The Eye of the Beholder

Beauty is a term that dates back to the beginning of written history. This evidence can been seen throughout the ages from Adam and Eve to the Greek gods and goddess. From the Victorian area in Europe to modern day Milan. It is a term that every person young and old alike are familiar with. We learn to say and spell the word in our early school days. As we grow into our adulthood, we believe we have a good grasp of what beauty is, where it is found, and how to acquire it. Little do we know that the true meaning of the term beauty has alluded us our entire lives.

Websters dictionary defines the term beauty as, “The quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit.”(Beauty Merriam) In reviewing this definition, one can conclude that beauty comes from many sources. It can be visual, physical, vocal, and intangible. This being the case, beauty originates from anything that gives one pleasure through their senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, or taste) or to their mental state of being. Beauty can be the smell of fresh cut grass, or the taste of a sweet apple. It can be the feeling one gets as they sing hymns in church, or make the winning basket in the last game of the season. Beauty can be as simple as the way a baby's skin feels against its mothers cheek, or the way the light pours in the window on a spring morning. Beauty can be embodied in places and things one wo9uld never dream. Take for instance the sky before a storm. The dark ominous clouds, a mixture of purples, grays and blues. Though it is the warnings of something that can be quiet destructive, some would call it a thing of beauty. The old proverb, that everyone has heard at one point, says it best, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”(Beauty Wikiquote) Beauty, in any form, is perceived and translated by the person experiencing the joy it provides.

Our society has redefined beauty. Some synonyms of the term  include: adorableness, allure, artistry, attraction, bloom, charm, comeliness, delicacy, elegance, exquisiteness, fairness, fascination, glamor, grace, loveliness, polish, pulchritude, refinement, shapeliness, style, and symmetry.(Beauty Synonym) The average person would define beauty as a visual interpretation of features possessed by a person, place, or thing according to a socially predetermined set of standards.  If a person does not possess theses standards, they are not perceived as beautiful. This eliminates many of the true sources of beauty. Where do these standards originate from? We encounter them everyday in television ads, beauty magazines, and our interactions with our peers. Advertising companies, modeling agencies, and the like have molded our society's view of what is beauty.

For a woman, they have created the image of an angelic young creature that is thin with a small body frame, endowed bust line, blond, fair skinned, blemish free, that has moderate curves and a radiant glow. This is a much different ideal than our society possessed only sixty years ago. A time when women could be thicker and still thought of as beautiful. Take Marilyn Monroe for example. While many would still call her a raving beauty, by todays standards she would be consider a plus size woman.(Wee) Much too large for the catwalk.

Men, on the other hand, have kept a consistent ideal. Society has created the image of a muscular, tall figure, thin in the waist, broad in the shoulders, with chiseled features, tanned skin and gelled hair. Men also suffer fewer stigmas for aging. As men age they are still seen as attractive, while a woman the same age may be thought to have lost that appeal.

In a study conducted by Nancy J. Nentl and Ronald J. Faber, of the University of Minnesota's Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, it was concluded that teenage girls were more susceptible to the ideal body image portrayed in advertisements than boys of the same age. Social approval was found to be the best predictors of comparing themselves with ideal beauty in advertising.
Nentl and Faber argue that advertisements display body images that are either difficult or impossible to obtain, which leaves impressionable minds to compare themselves to an ideal that is unrealistic.(Nentl)

A small portion of the population will fit these descriptions of ideal beauty. The remaining population either strives to achieve these states of physical being or simply shame themselves for their inability to achieve that state. The problem is, despite how hard they try many will never achieve the look they dream about, at no fault of their own. Advertisements are often digitally doctored. Magazines publishers manipulate and airbrush photographs to remove blemishes, to thin waistlines, and over all create the image they want to portray. This leaves the general public, teenage girls in particular, to long and want for a body, a look of beauty that does not even exist. This early since of not being good enough can haunt them long into their adult lives.(Bennett) Social pressures and self comparisons to something that cannot be or perhaps never was, leads to many psychological problems. Self esteem being the major issue. When these women cannot achieve this look they are driven to extreme measures.

