After reading that little ditty in class about the varying conceptions of beauty (12th period spoiler alert: you will be reading all about it this Friday), I have been seriously contemplating the idea of what makes something beautiful.
The great and powerful Sophia Loren once said, "True beauty is a mirage." True beauty? What IS that, anyway? DO NOT SAY TRUTH!!
Myself, I am awed by things of beauty, no matter what--or who--they might be (Johnny Depp...ahem…sunsets...butterflies).
This week, I would like you to muse with me about this concept. Over time, across cultures, the mystery of beauty has both vexed and captivated all walks of life. The animal kingdom even has its own notion of what makes them attractive—peacocks fluff their plumage, ducks wiggle their butts, all in the name of beauty.
Men and women have been frustrated and fascinated by beauty, have been rendered powerless in their attempts to capture it, bottle it, enhance it, ignore it, use it and celebrate it. Why? Its importance and its role in our lives will be the subject of this blog discussion, and I would like you to seriously consider what your definition of “true beauty” is. Why is beauty the object of both admiration and envy? Why does the pursuit of beauty bring us pain as well as pleasure? Consider both sexes when you ask yourself these questions—think about the pursuit, the pain, the pleasure from all angles.
(450-500 words/50pts)
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(i've always wanted to be the first to comment but this is a lot to think about and i need another day...but just for the record i would've been the first for real =]
one day..)
beau·ty - Show Spelled Pronunciation[byoo-tee] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun, plural -ties.
1. 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).
Now, when I looked up the word beauty, it surprised me that this was the first definition. It doesn’t just say pretty or a beautiful woman. It really sums up what beauty is, by its definition, anyway. Ya know, I am one of those people that always say, “Oh My God! You’re so pretty. I love your hair!” Or I say, “That necklace is beautiful! Where did you get it?” That’s only one type of beauty, the physical beauty that attracts the eye, resplendent if you will. I was watching the America’s Next Top Model marathon and the girl who wins is always someone who looks “unique” and “beautiful.” That’s like the only two words that I hear come out of Tyra’s mouth. But I believe that, too, well half that, even if that sounds hypocrital. I believe that to be beautiful, you have to be unique in some way. And now that I’m typing this I’m really wishing that there were more words that meant beautiful, but in different ways. You can be Miss America and be beautiful. You can be an old, wrinkly 90-year-old woman and be beautiful. You can be a bum on the street and be beautiful because it’s more than just that physical perception of a person that makes them beautiful. When I was a little girl, about 5 years old, I thought my mother was the most beautiful woman in the world. Not just because of her sparkling white teeth or her olive skin, but because she loved me and cared about me. In my eyes, that was beautiful. Now, when describing my mother, I would use any other word besides beauty in her definition. She betrayed me and left me for a man without any feeling of guilt. Now how can someone say that’s beautiful? Without going into much detail, I’m just going to say my dad is getting over his divorce and still has a long way to go. To help him realize that he not all of these bad things that his ex-wife has called him and persuaded him that he was, his girlfriend Jen wrote him a whole letter telling him that he’s not and that he needs to believe it. I’ve told him this, too, but he needs to hear it from someone besides his daughter. She told him that he’s caring, sensitive, has a great sense of humor, and is easy to talk too, but also told him that he has a lot of baggage and that he’s stubborn. That may sound surprising that she said some negative things, but in a way I think that’s beautiful. She’s honest. She’s being her real self, not just saying what he wants to hear. See what I mean about beauty having more than one meaning or having more words to describe beauty. I guess there really isn’t. You have to make them up for yourself and look deeper. Kinda like RRL’s.
I don’t know why beauty is envied. Just because you don’t have the clearest skin or perfect teeth doesn’t make you any less beautiful. Beauty is in the way someone walks, in their eyes, and most of all inside. I used to be that girl who wanted to be that beauty stereotype, but I’ve soon realized I don’t ever want to be that. I want to be me. I want to bite my nails and laugh at the wrong times. I want to be the goody goody in school and not be oblivious to everyone else in the hallways at Oakcrest! That’s me and that’s what makes me beautiful. I think everyone is beautiful and no one should envy it. Your qualities of sincerity and honesty make you beautiful, plan and simple.
Oh and Leslie, youre comment does not count! I actually answered it you freak!
Beauty is, from all angles, from all sexes, unavoidable.
Whether you’re a believer of true beauty lying in the eyes of the beholder or you see people, places, and objects as beautiful, regardless, beauty is present and will forever be existent in our lives. You can hate it, want it, have it, see it, feel it, mock, it-whatever you choose to do with it, YOU have it and its YOURS. It’s in you. Now, I know some people are like “what?! How can you say beauty is in me?” Simple. It’s in your mind, its in your inner-most secrets, it’s in your reactions, it’s in your facial expressions, it’s in your perceptions. And this, brings me back to the idea of beauty being in the eye of the beholder. I am a strong believer of this as I’m sure many are. Beauty can be judged through perception. The way someone views something, someone, or even some invisible factor of life, is the only way beauty can be measured. If an equation were made to calculate and solve for beauty, the only variable necessary is you. You, the beholder, are the key that equals to beauty.
Maybe this is all too deep to understand, but actually, it’s too deep to explain. Beauty doesn’t have to power to cause pain or pleasure, you do. You could see a gorgeous wedding taking place on a beach and pass by it unaffected at all. Then you could take that same gorgeous wedding and imagine it’s yours, its beauty doesn’t make you get butterflies in your stomach and leave an everlasting smile of your face, you do. Your perception of what you see, from your own eyes and mind, is what allows beauty to bring happiness to your soul. And just like happiness can occur, sadness is the exact same. Though opposite emotion, both are sparked by your personal connection and insight.
Anorexia/bulimia is a good way to explain the different depths and interpretations of people’s perceptions. My cousin was so pretty. My cousin was so admirable. My cousin had beautiful inner and outer traits, I myself, envied for years. Notice I said WAS. My cousin is bulimic. My cousin looks in the mirror every day and hates the reflection she receives. When I saw her as tall and skinny, she saw her as fat and disgusting. If beauty had the power to solely bring her pleasure, without her being a factor, then she would not throw up after every meal. She would not see a psychiatrist and hate who she has become. She would not have to go away for a 60 day rehabilitation center. BUT, if she realized SHE had the power to bring pleasure to herself every time she looked in that mirror, her entire life would be turned around. I wish I could show her my perception of her and help her realize she was beautiful before she started hurting herself. Perception; perception is the wire connecting beauty to emotion. Perception is the flame that lights our reactions to certain people and things. Perception is forever ours and it is unavoidable. Perception equals beauty, and therefore, beauty is unavoidable.
i completly agree with how Becca said you can be Miss America and be beautiful and you can be a 90 yr old wrinkly woman and be beautiful, and no, not JUST because i LOVE old people and think they're beautiful, cute, amazing, and the best people in our society but because, it all brings it backs to everyone's perceptions. =]
AND I completely agree with Leslie's entire blog. We have the same perceptions of this whole beauty thing, which isn't surprising. Her cousin needs to see how beautiful she is and realise that she's a good person, inside and out. You can't have beauty unless you believe you are.
True beauty doesn’t have a definite definition. Beauty is different for everyone, what I think is beautiful could be silly or funny looking to the next man. I agree with Leslie that beauty will forever exist and be present.. My definition of beauty is broken into two perspectives; pure and impure. Pure beauty found in a person is when that person is true to them selves and that shines through making them beautiful, this is the kind of beauty I see in my grandma. I call that a pure beauty when the person is beautiful for what they are not necessarily what they look like. Like infants or rainbows they’re both beautiful for what they are, it’s pure. Impure beauty is when you’re beautiful for your aesthetics. Models judged solely on their appearance are products of impure beauty. Impure beauty has nothing to do with the person you are.
All beauty is the object of admiration and envy because common people believe that being beautiful is directly related with fame or success, popularity and wealth, especially impure beauty. Most of the time people who envy fail to recognize their own beauty. Some people spend so much time envying others that they lose themselves and any hope of ever accomplishing pure beauty. They also risk losing others around them. Pure beauty is admired because people who posses pure beauty normally are confident and secure. Inanimate beautiful objects are admired simply because of what they are, like waterfalls. Like Leslie and Rebecca said whether your Miss America or a wrinkled old lady both can be beautiful.
