The beauty of "monsters"...If I may use Eco's term...Of course in this case I refer to the pyhisical apperance...
Quote:
Originally Posted by rachel
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The beauty of "monsters"...If I may use Eco's term...Of course in this case I refer to the pyhisical apperance...
Quote:
Originally Posted by rachel
From a personal experience, when I lived in Brazil, the women in Rio de Janeiro always adjust their bikinis so that they keep the same tan lines. The contrast of light skin with darkened skin is considered to be very sexy there. The local news once did a report from an Asian country where the women all walk around on sunny days with umbrellas to protect their skin from getting tanned. My Brazilian friends thought that was strange. The reporter must have too, as he made a point of showing it to his viewers.
The point being, there are rules, some biological, some social and yes they change. So beauty is relative to the society and time it is from.
Beauty can be divided into eclectic parts.Some divided into lustful circumstances while some divided into demeanour ones.Though beauty is not present outside the eye but inside the eye.It is all thy volition to be beautiful,for all is beautiful.
In physical terms, beauty is recognised by evenly distributed proportion of the body and the face. If the face is distributed in closest format of the golden ratio, then it is considered superior beauty over the rest.
According to research, male finds a feminine female as beautiful whereas females finds a slightly feminine male more beautiful than a full masculine male.
In spiritual terms, purity, goodness and righteousness are recognised as beautiful, as the cleanness of the soul is priceless and flawless.
Beauty, to me, has to have something of harmony in it to be beautiful. I think it's true to an extent that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but in that case "beauty" is defined as something the beholder likes. If he likes it, it's beautiful, but if he doesn't, it's not.
Beauty goes beyond that though, at least for me. I think there is something universal in beauty that has nothing to do with the beholder. If Marylin Monroe falls in the forest without a camera there, is there a beauty? I say yes.
Okay if we're going to talk about physical beauty, scientifically symmetry = beauty.
Good bone structure, a symmetrical face = beautiful.
But that is beauty in it's rawest form. You may have no warm feelings to that person who possesses that beauty but they're still beautiful.
And then there's the people you fall in love with ( i dont just mean in the romantic way ) they suddenly become the most beautiful creatures in the world, aided by your feelings towards them.
Beauty like i said, can be found and appreciated and acknowledged without thought or feeling.
Other forms of beauty can develop only because your feelings towards whatever it may be, develop.
It's like those couples you see together and one of them is extremely beautiful, the other quite unattractive, and you always wonder why - but you know. Because that other person, the one who seems beautiful to you - see's the world in the other, see's everything beautiful, right, true, good and pure within them - and appreciates every line, mark, scar, spot, everything.
Love in my opinion, brings attention to beauty. Or perhaps it creates it, i'm not really sure. It doesn't matter.
The second beauty i described, the beauty which you see because that person is so beautiful on the inside and for whatever reason it is, you love them, out runs the first by miles.
How that person makes you feel makes them beautiful.
Also, reading over all the posts, it seems like most people are talking about the "inside of a person"
But physical beauty can not be denied. It turns your head. Why? because it's beautiful.
You don't need to know his or her soul to know it's beautiful.
Like i said, symmetry.
To say it is in the eye of the beholder i believe - makes references to pretty, cute, hot girls or guys. But beautiful? something that is truly beautiful, physically, is generally agreed with by the masses.
I think it may have been Plato who said that beauty was a seperate entity and that what a beautiful girl and a beautiful mountain had in common was the form of beauty.
I think the Plato quote above has come the nearest to the truth about beauty. There is a unversality in beauty. Look at a lake in the moonlight, or a mist filled valley at dawn. When I see such things I can imagine Stone Age Man standing in the same spot and staring in wonder thousands of years ago.
But when it comes to human beauty, fashion seems to hold sway. Would that same Stone Age Man stare in wonder at Keira Knightley?
I think so.
I think beauty has been understood for a very long time..
To reduce truth and beauty to some solipsistic model is a a terrible tragedy. If you endorse that claim, you have to willingly admit that a song produced by Britney Spears and something done by Tchaikovsky, somehow warrant the same level of artistic valuation. I think this is ludicrous. Of course Beauty is to a certain extent relativistic but, there are general cannons of judgment and taste that are for the most part agreeable to all. In the same way, someone might ask what it is to be " Just " or ethical. There are general bedrock values that seem to transcend circumstance and partiality. Such as the right not to be systematically tortured and oppressed, or the right to human dignity, i could go on... I Am not trying to reduce Beauty to a statistical science in that numerical validation by some population renders something beautiful. it just seems as though an experience of something truly beautiful has a transcendent quality that is undeniably objective. Of course the sweater that someone's dying grandmother knitted for them does not evoke the same kind of emotional response in me, as with him. But that does not prevent me from understanding why it is an object of beauty and reverence