One such measure is cosmetic surgery. Many women turn to cosmetic surgery as they age, in the hopes to regain their youthful beauty. Though these surgeries are not only sought by the aging. Many young women seek breast enlargements, tummy tucks, and liposuction to acquire the beauty that nature seems to have denied them. In a world of perfection, surgery is an expensive, painful, and fairly easy solution. In the year 2007, the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery reported an 8% increase in surgical procedures since a report that was released on January 3, 2000.(2007ASAPS)

Another measure taken by these desperate women are eating disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia.  The American Psychiatric Association Work Group on Eating Disorders estimates that 8% of the female population suffer from one of these two disorders.(American) The pressures to be thin, to be ideal are so great, and so embedded into every facet of our society that some young girls and women begin to suffer from these conditions. These are serious and sometimes fetal psychological disorders. According to a 20 year study, the death rate for women suffering from these disorders is 18%. The annual death rate associated with anorexia is more than 12 times higher that the annual death rate due to all other causes combined for girls and women ranging form the ages of 15 to 24 years old.(Cavanaugh)

These ideals about beauty have also changed the face of dating in our society. With the self esteem issues, busy schedules, and waves of new technology it's no wonder that online dating is on the rise. This new form of relationship allows a man and woman to get to know one another on an emotional level long before they are physically in the same room. Thus, these love stricken souls find beauty and attraction in each other because of things that are not visual. They may love the way there partner says their name over the phone, or how they write letters that flow like poetry. It may be the thoughtfulness of their partner, sending sweet emails at lunch, that makes them swoon. This sounds like a happy story, but the ending is not always so happy. Often these would be lovers find that when they finally meet one another, when the day they waited for finally comes, they are disappointed. When they become physically faced with this person that they found so attractive before, they begin to find it hard to look past their predetermined visual ideal of beauty or attractiveness. Suddenly this person is not appealing, though in truth it is the same person they so very much loved.  The would be lovers suffer from an impression placed in their minds practically from birth, that beauty is physical. In a phrase, it is love until first sight.

Beauty is not a standardized test that must be passed. It is not a set of rules that are set in stone. Whether or not something or someone is beautiful must be determined by each individual. Our society is so caught up in ideal beauty that people fail to see the beauty that they, themselves, possess. People fail to see the beauty in their peers.  We fail to understand that all things hold some quality that indeed makes them beautiful. Those qualities are not strictly visual. It has been said, “Beauty is as beauty does.” A person can hold every quality of ideal beauty and still lack beauty. A woman can be fair and thin and socially perfect, yet if she holds no beautiful qualities be quiet unattractive. A kind personality, a generous heart can be more beautiful than all the physical appearance in the world. An outwardly beautiful girl can become homely fairly quickly if her actions and her words out play that supposed beauty.

With that said, too often people look to the opinions of others to tell them what is beautiful, or to tell them if they are beautiful. This is a hazardous and unreliable practice, because what one person sees as unattractive, unsightly, or undesirable may be the one feature that someone else finds the most beautiful. In all things, people should look to their own judgment of beauty, but especially when comparing themselves to the ideal beauty.

Our society needs to correct this ideal standard that it is setting. There needs to be changes in how advertising companies market their products. There needs to be a change in the way models are portrayed. Natural beauty needs to be emphasized, young girls need role models that are not airbrushed and made-over. On the same note, they also need role models that are acting beautiful. Young girls need to be able to look up to figures that portray qualities that are morally sound rather than sexually explicit. Beauty is often interchanged with sexual attraction. While the two are related, they are not interchangeable.  Parents and teachers need to teach their children that there is beauty in all things. In the same manner that “art” is “art”, “beauty” needs to be “beauty”. It needs to be recognized in all it's forms, not restricted to one interpretation.






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