Beauty is the combination of qualities, such as shape or color, which pleases our aesthetic senses, especially our sense of sight. Due to our societal rules, the media determines much of what our culture deems to be beautiful, while those who do not follow cultural trends are set as outcasts and considered ugly. The epitome of beauty in American culture in females is a woman with clear, even-toned skin; a skinny, toned figure yet maintaining curves in her chest and hips; light eyes; silky hair; and obvious signs of femininity through fashion. In men, our culture deems men who are beautiful as those with a proportionally built body; even-toned skin; and light eyes; and expresses masculinity. In nature, beauty is determined on how aesthetically pleasing flora or fauna is, such as the grace shown in antelope when they run or a tiger’s fur. Many examples of what our society deems to be beautiful is demonstrated in magazines geared toward America’s youth and young adults, updating with the season’s new trends of what to wear or not, such as Seventeen or Vogue. Because of the influences society places on people, many people share the same ideology of what makes someone beautiful. But because we are also unique, we also have differences in what we consider beautiful, as was seen in our experience with the artist at the Macaulay Building. We all had different ideas on what was beautiful, for example, while I believed that humor and writing was beautiful, my peer Xiang believed that a DNA Electrophoresis Gel result was beautiful. While much of society shares a similar ideology in what is beautiful, we also differ on what is beautiful.
In art, beauty is not necessary. Many pieces of art can be aesthetically pleasing, but not necessarily beautiful and other pieces may not have the aesthetics, yet maintain a message of beauty or beauty in technique. An example of this is Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son, which may be considered gruesome by some and beautiful by others due to the brush stroke techniques. In humans, a similar idea is presented. While some people may believe a person is ugly, their personality or a certain trait can create beauty for them. The emotional aesthetics can overcome visual aesthetics in humans.
