11/10 Assignment: Beauty and such.
Who gets to decide what or who is beautiful? Is it a product of our collective unconscious described by Jung? We might all think that we each have our own idea of beauty and what makes things beautiful, but I still believe we are heavily influenced by our culture, our society, and the times we live in.
As of recent times, American culture has been very confusing with its concept of beauty, especially of the physical kind. The fashion world believes it is in the shape of emaciated little bodies with large, interesting faces and blank beige skin. Hollywood idolizes glamorous, super-polished celebrities. The common thread between these two worlds is that there is an underlying theme of unreality, of something not natural or common. Yes, models and movie stars are stunning to behold and we might hold them at a pedestal, but isn’t there something eerie about how different they look from the rest of us? Is that what makes them “beautiful”? Does their rarity, their superior aesthetic value, their novelty make them beautiful?
In the Philippines where I grew up, a physically beautiful person had to have white skin, straight hair, almond shaped eyes, and a slender build. Any deviation was considered subpar, even ugly. I find it hard to reconcile this idea of beauty, which in my opinion is artificial and shallow, to the same culture that praises the natural beauty of glowing sunrises, fishing at dawn, and the haunting song of wind passing through the rice fields. How can the same culture that revels in the most primitive works of nature be the same culture that would allow chemically bleaching skin and surgically enhancing eye shapes?
I think the answer to this is that there are two kinds of beauty that we like to see or experience: the ideal and “perfect” beauty that becomes the standard based on what we innately think is beautiful in nature, and the beauty that stems from being different or unique. Why else would there be different styles of art or music? We can all generally say that classical music is beautiful, but then other people will also find rock beautiful even if that’s not what it’s supposed to be described as. We can all agree that the Mona Lisa is beautiful because we have been conditioned to think so, but abstract pieces of the modern era can also be beautiful without ever resembling the Mona Lisa.
But does something have to be beautiful in order for us to appreciate it? Why can’t we just learn to appreciate the beauty in anything? I think that’s the real question.
Side note: Beauty is just Bea with a –uty 😀 I’m just kidding, of course.