The pursuit of beauty is not always a successful task. For instance women who seek plastic surgery to become beautiful (Kanye West’s mother died from it.) Or guys who work hard to gain these slamming bodies may not always make the healthiest decisions. . Not only do guys wanting muscles make bad decisions but anyone with an eating disorder. Anorexia and bulimia have haunted people with insecurities due to weight for years. I believe the only time beauty leads to pain is when you try to pursue impure beauty. The pursuit of impure beauty will always lead to pain. Yet attempting to pursue pure beauty at worst will lead to self knowledge. Anyone who tries to become beautiful in the pure sense will always find pleasure, because there’s nothing corrupt, you’re becoming true to thy self therefore you only achieve pleasure through your beauty. You can also have both impure beauty and pure beauty, its not like you have one or nothing.
Through writing this blog I came to the conclusion that true beauty is pure beauty. Beauty that shines through a person, beauty that can light up a room, beauty found in the heart of a family, beauty that’s untouched.
I would have to agree with both Becca's and Leslie's comments. Beauty is in the perception of the holder. I met Leslie's cousin, and she really is beautiful. I never can understand why people, so beautiful like she is, can't see it for themselves. I think beauty goes deeper than physical attributes, it has to. So many times I have heard people say that a person was cute, until they started talking. Or, someone was gorgeous, but their personality ruins it all. Inner beauty, or in some cases ugliness, can make or destroy a person.
I really don't know why beauty is so strongly strived for. I think people have blurred the image of what beauty is. I look at these models who are skin and bones, and I rarely see something beautiful. They seriously look sick to me. I think people see this so much, and they think "That’s what I need to be." So we get these warped emotions, and these messed up kids, who are bulimic and anorexic, all to just strive for an ounce of beauty. It isn't necessary. Beauty is everywhere. It can be found in a picture, in a childs laugh, in the moment when you finally decide to give your heart to someone. It is in everything. I think beauty is envied, because true beauty is also happiness. If someone is happy, most likely they're not feeling too beautiful.
I heard this story once about a man that wanted to marry this women from India because she was so beautiful to him because of her personality, but her appearance was not appealing at all. He offered her father 20 cows to marry her. The father answered that that daughter was only worth one cow. The man swore she was worth 20. His friends never understood why, since she wasn't 'beautiful' at all. Years later, his one friend went to visit him. When he knocked on a door, a beautiful woman opened the door. The friend was shocked. The man introduced them saying, "You remember my wife don't you?" The moral of the story was that since her husband thought she was beautiful, she too began to believe she was beautiful, and that confidence gave her the perception of beauty.
This story proves that happiness is beauty as well.
I think that is why beauty is strived for and envied so much. Who wouldn't want to feel that confidence and happiness? This is why it brings us pain and pleasure. Because if you dont feel it in yourself, then you don't feel happiness. And when you don't feel happiness the things around you won't seem as beautiful.
Aw now that Les and Bec just had their little moment, I think it's safe for everyone else to comment now. And Les, I COUDN'T help but notice that you use repitition throughout your blog very frequently and i have to say that it works for you and is "effective." Ok, so now that that's out of the way...
It's true that we've always been compelled by beauty, but never before have we allowed society to define it for us as much as we do today. This happens for a couple of reasons, including pressure, the media, and just the fact that we want to "look damn good" around the opposite sex. When mirrors used to appear in places as simple as bathrooms, mirrors can now be found everywhere- hanging up on the living room wall, floor length mirrors in bedrooms...they're everywhere. This is tribute to the fact that we really are obsessed with the concept of beauty. We can't help but be in awe at the sight of something beautiful. Part of the problem is that we are told what beauty should be... we see "beautiful" actresses in magazines, we see the "beautiful"faces of boy bands on tv. The word "beauty" is losing its ability to be stretched to mean both outer AND inner beauty. I think we're all after beauty simply because we want to feel good. When you wake up and go to school knowing you're having a terrible hair day, you aren't as social as you would be if you thought your hair looked nice that day. Studies prove this (Mike Galli after your battle royale with Cervi, don't quote me). According to a survey, 90% of teenaged girls would change something about their appearance in order to be beautiful. Girls are definitely more obsessed with beauty, of their own beauty and envying the beauty of other girls. I don't think many boys want to be "beautiful" (of course they don't want to necessarily be ugly) but a lot of them (the jerks out there) are obsessed with nailing a hot, "beautiful" girlfriend. Again, this is because of the pressure society puts on us. Les brought up a good point with America's Next Top Model. What makes someone beautiful on the outside is all of the features that make them unique. If everyone looked exactly the same, would we be able to pick out who is beautiful? Physically no, but the answer is that we WOULD be able to pick out who is beautiful. In fact, since everyone wouldn't be judged physically, it would be easier for a person's inner beauty to shine through. Beauty is not perfection, and I think that this has been forgotten over time.
Oh that’s such an easy question; beauty is truth!
No, I’m joking. Technically, Becca and Leslie stole all the words out of my mouth and now I’m probably going to repeat their insightful words, no not really.
Beauty is, in my opinion, a light that shines out of every person and or thing; it’s a light that is of course unique and special in it’s own way. Beauty is a light because sometimes the person who is recognized as beautiful, like Leslie’s bulimic cousin, does not see the light (beauty) that shines off themselves. Beauty isn’t something the person holding it can truly see, unless they believe in it, beauty gives off an aura that is felt by other people around them. This is the same with light, the sun does not really see itself as being intensely bright, but the earth that feels and sees it can certainly feel the sun’s intense, bright rays of light. I agree with every word that Leslie said, when she said that beauty is only beauty when that certain person truly believes in it. It’s a confusing concept, but it’s true. The example Leslie gave about the “oh so gorgeous wedding,” is a perfect example of what beauty really is. If you don’t feel it to be beautiful than it isn’t, you have your own perspectives. Becca’s example of her step-mom is another good example. How can such a physically beautiful woman with shiny teeth and olive skin be that bad of a person? But that’s only physical beauty. Life would be so much simpler if the mean looking guy really is mean and the beautiful woman is perfect, but life’s not meant to be like that, I guess. Beauty has it’s own way of thinking and choosing, it’s a complicated word with SO many meanings and SO little ways truly show it to everyone.
I agree that everyone and everything is beautiful because they have that quality in them, even if they don’t really see it. I have to admit that I’m like Becca, I always wanted to be that beauty stereotype girl, but I don’t really care anymore, I’m beautiful in my own unique way! But I’m sort of lying to myself when I said that because no one’s that confident, even if they show it. It’s true. Maybe I don’t go “Argh, I’m so ugly!” But I do feel that I’m not as pretty as I should be and I believe that’s okay, everyone has their pitfall when they believe they are ugly or not macho enough. Even if everyone has their own inner “true beauty,” we can safely say we’re only humans. We have our malfunction, we just have to know how to deal with them, now that’s true beauty too. It’s knowing when to accept yourself even through the toughest times. True beauty is knowing and believing in yourself.
It's strange how girls are first at posting on this topic.^^
To me, beauty is the result of a deep, emotion evoking quality you feel inside your soul. I think that is where true beauty comes from. True beauty can not be faked. You can fake that you think something is beautiful but after time your true emotions will show through. If something is truly beautiful it touches something within your soul that can not be erased. I find this in very few things. I think sunsets and sunrises over the ocean are truly beautiful. I also think a snow covered trail on a mountain with other mountains in the background with small snow flurries falling on your face is truly beautiful. When I think of true beauty I tend to think of extravagant landscapes. I don’t find true beauty as something a person can possess on the outside. It’s not thinking someone is “cute” or “hot” or “gorgeous”. Beauty in people comes from within. Overcoming obstacles, looking at life with the utmost respect and admiration no matter what hardships you have had to overcome, helping people in their greatest time of need is beauty. I think that these qualities are many times found in people who also tend to have an attractive outward appearance because the people that possess the qualities usually take the time to maintain themselves well, and thus also have an outer appearance that matches their inner qualities. Over time I think it has come to be that someone that looks appealing embodies beauty, when this is not the case. So, as you say Bunje, this makes the peacocks look for the attractive feathers or the ducks wiggles their butts as ways to determine beauty from a distant. But I think that beauty can only be discovered in time, after getting to understand a person. I find many older people, our elders to be beautiful. The experiences they have to share with the rest of us and the wisdom they have acquired over the years is beautiful.
