An interesting quote, I came across while watching the movie “A good year”. Even though I don’t totally agree with such statement, if we take beauty as an alignment of someone’s physique with society’s standards, that are instilled in us during our socialization and participation in society as such, the above statement couldn’t be far from the truth. Why so?
I believe there are some among us, that have faithfully allowed their colleagues, media, etc. to take charge over developing their own goals and life’s purpose. For them, the idea of having such a “standards complied” girl to be seen around with, alone presents the big enough source of satisfaction for all their needs. But all others, we need something more.. something with much more distant expiration date, something that will at once dismiss all our doubts and regrets, that could turn up while investing huge amounts of our love and energy into the selected person. And what is that “something”?
I believe it could be the respect of her/his personality and of course, some kind of a physical turn-on. The latter is already taken care of by our creator, we only need to find the way to manifest those charms at our best, but the former needs some more of our effort and attention. Nobody is born with an impressive character, only with its predispositions. Then it is up to us, how we’re going to develop it. And here comes the catch… our character consists of our habits, that are the result of continuous actions in its favor, and actions are the consequences of our thinking and philosophies. And as we are always heading along the path of the least resistance, we end up with two choices for altering the habits, which usually demand heavy effort end energy investments. Either we end up in conflicting situation that forces us to do so, or take our own initiative, which is quite illogically very rare (otherwise there wouldn’t have risen such business around quick diets, shortcuts to financial independence, etc.). And this is where that “standard beauty” become more of a curse, than a blessing. Because we tend to be much more sympathetic with the people that are most aligned with that social beauty standards. We are more likely to help them, and avoiding conflicts between us and them, by solving them in their favor. So people of such “curse” are much more likely to experience less life’s difficulties and therefore, the development of their character and good habits are very likely to stagnate, with slow or no positive development at all. Of course exceptions can be found, as they might have different problems (for an example, in a modeling world, it can be a very tough path to a successful career, with many testings of personal values, ethics, etc.), but I still believe that could only apply to a little minority, as for majority, the hypothesis described above could have a very solid grounds.
But what about beauty as such? The one above is mostly regarding to the society ideals, we are brainwashed by through different media channels and different traditions. But as for the other sorts, I’m strongly convinced It’s a very relative thing. As in economics, where there is some kind of demand, there can be some kind of value. So as nature made us, we’re all buyers at this, and we are the ones that put the “price tag” and express desirability over some personality or physical trait. And a question inevitably appears; What do we really value?
Not what the society expect from us, but what do we as individuals sincerely want? What character traits we respect most and what physical attributes turn us on most effectively? And as we all have different sets and combinations of these “preferences”, nature blessed us with the variety, that made it very possible for the “perfect” matches of our demands to be found. And to conclude, our “match” is as beautiful, as we make it. It all depends on how well we’re able to express this perfection, cherish it and welcome it in our life’s fairy tale. So there is no universal beauty, it all depends on how well we’re able to resonate with the chosen “perfection”, we decide to build our life around.
And lastly, to comment the title of this “article”… Most of the beauties (there are some exceptions of course) by so called “society standards” really are for the shallow “heroes” without any bright future in the eyes of a great character building and enjoying life in all its beauties on as many areas as possible. But for all others, we want something more… We want those angels, we could establish the greatest relationships with, and transform them to our best friends, as well the intimate ones, as the ones on the other areas of our cooperation. We search for the soul mates in creation, the most divine shape of the interlaced blissfulness for every individual, that will ever come in existence, called true love… And can such materialistic attitude towards beauty (as pointed out in the title) ever be the core foundation for this sensational, almost spiritual leveled feelings? I don’t believe so…
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