Umberto Eco's Essay: The History Of Beauty

According to Susan, nowadays, people often view a woman as a mixture of both inside and outside beauty. However, people are still surprised by woman “who is beautiful is also intelligent, endowed, and good”. The idea of good looks as a central is derived from Christianity’s point of view. The word “beauty” is often represented as woman’s feminine side, just like “handsome” is often a demonstration of man’s masculine and good look. Even though, “beauty” could be used for everyone, but people be likely to refer to woman as a symbol of their feminine.

It’s an argument we’ve all heard before and there are more than a few books that have tackled the subject. But what’s different from even the last three years is just how widespread the media has become. Today’s teens spend an average of 10 hours and 45 minutes absorbing media in just one day, which includes the amount of time spent watching TV, listening to music, watching movies, reading magazines and using the internet. This is a generation that’s been raised watching reality TV – observing bodies transformed on Extreme Makeover; faces taken apart and pieced back together on I Want a Famous Face. They are, as Tina Fey puts it, bombarded by "a laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful.”

In the article Beauty Standards by Kate Povey, she tells us how beauty standards have changed and how they have affected more people today. “Beauty standards have always been extremely prevalent throughout human history, and today they drastically affect everyday interaction, the media, and the commercial world.” (Povey) This quote shows how beauty standards are still an issue today, especially because of social media. On social media, anything can be edited to make you look differently.

Gauging physical appearance was a common practice, as it continues to be in most modern day societies, though the defining features of what made someone “beautiful” were relatively rigid, and quite surprising effeminate. For a male to be considered appeasing to the eyes he had, “a plump white face with a minute mouth, the narrowest slits for eyes and a little tuft of beard on the point of the chin” (Morris 144)—all of which is an ideal that may not resonate with a time of such a heavily male dominated society. This projected sense of beauty is in turn considered, “the same as the ideal of feminine beauty… [to the point that] a handsome gentleman…is as beautiful as a woman” (Ibid), and it worked to shun those that stood too far from the societal norm. Through study, and a better understanding of the overall context that these physical traits of beauty developed, one can grasp the basis of this phenomenon, though that does little to lessen the unexpected nature of

In the past century, the ideas and ideals of what beauty signifies have changed dramatically throughout time and the world. From Snapchat and Instagram, to makeup tutorials and trends, technology today has influenced and changed the image of beauty. These changes can be explained through Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point, with the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context. These main points assist in explaining how the world changes due to the psychological understanding shared with one another.

Every individual cares about how they appear to others; their shape and in this informal, narrative essay titled Chicken-Hips, Canadian journalist and producer Catherine Pigott tells her story on her trip to Gambia and her body appearance. In this compelling essay the thesis is implicit and the implied thesis is about how women are judged differently on their appearance in different parts of the world, as various cultures and individuals have a different perception on what ideal beauty is. In this essay Pigott writes about her trip to Africa specifically Gambia and how upon arriving there she was judged to be too slim for a woman. She goes on to write about how she would be judged differently back home by mentioning “in my county we deny ourselves

Ideas of what beauty should be are a simple influence by the media. These ideals can be a simple commercial that projects the image of beauty as thin, certain skin type, and hair length. A lasting impression is made on all who view these images. Fiji was once unbiased as to weight and outward appearance of others. The women would greet each other without remarks or negative tone toward one another.

She outlines her culture as something that is truly remarkable. During a time where society puts a strain on physical appearance, Silko proves that the meaning of beauty is something that has less to do with physical appearance and more to do with

This constant fixation on physical perfection has created unreasonable beauty standards for women, ones we cannot possibly achieve on our own. Such standards permeate all forms of popular media, particularly fashion magazines and advertisements. Women are bombarded with the notion that we must be thin in order to be desirable. These images project an

The media portrays these unrealistic standards to men and women of how women should look, which suggests that their natural face is not good enough. Unrealistic standards for beauty created by the media is detrimental to girls’ self-esteem because it makes women feel constant external pressure to achieve the “ideal look”, which indicates that their natural appearance is inadequate. There has been an increasing number of women that are dissatisfied with themselves due to constant external pressure to look perfect. YWCA’s “Beauty at Any Cost” discusses this in their article saying that, “The pressure to achieve unrealistic physical beauty is an undercurrent in the lives of virtually all women in the United States, and its steady drumbeat is wreaking havoc on women in ways that far exceed the bounds of their physical selves” (YWCA).

One of the categories in being the ideal woman is being conventionally beautiful because, according to the media, a significant portion of a woman’s self-worth rests in appearance. This can be seen through women’s magazines in particular, which promote altering one’s appearance leads to the significant improvement of one’s “love life and relationships, and ultimately, life in general” (Bazzini 199). Therefore, the media presents a direct relationship with beauty and success: the more attractive a woman is, the better her life will be. Thus, a woman must the take initiative to look beautiful in order to be successful. Through the repetitive exposure of the same type of image in the media, what society considers beautiful often resembles a definitive checklist.

Your decisions to comply with society’s view of “beauty” are no longer subconscious, but rather are more conscious-driven decisions. Barbie’s slender figure remains idolized; however, it has evolved from a plastic doll to a self-starving model that is photo-shopped on the pages of glossy magazines. You spend hours in front of a mirror adjusting and perfecting your robotic look while demanding your parents to spend an endless amount of money on cosmetics and harmful skin products to acquire a temporary version of beauty. Consider companies such as Maybelline, which have throughout the ages created problematic and infantilizing campaigns and products for women. More specifically consider the “Baby Lips” product as well as the company slogan, “maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline,” that reiterates the male notions of beauty to which women are subjected.

In his documentary film “why beauty matters” English philosopher Roger Scruton introduces the idea of beauty is disappearing from our world. The philosopher implies, that Art has become ugly, as well as our physical surroundings, manners, language, and music. Nowadays, the main aim of art is to disturb and break moral taboos. It has now lost its initial duty and is used to show solely the ugliness of our world, instead of taking what is most painful in the human condition and redeeming it in the work of beauty. What according to Scruton is the main purpose of art.

A person's personality role in beauty is hard to form conclusions around but contributes to our views on somebody just as profoundly as any other physical

To this culture, beauty is just something that is pleasurable or satisfies the moment. On Wikipedia, it says beauty’s modern definition is, “A characteristic of an animal, idea, object, person or place that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure or satisfaction”. And that’s what I thought to. But this first article helped me realize Beauty is characteristics of God, like for a small range of examples; excellency, complexity, purity, or admirable. I think that blew my mind just a little bit.