Because these qualities are desirable in a spouse, a friend, a role model people try to be possess beauty. It’s like those women who spend thousands upon thousands of dollars getting cosmetic surgery to remove signs of aging. When in fact, I think that there is true beauty in aging. Each line or wrinkle you may have shows some story and is a physical reminder of the obstacles one has been through. The people that chase youth are inevitably chasing what they think is beauty. But I believe that being confident in yourself and your appearance is beauty, true beauty not the physical type of beauty. We are surrounded everyday by people envious of others beauty but typically the people that most look up to as beautiful have only that, looks. I find it much more beautiful to have the looks and the smarts and experiences to back up that beauty. Physical or outer beauty can fade and will with age which makes the struggle for this beauty unworthy of our time and effort. True beauty is the whole package, something that can not fade with time.
I agree with Leslie when she says, “Though opposite emotion, both are sparked by your personal connection and insight.” When she is talking about beauty. True beauty is something different for everyone. It is a spark in your soul that let’s you know what is beautiful to you, so in that sense beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, more in the heart of the beholder.
For me, for something to be beautiful, it has to inspire awe, wonder, and/or amazement. When Rebecca said that something has to be unique to be beautiful, I agree with her up to a certain point. Volcanic eruptions, for example, are beautiful. I have never been lucky to see one in person, but I have seen clips of what they look like, and they are awe-inspiring. They are not unique, though, thus I don’t agree with Rebecca completely.
Regarding people though, a person that is beautiful is appeasing to the eye. That is my view at least. For the beauty within to count, there has to be beauty on the outside. By beauty I don’t necessarily mean thin as a rail, blonde hair, and plump like a partridge, or whatever that phrase was from the story last year. Different people are pleased by different features. It is true that without the beauty within, physical beauty doesn’t mean much. Without physical beauty, though, it is harder to notice the beauty within.
The pursuit of beauty is one of admiration and envy because those who don’t have it envy it because they want it for themselves, but still admire it because it takes a mixture of natural and work to be beautiful. The pursuit of this brings pain because it takes work and time to be beautiful. It brings pleasure because the eye of the opposite sex, or same sex for those that it applies, is worth the work.
For a girl, this could include things like dieting, which seems to be all the new rage, make-up, and a bit of presence always helps. Working out is also important, although not quite as important as it is for guys. For a guy, different things that a guy has to do to keep up with a woman’s expectations include working out and dieting if necessary. It is a misconception that guys care about physical beauty more than girls do. Girls care about it just as much. A poll done by Cat Country, I believe, maybe it was SoJo, said that the number one things girls care about is man’s body. A sense of humor is second to that.
The pleasure of beauty being so important is that those who have it reap its rewards. Those who work for a body can have the reward of members of the opposite sex look with desire. This may seem almost cruel, but beauty is something that is worked for in many cases. Sports, exercising, dieting, hygiene, and other factors affect physical beauty. People think that looking at one’s physical beauty is shallow, but physical beauty helps to show one’s work ethic and self value combined. Even the beautiful but less smart women work for their beauty, whether it be not eating that snack or doing sit-ups and crunches. That is why beauty is so important to me, because I know how hard one has to work to become or stay beautiful.
Hmmm... Beauty... Well I suppose that when faced with such a hard question their really only is one true source for answers in life, Google.com. (Now that I think about it I probably should have said the Bible for that, oh well, Google just came to mind. I guess this means my list of chief religious texts should now go 1. Google.com. 2. The Bible) First off, there’s around 1,060,000,000, so its obvious that there’s a lot of interest in the idea of beauty.
Result 1.
Beauty.com - Cosmetics, Skin Care, Fragrances, Beauty and Makeup Tips
www.drugstore.com/qxc9730_333181_sespider/beauty_com/beauty_com.htm
-A large proportion of my results were of this nature. I’ll skip most of these just because I don’t feel like wasting valuable space on the internet.
Result 2.
Beauty - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty
-Of course, no matter what you search for, Wikipedia is always a top result. (Oh, and just to correct my previous statement; 1. Google. 2. Wikipedia. 3. The Bible.)
Result 3.
Beauty Quotes and Sayings
www.quotegarden.com/beauty.html
-Sweet, I’m totally D-blocking some of these later on in this essay. Upon looking through this list, some of the ideas are striking, but none are as striking as the fact that this list manages to contain quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, as well as Roseanne. I just never saw Rosanne as being on quite the same level.
Result 4.
Buy beauty, face, and lips online.
www.drugstore.com/qxc40_333181_sespider/beauty/beauty.htm
-I find the concept that one can, “buy beauty” somewhat incredulous. Though I suppose if you look at the title as a whole, buying beauty seems somewhat more reasonable when compared with the idea of buying “face” or “lips” online.
I could include more but they all simply seem to be reiterations of these same general ideas. It seems to me that our culture has tangled up the term “Beauty” with the word “Cosmetics.” First of all, I must be honest about one simple fac; I have absolutely no qualms about me personally wearing makeup. As a drama kid, I have worn far more makeup over the last year and a half than most men ever do (or ever should) wear. The simple truth is that over time, I’ve stopped really minding wearing makeup, and as gay as it may seem, at times I actually like how I look with makeup on. Now I’m not talking, lipstick, eyeliner, and that sort of crap. I’m just saying I don’t see any problem whatsoever with some foundation and just a little bit of blush, I mean, I wouldn’t go put on makeup in the morning, but I can understand why some women do. I really believe that cosmetics can have a positive affect on beauty to a certain extent.
There is though, a dark side to beauty. Take for instance this one girl in my gym class. Some of my friends, who shall remain nameless for their own protection, and I have taken to referring to her under the names “Pretty Girl,” “Makeup Girl,” and “Mary Kay,” due to the fact that she wears WAY TOO MUCH MAKEUP every day, and we’re all complete assholes. The thing find shocking about this girl is the fact that while she would by no means be a knockout, she would probably look fairly acceptable if it weren’t for the overtly complicated Kabuki-esque makeup she slaps on every morning. As far as physical beauty is concerned, there is a whole lot to be said for the natural look.
I don’t believe that beauty, in its crudest physical sense, is something that can be bought. Either you are beautiful or you are not. Now, I don’t believe that physical beauty and hotness are not necessarily one in the same thing. Beauty is a thing that takes your breath away. It makes you’re head spin, your palms get sweaty, and you are left with nothing you can say. Hotness merely gives you an erection and makes you say “Damn, I’d hit that.” George W. Russell once said “Our hearts are drunk with a beauty our eyes could never see.” Beauty, in its truest form, lies in what you desire, not in what you have. The most beautiful of all dreams, are the ones that we have absolutely no hope of ever accomplishing, and if by some bizarre streak of luck you do manage to find what you had envisioned as so beautiful it quickly loses its luster. There is nothing more beautiful than a fiction. American society has had all of its ideals about human beauty and loveliness built off the media standards we have been pressed with for years. We are left with this image of the perfect air brushed woman, who’s every blemish and imperfection has been, through a combination of surgery and digital editing, magically removed. We are left with ideals of human beauty that bear absolutely no resemblance to reality.
I’ve never really believed in Beauty and the Beast. I mean, it’s a nice idea, it just unfortunately never really could happen. I mean ladies, correct me if I’m wrong, but if some sort of demented looking 8 foot tall werewolf came up and asked if he could take you out for a drink sometime, it doesn’t really matter how sweet he is or how cute all of his talking furniture may be, you are probably going to say no. Something about the double rows of razor sharp teeth seems to turn some people off. The real reason an image such as this persists is that it is thoroughly beautiful. It is meant to give hope to all of the singularly undesirable people who find themselves to be the beast, striving after ideas of beauty that in reality it seems we could never truly reach.
Beauty most accurately describes all of the things we ourselves will never truly attain, but search after anyway. It is in every thought of who we want to be, what we would to do, and every thing we want to own, and every person we want to spend our lives with. True beauty is rare. If it were common, there wouldn’t be anything beautiful about it in the first place. It is what we all strive for, and I hope that someday I might achieve it, no matter how futile it may seem at the moment.
