Society vs. Science over the Beauty Spot
November 12th 2006 02:39
Are you beautiful? From Extreme Make-Over miracles to a forever young Covergirl, beauty is of utmost importance and clearly the ideal is widely understood. Once upon a time, a young, female, Sleeping Syndneyite awoke from her long slumber. Looking in her mirror, she see's her uncovered blemishes and awaits the arrival of her pre-pimples. She wipes the sleep away from her eyes which improves her vision. Those stray hairs that have escaped her unsympathetic tweezers mock her eyebrows. She attempts to add volume to her limp hair which falls back tenaciously. With an air of indifference she hide's her dissatisfaction and prepares a sugary cereal for breakfast. Obviously, I am no Sleeping Beauty. Most men claim that a beautiful woman wakes up and looks beautiful. Obviously, these are single men who believe that they are romantically advocating the superfluous need for women to wear make-up. They are wrong. Any woman, who can meet the very high standards of male defined female beauty, wearing no make-up, when they first wake, is an illusion. Much like the socially constructed apparition that is "beauty". Fairy tales propose that beauty is essential for well being and survival. Would Sleeping Beauty ever have been able to wake, if she was not beautiful? I shovel another calorie packed mound of over-commercialised flakes into my mouth and wonder whether any-one with 20/20 vision would find this a beautiful sight. Flipping through a handy magazine I am faced with picture after picture of perfection, and I once again realise the unfair reality that "the kind [of beauty] that inspires awe, lust, and increased jeans sales cannot be evenly distributed. In a society where everything is supposed to be within reach, this is painful to face" (Siman K, The Beauty Trip, Pocket Books 05/95 p132). Why aren't I on those pages? Probably for the same reason Magda Zubanski isn't the host of Australia's Next Top Model. Who decides what is beautiful, and how? The main debate surrounding the construction of beauty is whether it is in fact socially or biologically formed. Is our perception of beauty defined by exterior experiences or simply interior preferences? On one hand, ones idea of beauty is created by assembling the images and ideas of beauty around us, "Our minds have evolved to generate pleasurable experiences in response to some things while ignoring other things. That's why sugar tastes sweet, and that's why we find some people more attractive than others." (Cowley, G, The Biology of Beauty (Cover Story) Newsweek, June 3, 1996 v127 n23 p60) On the other hand, many psychiatrists and theorists such as Charles Darwin, through such theories as Sexual Selection, have argued biological grounds for attraction. Sexual Selection, in essence, endorses the idea that the selection of a mate, "depends on the success of certain individuals over others of the same sex, in relation to the propagation of the species" (Anderson M, Sexual Selection, Princeton University Press, 27/05/94 p3). After I researched this topic I found that biological theories far out weighed any exterior influences…proportions of the face and body, symmetry and the minute placements of fat, reflect ones innate sense of beauty…everything else, such as traditional notions of beauty formed voluptuously in Botticelli's Venus to Vogue's portrayal of rake thin Kate Moss, is merely fashion.
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