face, sleek, skinny, or any shallow outside appearances of the body.
Beauty is an emotion. A human being expressing emotion can emit an aroma of beauty. Emotion is a special gift that lets a person express how they feel or think. Is a person who does not smile or cry, or even laugh beautiful? No. One may argue that emotions can come in bad forms, such as anger, violence, and rage but when looking at the perspective of beauty those are all classified as beautiful. For not everything on this planet can express anger, violence, or rage, and being unique is simply being beautiful. An emotion is an expression unique to living creatures, and why would anyone want to waste that? Love is a great example of an emotion. One cannot usually control who they fall in love with or why. Sometimes people fall for the most unexpected of people, and there is no other description for why other than there is something beautiful about them. In “Beauty and the Beast” Belle falls in love with a beast. Why does Belle fall in love with such an aesthetically unattractive creature one may ask? Because Belle sees in the creature more than what appears on the outside, she can see deeper into him, his emotions, characteristics, and his personality. Walt Disney did a wonderful job portraying how every being should act upon meeting a stranger; you must first give them a chance. There is more than meets the eye. A long cry or a long laugh is beautiful because not only do you show how you feel but also you are expressing yourself. Expression is an amazing thing. To live and express is to be beautiful.
Along with emotion and characteristics, personality is a major contributor. Personality is a trait that one may possess that is also unique from others. A person, who is outgoing and stands out from the crowd because of it, is beautiful. If you had a person who was dull and stood back in the crowd and never spoke a word would be just the opposite. An aesthetically pleasing face does not equal a wonderfully pleasing person. The term “aesthetically” should have absolutely nothing to do with the word “beauty”. Personality is something so different from each and every thing that it is beautiful to show off. To provide people or objects with something that is different and out there is beautiful. A cardboard that has been cut up into different shapes and stands out from the rest has “personality” because it is different from everyone else. This is an attribute that contributes to the cardboards beauty and spunkiness.
Beauty is something that comes in all different forms. It is not something that can be seen in an instant, but is something that must be looked further into. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and is about so much more than just the surface. William Shakespeare expressed this saying; Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in an excerpt of his Love's Labours Lost back in1588. Shakespeare states, “Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean,
Needs not the painted flourish of your praise:
Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye,
Not utter'd by base sale of chapmen's tongues”. Dating further back the 1600’s the term “beauty” has needed a more constant definition. The aesthetics of beauty have single handedly ruined lives of many through plastic surgery, lack of self-confidence, lack of motivation, and credit debt to far in the hole to survive. It has become such a problem among woman and men that it has caused deaths from eating disorders to poverty. Beauty should always be looked at as nothing other than what is inside. It in no way should have anything to do with outside looks or what you wear. Today in society people have come up with cosmetic definitions for beauty, but in reality, beauty is about looking beyond the surface and exploring further into the person or object.
Works Cited
1. Beauty and the Beast. Dir. Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale. By Linda Woolverton and Roger Allers. Perf. Paige O'Hara, Robby Benson, and Richard White. Walt Disney, 1991. Videocassette.
2. Marshmallow, Bulletproof. "Beauty." Urban Dictionary, October 16: Sounds like My First Time. 28 Oct. 2003. Web. 16 Oct. 2011.
3. "Beauty." Oxford Dictionaries Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 14 Oct. 2011
4. Wood, Louise. "Perceptions Of Female Beauty In The 20th Century." Egoist. Web. 16 Oct. 2011.
This was a very interesting paper to read, I really enjoyed it. Your point is so true about how today's society is so caught up in the physical appearance of things. I loved your paragraph about beauty being an emotion and what is inside it really made me think about beauty in a different way.
ReplyDeleteI liked your paper because it is arguable, which is what the assignment was. Also, it gives beauty a new "look" to it.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this paper. I loved your definition of beauty and how you talked about how society has turned into physical but it is not. You have great points that make your paper very arguable! good job!
ReplyDeleteNot an easy word to try and define but you did an excellent job in portraying the role that individual perspective plays in the definition. very solid stuff
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