Grrraggghh. And once again I made my Blog all bitchy and moany. I think I’ll just leave this with some of my favorite quotes about beauty.
“Moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.”-Derrick Zoolander.
“I hear words like "beauty" and "handsomness" and "incredibly chiseled features" and for me that's like a vanity of self absorption that I try to steer clear of. “- Hansel
“It's that damn Hansel! He's so hot right now!”-Mugatu
“Have you ever wondered if there was more to life, other than being really, really, ridiculously good looking? “- Derek Zoolander.
(Oh, one more correction. 1. Zoolander 2. Google. 3. Wikipedia. 4. Bible.)
Everyone is beautiful. Christina Aguilera even said it herself. Beauty can be defined an infinity amount of ways. It’s all about perception, like I think everyone before me said. To me, beauty is tricky to define. Something can be aesthetically beautiful. Flowers are nice to look at. Objects can be beautiful because they can’t speak. I think that’s a big part of beauty, when it comes to humans, at least. Beauty isn’t just looks. It’s personality and attitude and the way you act. I completely agree with what Alli said. Personality can make or break someone’s perception of you.
Beauty is one of those things that everyone wants…don’t deny it. In our day and age, everyone is pressured into being beautiful. I think all of us smart AP kids realize that beauty goes deeper than the skin. But for everyone else, they think they have to change their appearance based on what they see in magazines or on TV. Honestly, I don’t know why. When someone allows their personality to shine, they are more appealing, I guess you could say.
There are so many people who are physically attracted to someone else and then go on a date with them and say forget it. Looks aren’t everything. There are also so many people who say someone’s ugly and after getting to know them, change their mind. You can’t judge someone based on if they have a small head, a big nose, a sharp butt or nice female genitals…oh and 12th period, I’m not crazy. You’ll get it once you read the thing.
After thinking about it, everyone really does have their own definition of beauty and I’m not completely sure what mine is. Since I can’t really put it into words, I really don’t know what the big deal is. I think people are more concerned with the word rather than the concept. They’re not willing to actually find out what beauty means to them. It sounds nice. They want it, just like they want a new purse or a new pair of jeans. And now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve never heard a guy say he wants to be beautiful…well at least not a straight one. I guess beauty isn’t masculine enough for them. I’m not sure…what do you think fellas?
All in all, beauty is something we’ve, as a society, become obsessed with. Girls do their make-up just to run to Wawa to get a sandwich. My sister has to look cute when she goes to the gym. Cut me a break. Looks can only get you so far. And looks aren’t the only thing that makes you beautiful. Wear some dirty sweats. Don’t worry about make-up. Slap a smile on your face. Be beautiful. Hahaha and Mike, I thought you were talking about the place Volcanic Eruptions.
True Beauty? What is that, anyway? According to Sophia Loren, “True beauty is a mirage”. So lets first contemplate a mirage. The hallucination invokes a desert scene, sweltering temperatures, and dehydration. Your thirsty tongue is as dry as parchment paper. Even the smallest drop of water would be welcome. All of a sudden, a lush oasis is visible just between the sloping desert sand dunes. You run to it, longing for the cool moisture of the water, but as you get closer, it simply fades away. Such is the image of humankind hungering for a specific beauty that simply does not exist, at least not for us. Sure, you may think you know just what beauty is. You may think that you see it far off in the distance, just out of your reach. But the truth is that you will never reach that oasis, for true beauty is unobtainable.
So what now? Beauty doesn’t exist? That is genuinely devastating…
On the contrary, beauty does exist. It is true beauty that I feel we cannot attain. Think about it. There are so many ways that someone or something can be beautiful: aesthetic beauty, inner beauty, and all the in-betweens. What makes the beauty true? The answer is most likely different for all of us- we cannot grasp this concept. Maybe we are all wrong. We could merely be mistaking beauty for something that is appealing. I am rambling now, but searching for the meaning of beauty isn’t exactly an easy thing.
Since the beginning of time, mankind has been in search of what they thought beauty was. Pythagoras observed beauty through mathematics, in symmetry. Artists such as Michelangelo tried to depict beauty through paintings and sculptures. And Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León set out on a quest for the Fountain of Youth in 1513-youth being an ideal characteristic of beauty. Unsurprisingly, Ponce de León never found the Fountain of Youth, just as the desert traveler’s mirage was never a reality.
There’s no escaping the fact that beauty has the power to render us both admirers and enviers. We are attracted to beauty. We admire it, consequently wanting to aquire that very same beauty for ourselves. It drives us crazy because we can never fully possess it in all of its capacities. People want to be beautiful. Women often wear make-up to make their skin flawless, or at least give them the illusion that it is flawless. Some get breast implants and lyposuction so that they will fit better into the ideal definition of beauty that our nation conveys through countless magazine ads, billboard advertisements, T.V. commercials, and movies. Yet again, this beauty is merely a deception.
The pursuit of beauty continues to be as great a concern today, just as much as it was in the past. Some are content in discovering there own meaning for it, while others struggle to obtain the apotheosis of beauty, never fully finding what they were searching for.
I guess you could say that I’ve been playing the devil’s advocate, totally contrasting with Leslie’s idea that beauty is always unavoidable. I most agree with Jon Henry when he said, “Beauty most accurately describes all of the things we ourselves will never truly attain, but search after anyway”.
I looked up the definition of beauty and there were plenty of definitions to describe one of the most subjective words in our English language. The first definition is the one Rebecca used. The other definitions were interesting. Definition 2: a beautiful person, esp. a woman. Definition 5: an individual pleasing or beautiful quality. Beauty is fickle. It changes depending on the context it is used in. However, there is an overall feeling beauty implies. Niah put it beautifully; “True beauty is pure beauty. Beauty that shines through a person, beauty that can light up a room, beauty found in the heart of a family, beauty that’s untouched.” I don’t think I could have explained it any better.
When I first read this blog immediately I thought of our discussion we had last year in Costal’s class about the quote “Beauty is truth, truth is beauty.” We discussed this quote for days and we still never acquired a concrete answer to the meaning of the quote. I firmly believe now in the impossibility of coming to a universal conclusion of what beauty really is. What makes something beautiful is as varied among people as what makes us love something. Leslie’s argument was beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Take myself for example. Horses are beautiful. Roses are beautiful. A child’s innocence is beautiful. True love is beautiful. Caring for someone is beautiful. I find these things beautiful, but the same things may not be true to someone else. The individual, you, decide what is beautiful and what isn’t.
Going back to what Niah said about true beauty being pure beauty, I thought of beauty of an old person. Taking into account that the old person hasn’t taken any sort of botox or anything like that, an old person has pure beauty. Physically an old person, or should I say an elderly person, doesn’t have the picturesque looks like a model or soft, smooth skin like the petals of a rose. Instead, every story, every memory, and every life crisis, during the natural aging process, makes an elder person beautiful. They have pure beauty. The pureness of their natural life cycle, the untouched-ness of it makes them beautiful. I know as adolescence we don’t appreciate the old or even care to worry about them. We take them for granted and we don’t have time for them. But they are some of the most pure creatures on our planet. Especially grandparents of our generation, before medical innovations came around and inspired people to inject themselves to force their skin to tighten up.
Why is beauty the object of admiration and envy? The physical side of beauty is always, and forever will be envied. People in our society, especially women constantly envy one another for their beauty. However, besides the physical aspect, pure or true beauty is always admired. People, who truly appreciate the beauty that surrounds them, admire it.
I think I can speak for both males and females that beauty will always cause us pain. We constantly search and work for obtaining the “perfect image” or should I say beauty. As much as men don’t want to admit to the fact that they want to be beautiful, they do. Men work out. They wear nice clothes. All of this to appear beautiful, particularly to the opposite sex. Females do the same thing, but more obviously. We find the cutest clothes and shoes, make sure our hair is perfect, and our body has to be model-like. These images of the perfect man and woman are what cause the most pain. However, the result of beauty – receiving compliments, getting the boyfriend/girlfriend of your dreams – is what makes is worthwhile.
You want the definition of Beauty? Courtney Marie Sophia Tomasello. I think that about sums it up.
