“I’ve never met a person I couldn’t call a beauty. Every person has beauty at some point in their lifetime. Usually in different degrees. Sometimes they have the looks when they’re a baby and they don’t have it when they’re grown up, but then they could get it back again when they’re older. Or they might be fat but have a beautiful face. Or have bow-legs but a beautiful body. Or be the number one female beauty and have no tits. Or be the number one male beauty and have a small you-know-what”
-The philosophy of Andy Warhol : from A to B and back again
Beauty. Everyone have different standards of it. It is as abstract as the color gray: there are simply too many gradations to gray for it to be defined as exactly as the color black, for example. Beauty, to me, like a photograph, is contained in the moment. The essence of beauty is very much relevant to the context in question. Like Andy Warhol says, “Beauty really has to do with the way a person carries it off. When you see “beauty”, It has to do with the place, with what they’re wearing, what they are standing next to, what closet they’re coming down the stairs from”. A girl smoking outside the Business School the other day was beautiful by this standard because of the way she was leaning to the concrete wall, the way the breeze carried her silky hair like barley plants waving rhythmically in the air, and the way she blew out the smoke puffs so nonchalantly, as though she does not belong to this world.
I am addicted to beautiful things and beautiful people, especially beautiful people. I can spend half an hour staring at someone gorgeous, girl or boy alike. Beautiful people, people are aesthetically pleasing, who carry themselves strikingly different and who has a unique air about them, seem to be the doom of my existence. They are the jaws of killer whales. I am the squids in the sea that gets easily fascinated and that falls prey. They usually swallow me whole. They are also the alcohol that feeds on my spirits, leaving me clueless about what has happened before and what I am supposed to do after, besides the fact that I just ran into someone beautiful. The definition provided by dictionary.com defines beauty as “the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations ( as shape, color, sound, etc), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else (as a personality in which high spiritual qualities are manifest. Maybe people do receive deep satisfaction to the mind when they behold beauties. Maybe this explains my addiction. Maybe it’s the same mechanism as how runners persist in running because of the adrenaline and endorphin rush they get afterwards.
I imagine that people in love are beautiful because they wear their emotions inside out tackily like girls wear their shorts inside out on spirit days. Their partner’s impression of the beloved problems goes something like the lyrics from “Just the way you are by Bruno Mars”—
“When I see your face
There is not a thing that I would change
Cause you’re amazing
Just the way you are
And when you smile,
The whole world stops and stares for awhile
Cause girl you’re amazing
Just the way you are.”
In psychology, we learned that symmetry is beautiful, which is genetically important as symmetry seem to be a good indicator of health, and good health is significant in light of reproduction. Beauty can arise from attraction and in this sense, even body odors can be beautiful because it is fine-tuned in such a way to help people find compatible mates as suggested by the recent “sweaty T-shirt experiment” done by Swiss zoologist Claus, which showed that “women sniffing the T-shirts recently worn by males favored the scent of those whose immune response (MHC)genes were different from their own”. Since it is beneficial for partners to have diverse sets of immune genes to pass on to their offspring for their offspring to fend off different diseases, odors are beautiful this way because they are purposeful and functional. Some things are beautiful because they serve their purpose well. For instance, Birkenstocks and New Balance shoes are beautiful even when they go out of style. Their beauty lies in the comfort they provide to the consumers. Toilet papers are beautiful to the users not because of the intricate patterns on them but because that they are simply present and ready to be used in the place and the time that they are most needed.
In Spain, the plump, as represented by Penelope Cruz, is the beautiful. In United Kingdoms, the skinny ones, as represented by Keira Knightely, are the beautiful, they pursue the figure of the “emaciated” up there. In some Amazonian and African tribes such as the Sara People, the Makonde, of Africa, the Surma and Mursi of Ethiopia, and Kayapo of Amazonian, lip plates done with the excision of teeth are deemed beautiful. Some decades ago, Chinese men saw small feet in women as beautiful. In the Elizabethan time, the ideal beauty was one with “alabaster white skin, red lips and cheeks, bright eyes and fair hair”, which all pinpoints to nobility, wealth and delicacy. As a result, ceruse, “an ointment of white lead and vinegar, was applied to the face and neck to achieve this look”. To achieve fair hair, some used urine to dye their hair, or to simply the issue, wore wigs. It should be noted that back then, “the tightly curled front was the most popular”. In the modern age, there is of course, the invention of plastic surgery and many beneficiaries and victims alike under this new method of achieving the “perfect look”. This brings up the question of “Can beauty ever be perfected?”
Then there comes the question of which is more important, inward beauty or outward physical beauty? Honestly, I am not quite sure. Outward beauty brings applause, acceptance, positivity, popularity, friendship, all factors that can build one up inside. Sometimes, inward beauty can exude/ooze out like toothpaste and make one more alluring on the surface-for I always think that the smile of Mona Lisa is bewitching more so because of the thoughts she was having in the moment, because Leonardo de Vinci captured her heart, not just her outer shell.
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