Yaseen Mehter's Weblog

Beautiful?

Our definition of beauty can be strange at times. I have heard the cliched statement - beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder - several times from several different people and have had the opportunity to witness this statement in action on quite a few occassions. I cannot say that I enjoyed a demonstration of the fact that beauty can be interpreted so differently by different people.

A simple way of witnessing this phenomenon is to ask your peers to name the actor and actress that they consider most beautiful (or perfectly made). You had better be prepared for the diverse set of names that you might get to hear. Unless your peer group is rather homogeneous, meaning that they consist of the same ethnicity and are mostly from the same part of the planet, the variation in the definition of beauty can be astounding. Variations in what is c0nsidered to be a sign of true beauty varies with demographic distributions to such an amazing extent that the aspired physical characteristics of people in different geographies tends to be very diverse indeed.

Slim was not always considered beautiful. There was a time when a little chubbiness, which indicated material affluence in countries where food was not as plentiful, was preferred as a sign of beauty. One could argue that living among a starved populace automatically made anyone with enough food to overeat an object of envy and a sign of beauty.

Conversely, if you were to consider things as they are today, the obsession with health and fitness seems to place a great deal of emphasis on low body fat as a test of beauty. Slim and toned is beautiful today.

I cannot help but wonder about the definition of beauty a hundred years from now.

posted by Yaseen Mehter @ 7:08 AM