Ok, ok, if you're one of those people who want a little more detail in an answer, than I'll indulge for you. Beauty is, plain and simply, a girl's worst nightmare. I'm not entirely sure if it's a boy's worst nightmare, however. This might be because, surprise, surprise, I am not a boy and thus don't know how boys feel. But I do think that most boys do put a little effort into their overall appearance. Maybe.
Let's start with what I think is beautiful. Anthony Kiedis is beautiful. (ANTHONY KIEDIS IS THE LEAD SINGER FROM THE RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS, for all you freaks out there who don't know who he is.) Actually, Anthony is horrifically ugly physically, because he was "a bit wild" in his younger years, to put it lightly, and I guess he's suffering from that now (just another reason to not do drugs, kids). No, Anthony Kiedis is beautiful solely because of his voice. Now I know that at least 40 percent of you nerds out there are saying "But that would mean his voice is beautiful!" You, friends, have not heard Anthony Kiedis sing then. Or at least not through my ears. I swear to you, every time that man opens his mouth I melt. Every worry I could possibly imagine evaporates as the angel that is Anthony Kiedis dances into my soul. (That was nice, right???) He's just so amazing that when ever I am asked to describe him the first thing that comes to mind is "beautiful", even if he an extremely ugly person physically. (In case you're wondering, I'm listening to my Chilis now)
The award for most physically beautiful, I think, goes to Owen Wilson. People might think it's kind of crooked but, I think it's pretty. And Brendon Benson of the Raconteurs is quite beautiful, too. Only physically, though. He has a nice voice, but that's not what makes him beautiful like my man Anthony. Ms. Bunje's pretty, but not as pretty as me, of course. Horses are beautiful. Oh, and my boo Mike Galli is HOTT! (wink!) [Italian inside joke] Speaking of which, his blog was awesome, but Ithought he was taking about the strip joint when he said Volcanic eruptions. Sorry Mike!
I can tell you someone who's NOT beautiful in any way possible- Mr. Olivo. I mean sure he teaches us some Italian here and there, but his personality makes him overwhelmingly ugly. Bruttissimo, in Italiano.
True beauty can best be perceived from the feeling the beholder gets when around "the beauty". I don't think that beauty is a physical trait. It's more of a perception of emotion. I think Anthony Kiedis is beautiful because of the way he makes me feel. Also Braddigan, whom I unfortunately forgot to mention. However, I could see a really pretty guy, and he could be a jerk. That's not beautiful.
So, why go through such great lengths for physical beauty? Honestly, I have no idea. That's why I don't. I don't spend hours and hours making sure that I am the perfect embodiment of beauty. I already am, in my own eyes. Just like the words of my Chilis in the wonderful song, Hard to Concentrate: "Finally you have found something perfect. Finally you have found yourself."
Beat that. ; )
*when I was talking about owen, I meant his nose was crooked.
*when I was talking about owen, I meant his nose was crooked.
Sorry about that my cpu hates me.
It's because I'm beautiful.
I disagree with what Mike said about beauty being awe-inspiring. Although I agree some of the most astounding forms of beauty are certainly awe-inspiring. But beauty, is wonderful, while ugliness causes wonder. They’re similar, in that they both leave you almost in a daze, with a picture of the thing stuck in your head, and wondering how something could be that way. But something so terrible, so ugly- like the volcano eruption destroying towns and villages, houses, lives and hops- is utterly amazing but leaves you feeling terrible. Beauty is something pleasing, that leaves you with a good feeling and maybe even a renewed hope. I liked the definition Becca used. And I definitely agree with both Becca and Leslie that a wrinkled old lady can be just as beautiful as Miss America. The physical beauty of something isn’t as important as the internal beauty it merely symbolizes.
I don’t know, I guess I’d say beauty is like the sum of a person’s character and their physical beauty, with their character weighed more. Kind of like on the AP test. My initial impression of people generally seems to be tainted by how I perceived them physically (if they’re pretty, etc.). For example, when I was little I tended to only want to be friends with others kids that I thought were pretty or generally good-looking. As I got older, of course, how someone looked was no longer the dominant impression I had of them. It’s seems now, though, as I’ve gotten to know friends much better and I much better who they really are, I see them differently. I can’t even just pick an adjective to describe how they look, because all I can think of is things to describe their personality or just specific features. The picture I have of them in my head is one totally affected by how I feel about them. Their zits are gone, their worst features hardly detectable, their smiles and best features highlighted. Even when I see them, I only really pick up the better qualities, the ones that fit in with my image of them. I may not like their yearbook picture, but I can always think of them, and see them as, beautiful. At the same time, a mean or cruel person kind of appears distorted when I picture them, like their face is shaded with their actions and bad personality.
It’s kind of obvious why someone would want to be beautiful. People are inherently attracted to beautiful people (and apparently learn better from them, too), plus it can give you more confidence and make you feel better about yourself. The problem with beauty is that it’s often contrasted with ugliness, both inside and out.
This definition wasn’t as bad, but I’m still tired of defining things. That’s what dictionaries are for.
We are bombarded everyday with beauty contests like Miss Universe and shows like Extreme Makeover. It doesn’t help that on almost every page of fashion magazines there are women that seem perfect and flawless. This causes us to constantly ask ourselves what exactly beauty is. According to Miriam Webster it is “the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit”. To me beauty is a quality or feature that is gratifying or pleasing to the senses. When I looked at this blog the first thing that popped into my mind was Christina Aguilera’s song “You’re Beautiful”, but that’s beside the point. Like Alli, I agree that the models that are skin and bones are not pretty. They are not “real” women and the media needs to stop portraying them as godlike creatures. Just because they caught the eye of a multi-million dollar fashion guru, doesn’t mean they should become the standard of beauty. When we get caught up in trying to let the media establish the definition of beauty, we lose sight of our own personal definitions. I feel bad for the girls that feel obligated to become anorexic or bulimic because they think that it is the only way to be seen as beautiful because the media advertises that skinny is more appealing. I also feel bad for the girls who are not comfortable with themselves and feel the need to get plastic surgery just because there nose isn’t small enough or their boobs aren’t big enough. It is sad how superficial our culture is becoming. Those are the extremes of trying to look beautiful, but what about beauty products. Even by the label they claim instant beauty, well then again there are people who look worse with make-up on but let’s not go there, and pretty much every teenage girl has used some form of a beauty product and the end result is usually a more appealing face. So far I have only talked about physical beauty when in reality there are so many different types of beauty. I think that beauty is another word in the English language that should have more words to describe it. I think the Eskimo’s are on to something with the having more words to mean different things. Beauty is admired because well to put it simply it’s beautiful. Things that are beautiful are appealing to look at and easy on the eyes or beautiful sounds are nice to listen to. The only envy I can think of when I think of beauty is how women envy other women’s looks and I don’t know why anyone would envy beauty because something might be beautiful in one way but ugly in another. For women the pursuit of beauty brings us pain as well as pleasure. Why? When I used to be in dance (when I was like 3) my mom would do my hair and make up for the shows and since it had to be stage make up and my dance teachers always wanted our hair to be perfect it usually took a lot of time. When I would complain about how long it would take my mom would say “it’s tough to be beautiful”. To a point it can be. I’m sure you don’t feel too great after plastic surgery. The pleasure comes when you get those compliments that you look nice because then it makes you feel like your hard work has paid off. But in the end beauty is only in the eye of the beholder.
Some people declare beauty as appearance; others say beauty is within the soul. Paintings, sculptures, clothing, homes, buildings, ext, all have to do with appearance and what they look like, while people can be appearance as well as beauty of the soul. Beauty is what we see. I mean that beauty is interpreted with our appearance and with our personality. What others see in us is and what we see in us is beauty. Make sense? I agree completely with Becca when she says that you can be Miss America and be beautiful and you can be 90 years old, wrinkly, and still be beautiful. It’s how we see them.
I completely agree with Courtney T, beauty is a girl’s worst enemy. Every girl wants to be considered beautiful, I want to be considered beautiful but those two things will never happen. Girls go to the extreme and apply too much make up to make themselves try to impress someone, let’s face it, who in freaking Oakcrest does anyone want to impress? This one girl wants to get boob implants so it’ll give her more confidence, ok, go for it, you’ll drag along back problems with you. I’m tired of seeing these gorgeous girls apply make up and become hideous (well, not hideous, just fake looking), stop eating and throwing up to become thin, and always denying their true beauty. Boys, on the other hand, could care less. I talk to Gary about this, and his response is, “Felicia, I don’t care.” Guys are blessed to not care and not feel like they are judge by society (Jeannie said it right). Maybe I’m totally wrong, maybe some do care.
My one friend wants to loose weight and wants to change things about her because she thinks the boy that she likes will fall in love with the new and improved her. I on the other hand, tell her that she is beautiful and that he probably likes her for what she looks like and, most importantly, who she is. This is not the only friend that has said those words to me and it saddens me quite a bit. Everyone’s perception of beauty is different. I look at my class mates and I see gorgeous, strong willed girls, so if they come up to me complaining about how they look, my reaction is ALWAYS “You are beautiful, why are you complaining?” Sure, magazines portray the bone thin girls as goddesses and People, Star, Us magazines will put up any horrific photo of a well known celebrity and have a caption above saying, “(name of star) now weighs 130lbs” and we are supposed to feel horrible. Eh, not so much.
Appearance is what our society sees beauty as, but the personality of a person makes them truly beautiful. Going back to the example of my friend, she is happy, entertaining, witty, sweet, and considerate, caring, and anything else you can think of to describe someone in a pleasant manor. Her personality makes her gorgeous and she does not need to become new and improved and neither does anyone else. Be happy with who and what you are. That is beauty.
“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.” ~Emerson
I think beauty is an abstract, intangible thing only captured when not trying to obtain it. Beauty is not something that you can achieve, but it is more a natural presence that embodies people, places and things. Beauty can be applied in many different situations, to many different things. People can be beautiful, places can be beautiful, and so can the all too familiar beautiful situation.
First of all, I will try to speak about beauty regarding places. To me it seems that there are those few remote places in the world that are beautiful. A place to get away from everything and everyone, a place where one can relax, and be one with the environment. To me, a beautiful place is more that getaway island in the Bahamas more than the quiet confines of my room. To some I am sure that there idea of beauty is a quiet room, low lighting, a comforter, and a good book. However I am not one of those people. Id much rather be sipping daiquiris on a beach listening to the soothing sounds of the rippling waves against the course white sand in the Caribbean. For some reason it feels if I were in the place, everything would be fine, and a worry would not cross my mind. That is sort of what I think beauty is regarding a place, which is somewhat linked to a situation.
Certain situations include being isolated on a hammock between two palm trees soaking in the vibe.
Beauty is one of those topics that has no universal agreement. Men think that the women in bikini's in magazines are beautiful, when mostly all women would say it's skanky or something. Women think that different pieces of art are beautiful while men think that art is boring. Everyone has a different perception of what beauty is. I think beauty is like what Mike said, (yes, I'm agreeing with Mike after two heated days of argument in class about that freaking article) for something to be beautiful it has to inspire awe, wonder, and amazement. If you see something that really catches your attention and really stands out, then I believe that to you, whoever you may be, it's beautiful. Now I'm not neccessarily saying that every person you think is beautiful has to be good looking, because I think when it comes to people, even to other things, beauty is held inside. It's like when you really care about someone - regardless of looks - somehow they always "look better" when you really care about them and enjoy their personalities. I think personality, like most of my classmates have said, makes up a lot of beauty within people.
I love that Courtney said beauty is a girl's worst enemy, because it totally is. So many girls try so hard to be what they consider beautiful - and it can really make or break them. Felicia, I just read about how you agreed with her and said that you think you will never be beautiful. Really, don't ever say that. I don't know anyone like you and your quirky little personality - you're beautiful. And I think knowing that you're beautiful comes with confidence and acceptance.
I just remembered that old saying "beauty is pain." I guess I can agree because people try so hard to be beautiful. Physically and mentally. Physically, like most of my peers said, because of surgerys and whatnot - but mentally, I think, because you need to be able to overcome different obstacles such as becoming more confident, being stronger, and just having a better attitude and more acceptance towards yourself.
And Ms. Bunje, you are beautiful -even with that black eye of yours. I'm in the computer lab right now and you just walked by and said, and I quote, "are you doing your blog, you sweet girl?" You are the greatest :)
“Beauty lies within the eyes of the beholder.” Beauty cannot be defined because everyone has their own opinion of what beauty is. It is just one of those tricky words, like love. Of course, there is a general definition for these kinds of words in any dictionary, but when you really try to apply that word in life, two people can think opposite things. A pink flower could be the prettiest thing to an individual. This explains why beauty is the object of both admiration and envy. A lot of people refer to beauty as a woman trait because of the way beautiful goes along with pretty. Beautiful is often a stereotype. The stereotype of a beautiful person is often thin, nice teeth, nice hair, and good clothes. These materialistic things often define beauty these days. A lot of boys do not want to be called pretty, however in the same way females are beautiful, boys are too. Besides the fact of the “movie star” image of being beautiful, a landscape of a mountain range out west could be beautiful to someone when someone else may think that the skyline of Atlantic City is. Beauty is what something is that an individual finds attractive or important or unique in their own way. Wow, this is actually a lot harder to explain than it seems. You really have my brain working Ms. Bunje. Let me see what everyone else has had to say about the topic. Well, I think that Jonathon H. made a very interesting point of what comes up when you search beauty on Google and around 1,060,000,000, so IT IS obvious that there’s a lot of interest in the idea of beauty. Cosmetics, Skin Care, Fragrances, Beauty and Makeup Tips and Quotes and Sayings. And that is funny about that website where you can buy lips and faces online. That goes to show that beautiful has so many definitions. Personally, I think I tend to see the more stereotypical definition of beauty. When I use the world beautiful, I am often talking about a person who just stands out above the average. After doing this blog though and really thinking about it, maybe I should change my views. I am starting to think that maybe a garden of pink roses is just as beautiful as the spots on a cheetah or even as Ms. Bunje says, the way peacocks fluff their plumage and the way ducks wiggle their butts. The whole world is beautiful in its own special way because everything is different. I think difference and variety is what makes the world beautiful. That’s it! That is why everyone has their own opinion of beauty because everyone is different, but really, everyone has something beautiful about them anyway. I hope that’s not confusing to you because I really think I understand the whole concept of beauty, but then again, that’s just me, and in the end, everyone sees things differently.
From the Moment I saw you,
from the moment I looked into your eyes
there was something about you
I knew I knew
that you were once in a life time
a treasure near impossible to find
and I know how lucky I am to have you
Chorus:
Cause I've seen the rainbows that can take your breath away
the beauty of the setting sun that ends a perfect day
and when it comes to shooting stars, I've seen a few
but I've never seen anything...as beautiful as you
Holding you in my arms
no one else has fit so perfectly
I could dance forever with you, with you
and at the stroke of midnight
please forgive me if I can't let go
cause I never dreamed I'd find a Cinderella of my own
Chorus:
Cause I've seen the rainbows that can take your breath away
the beauty of the setting sun that ends a perfect day
and when it comes to shooting stars, I've seen a few
but I've never seen anything...as beautiful as you
Chorus repeat:
Cause I've seen the rainbows that can take your breath away
the beauty of the setting sun that ends a perfect day
and when it comes to shooting stars, I've seen a few
but I've never seen anything...
Oh Oh, Oh no, I've never seen anything...as beautiful as you
from the moment I saw you,
from the moment I looked into your eyes...
“Beautiful” Jim Brickman
He drowns in his dreams
An exquisite extreme I know
He’s as damned as he seems
And more heaven than a heart could hold
And if I try to save him
My whole world could cave in
It just ain't right
It just ain't right
Oh and I don't know
I don't know what he's after
But he's so beautiful
Such a beautiful disaster
And if I could hold on
Through the tears and the laughter
Would it be beautiful?
Or just a beautiful disaster
He's magic and myth
As strong as what I believe
A tragedy with
More damage than a soul should see
And do I try to change him?
So hard not to blame him
Hold on tight
Hold on tight
Oh 'cause I don't know
I don't know what he's after
But he’s so beautiful
Such a beautiful disaster
And if I could hold on
Through the tears and the laughter
Would it be beautiful?
Or just a beautiful disaster
I'm longing for love and the logical
But he's only happy hysterical
I'm waiting for some kind of miracle
Waited so long
So long
He’s soft to the touch
But frayed at the end he breaks
He’s never enough
And still he's more than I can take
Oh 'cause I don't know
I don't know what he's after
But he's so beautiful
Such a beautiful disaster
And if I could hold on
Through the tears and the laughter
Would it be beautiful?
Or just a beautiful disaster
He’s beautiful
Such a beautiful disaster
"Beautiful Disaster" Kelly Clarkson
Ok so back to back these too songs played as I sat down to write my blog. The first song is one of my all time songs. If you have never heard it you should defiantly go listen to it. It is about a guy who is in love with a girl who is “beautiful.” This song has made me realize that people connect and often use love and beauty hand in hand. Most people love beautiful things. Guys love beautiful girls both inside and out. Nature lovers love the beautiful mountains. Rachel loves to scores goals, to her scoring is beautiful, especially if it a nice shot. Beauty has numerous dimensions, dimensions that take different routes to different people. To me life is beautiful. Waking up the next morning is beautiful. Knowing that I am surrounded by people who love me is beautiful. Beauty is a term often over used. I am caught to often using the word beautiful, like oh that’s beautiful or really pretty or oh I just love that. Beauty is so complex. I love that it is complex though. It is beautiful to hear my parents tell me they love me before I go to sleep. My family is beautiful both inside and out. The structure in which we live upon is beautiful. Achievement is beautiful. Accomplishing something especially for the first time is amazing. That amazing feeling of accomplishment is beautiful. Yes I know I am just repeating myself but it is the truth.
Beauty is a sense. A sense of contentment. Finding something beautiful is usually treasured and held on to. Relationships can be beautiful though they can also be a beautiful disaster, which brings me to my next point. Nature is beautiful but earthquakes kill people, is that beautiful. I believe that the occurrence is beautiful and the nature of it is beautiful but the consequences are not. Things can be seem beautiful at first though can deceive your mind and send you off right back to where you started. Relationships are the best example of this. One minute you are in love holding hands and the next you are yelling and screaming I hate you. Love can leave you heart broken. But why do we go back to it? Why do we trust it so much? I am not just talking about relationships. Why do we always need and go back to “beautiful” things, if they do us wrong? I believe we do this because of the feelings they give us. We can not leave those feelings so we just crave it again and again no matter how many times something goes wrong. We love that feeling of belonging, that feeling of being cared about, that feeling of being of some importance. The feelings beautiful things give us are unexplainable and not something you can find. They are simply brought upon yourself. They are brought upon you by sight, taste, hearing, feeling, and smelling. Our senses create those beautiful things in which our brains store in our minds.
Ok so now that I have established the fact that our senses create beauty, now lets talk about that everyday hassle to be beautiful. Who denotes what beauty is and why do we follow? No girl can lie and deny the fact that they love to receive compliments. Compliments about anything, clothes, hair, shoes, teeth, smile, eyes, etc. We strive everyday whether we think that or not to receive those compliments to win that approval. I do it sometimes myself. Now one of my biggest things is impressing guys. When I was single I was always trying to look nice, smell nice, just look beautiful. Well now most of that need went out the window because I have a boyfriend. A boyfriend that I don’t really tend to try and impress anymore. I guess I don’t try as hard now because I have him. He has seen me at my best and he has seen me at my worst and he still looks me in the eyes and tells me I am beautiful, no matter what. My dad has always told me I was beautiful ever since I was little. In fact not too long ago I went out to dinner with my boyfriend to a really nice restaurant and we got all dressed up. I wore a dress and did my hair and makeup and tried to look top notch. When I came down stairs my dad looked at me and told me I looked beautiful. Now yes it does mean something when Chris says it but when my dad says it has so much more meaning. He does not just mean that I look nice but he is also saying that I look presentable, that I am growing up too fast, that I his little girl no matter what, that I am his little beautiful creation.
Beauty is something in this world that will always have many dimensions. Everything is just B-E-A-UTIFUL.
I agree with Deanna. Everything is beautiful. Everyone sees different things as beautiful because everyone is different and everything is different. This is what makes the world so special. YAY WORLD!! hehe
To be honest, I'm not really sure what makes something beautiful. I don't really think of what beauty is, but, however, I know it when i see it. I don't really want to use this cliche but I really do think that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The opinion of beauty seems to vary from person to person and changes quite frequently with the passing of time. I really don't like this topic, it's somewhat difficult for me to write about. But I would have to agree with Megan, in that, everyone has their own definition to what beauty is.
In addition I also agree with Jon in his rambling about the difference between someone being beautiful and hot. I laughed a bit when i read it. Actually I enjoyed his whole response. Anyway, back to the topic. True beauty... hmmm... True beauty is something that stops you in your tracks, disallows you to function, and just puts you in a state of awe. If a person/object has true beauty, it is your right, as a person, to stop what ever it is that you're doing and just admire it. That type of beauty doesn't come around that often , but when it does, phew... it's refreshing. Also, I believe that true beauty could change someone's mood from being sad to happy in an instant. Say, for example, there is a painting. This said painting, is the most beautiful work of art the world has ever seen. Now, say that I'm having a bad day, i'm mad, annoyed, etc. Then all of a sudden, I get to see this painting and my mood changes from being miserable to happy in a matter of seconds. I'm not exactly sure if what i just said made any sense, but that's what I think of when I think of what true beauty is. It's a powerful thing, that true beauty.
Everyone wants to be beautiful. One person might think of themselves as being beautiful, where as another person might think that person is ugly. It's all perception. However, society tries to corrupt people and tell them that beauty should look like this, or look like that. What if someone doesn't want to look like everyone else? does that make them not beautiful? This sort of example happened on American Idol last night. There was one girl who could sing fairly well and would have, more than likely, advanced to Hollywood, but she was sort of strange, and not that pleasing to the eyes. However, she was comfortable with herself and didn't care that she wasn't societies definition of what beauty was. Technically, American Idol is supposed to be based on singing, but the judges told her that she didn't have the look and that this show wasn't for her. Apparently looks are accounted for just as heavily as the singing itself. How can the judges have a say on the looks of someone when they're supposed to be conducting a singing contest? What i get out of that is that the judges don't want not-so-beautiful people to be equal to the beautiful people. Hopefully that anecdote stayed on topic with the blog question.
The pursuit of beauty brings us pain and pleasure because, people try everything under the sun to become beautiful. Whether it be working out, buying makeup, etc. But once that person finds what makes them beautiful, they're happy. I think that once someone finds the secret to what beauty really is, they'll finally stop feeling the pain of striving for beauty, and bask in the rays of perfection. That was a bit cheesy but whatever. However, I feel that it's much easier for guys to find beauty rather than women. All a guy has to do is not smell bad, stay in shape, and not be a jerk all of the time. That's not all of course but i think those are the three main aspects. Women have so many more things to worry about that I don't really want to get into since I'm not entirely sure what all women do in their pursuit for beauty. I just figured that it's much more than what a guy does.
I just want to add in that I agree with Emrow; you are beautiful Ms. Bunje. You are missing one major fashion accessory I would want if I were you; an eye-patch. Seriously if I had a black eye I would totally where an eye-patch all the time, in fact I'm not quite sure why I don't wear an eye-patch even without having a black eye. With an eye patch, you could look both beautiful AND badass.
I guess I’ve never really thought critically about beauty, but as I think more and more about it, I realize how hard it is to nail a definition onto the word beauty and then to arbitrarily decide that that is the true beauty. But I suppose I’d better have a go at it, well beauty clearly has an aesthetic aspect but is that true beauty after all, beauty is only skin deep, so true beauty isn’t entirely physical. After all the definition of what makes anything whether its human or not varies across time and space, when busts of historical figures who were considered quite beautiful for their time are looked at it seems that they are quite ugly by today’s standards. So if beauty is not physical then it must be something of the soul, but what man can truly know a soul of another so beauty can’t just be purity of heart either. Therefore for me beauty for almost anyone is based either on judgments based upon what amounts of peoples personality they let be seen by others, or ever changing.
So then the real question is, why is beauty so important to people around the world? Personally I haven’t the faintest idea, I’ve never really understood why anyone would devote so much time and energy to something as pointless as looking physically attractive. I know I’m not physically attractive and I don’t really care all that much about that. I don’t see why it would be worth anybody’s time to devote their life on changing their appearance in an attempt to live up to some ridiculous standard of what is beautiful. I guess I really let my views on the quest for beauty be tinged a little by the examples of people like makeup girl in Jon’s gym class. So I guess I don’t have much respect for beauty in people, but then again I can sometimes be a little misanthropic, I do however acknowledge that something in nature or in art can be beautiful, like Mike’s example of an erupting volcano, or even the view from a mountaintop that isn’t exploding under your feet. But then again those things are simply images, and its easy to judge the beauty or ugliness of them, they aren’t human beings with so many different aspects of their lives that its almost impossible to sum up what they are in a few words. So what do I think, beauty is and always will be nigh on impossible to define, and pointless to obtain, and to continue in the grand tradition of quoting things in this thread I will close my blog with a quote from Pablo Picasso, “Beauty?... To me it is a word without sense because I do not know where its meaning comes from nor where it leads to.”
Thinking of beauty makes me think about the movie Shallow Hal. The inner beauty made all the "hideous" women become beautiful vixens because he was hypnotized to only see the inner beauty. I love this concept. To be "beautiful," you have to have all the factors of a good person. A good personality, good looks, and good aspirations make you appear to be beautiful. It is said that confidence also makes you appear to be a better person, if you aren't cocky about it like some people. Beauty has so many different definitions that you can't simply say, "That is beautiful."
Honestly Bunje, this was really hard because I can't define beauty and I don't think anyone can. We all have different interpretations of what beauty is. To me, beauty is the outward expression of the inward quality. It isn't something that you see, it has to be shown and you have to work at it to be beautiful. You have to make sure to be a wholesome person and be able to express that in a self-assured way. I would have to agree with Nick that beauty brings on pain. We all yearn to be sexy and catch the opposite sex's eye and if we don't live up to that expectation, we start to come down on ourselves. That is where depression and suicide can come to play. Through the media, beauty is so played out that every person wants to look perfect but their is no perfect. We all have to stop criticizing each other and appreciate everyone for you they are. "Beautiful" or not.
True beauty, what is it, does it have a true set definition or is it written in invisible ink that changes for everyone. I personally think true beauty is something that depends on the person. It matters by who the person believes they are and what they like. Their personality should shine through their skin and make everyone see their true beauty. No one has to put pounds of make up on or dress perfectly to be beautiful. So I guess I agree with the title of this week’s blog “Eye of the Beholder” because true beauty is seen differently through everyone’s eyes.
Men and women are frustrated and fascinated by beauty for many reasons. If you really think about it beauty starts to turn into a feeling more than representation. When you see something beautiful it moves you. Frustration is brought when your hair isn’t perfect or your clothes are dirty. Fascination is brought when you see someone or something that is truly charming and truly beautiful. One may try capturing beauty, but you can’t because it is already within one, just learn how to use it. Bottling it, that is impossible because one should be able to let it all out and be beautiful any second in time. Enhancing it, this can make you more beautiful outside and attract more outer beauty and you can also enhance your inner beauty by being your true better self. Ignoring it, why would you want to ignore beauty? It can bring happiness and love to yourself and possibly others. Using it and celebrating it, this one is the best because everyone should use their own beauty and celebrate it because they are beautiful. One may not be beautiful to someone on the outside, but there will always be someone that will find you extremely beautiful on the outside and inside. And other people who are extremely beautiful on the outside may ruin this with their inner beauty. Overall, I think this fascination with outer beauty is the result of wanting attention and other people to admire them.
Beauty is the object of both admiration and envy when someone finds their true beauty. It is when they see the truth and really respect it and have the jealousy that keeps that beauty going. Yea, this may sound weird, but that is when I think it happens. I think beauty can be driven by other people’s beauty. The pain of beauty can be found everyday. It can be found in many girls because many say “Pain brings beauty” and they get all their make overs ranging from their hair, waxing, or even plastic surgery. It can also be found in guys too, when they try to buff themselves up or even spending time making themselves look good. And in both, males and females, pain is brought most commonly brought when someone doesn’t find them beautiful, handsome, or cute. Pleasure is brought when you are told by someone you are beautiful, handsome, etc. and this really makes you happy. Or it is brought when you get a good feeling about yourself. This is the number one pleasure that should be taken; that you feel pleasure about who you are and your true beauty. In general, just believe you have beauty inside yourself and understand you are beautiful!
Leslie said “Perception; perception is the wire connecting beauty to emotion. Perception is the flame that lights our reactions to certain people and things. Perception is forever ours and it is unavoidable. Perception equals beauty, and therefore, beauty is unavoidable.” I agree completely with Leslie and believe she has a great idea of what beauty is. Overall, this just sums it up in such a good way.
True beauty can be defined. First you need to simplify the definitions by defining true and beauty separately.
True is defined as being consistent with fact or reality; not false or erroneous.
Beauty itself has two very different, but similar definitions: (1) The quality that gives pleasure to the mind or senses and is associated with such properties as harmony of form or color, excellence of artistry, truthfulness, and originality. (2) One that is beautiful, especially a beautiful woman.
As to the first definition of beauty, I believe that this definition better defines beauty as compared to the second one. The second definition is more of the typical response when a male sees a female who is attractive. This caters to the beauty is skin deep philosophy, and if beauty is in fact skin deep, then beauty is an insult to the unattractive beings living in this world. If anything is true about beauty (pertaining to attractiveness), it is the statement above. The second definition leaves you back where you started, questioning what makes something beautiful.
The synonyms include of beauty include: adorableness, artistry, attraction, class, delicacy, elegance, exquisiteness, fascination, handsomeness, pulchritude (Look, a vocab word from this week!)
True beauty is something you define yourself, but to be able to define true beauty you must be consistent with fact or reality. So if you are trying to define something as truly beautiful, you must not be under the influence of any mind altering substances. Mind alter substances such as, but not limited to, acid, alcohol, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, meth, morphine, opium and oxycodone inhibit your ability to think relationally therefore removing the true from true beauty. While that girl may have seemed beautiful last night when you got drunk and had a one night stand, she really wasn’t a candidate for true beauty.
For me, true beauty is Courtney Sherman. (Adorableness). True beauty is the work of the infamous street artist Banksy. (Artistry). True beauty is gravity. (Attraction). True beauty is Dolce & Gabbana. (Class). True beauty is caviar. (Delicacy). True beauty is that new dress you just bought(Elegance). True beauty is the design of Taj Mahal. (Exquisiteness). True beauty is quantum physics. (Fascination). True beauty is in men also. (Handsomeness). True beauty is also an ugly word. (Pluchritude).
My point is, whatever I find beautiful may not be what you find beautiful. But together, everything in this world has some sort of beauty attached to it, not matter what you think. So therefore beauty is composed of what society thinks. Beauty is not the same for everyone, as no one is the same person. Someone may be ugly to a persons opinion, but beautiful in someone else’s eyes. Everything is beautiful, just not exclusively to you.
Everyone seems to like Volcanic Eruptions for this blog. I’ll clear the confusion. Volcanic Eruptions, the strip joint conveniently positioned in the middle of a family shopping center along the black horse pike, is beautiful to someone. While it may not be elegant and exquisite to most of us, someone HAS to believe that Volcanic Eruptions is beautiful. I completely understand Mike G. when he states that “Volcanic eruptions, for example, are beautiful.”
[This text is here to make my word count go up.]
Beauty can manifest itself on a lot of different levels. Given that beauty changes from era to era the difference of those levels is perceived differently by society. The fairly large waisted, olive colored, voluptuous women of the Grecian era of would not be deemed today to be as beautiful as women resembling someone like Kate Holmes.Then again if that fairly large waisted, olive colored, voluptuous women had looked like that and possessed admirable qualities like a genuine personality, went to Harvard and she had an ultimate awareness about herself she would be deemed just as beautiful as Kate Holmes or even more.
I would like to say that i don't believe in aesthetic beauty, but if that was the case i wouldn't get up every morning and make an effort to look descent enough for people not to laugh at me.-but that's not true beauty. That's the kind of beauty old ladies fight for in Macy's to get the last bottle of. True beauty, on the other hand, is the innate,yes innate, quality in humans to realize and accept virtue and vice. It's a lot harder for some than others, but if Maya Angelou did it so easily I'm sure we can find it in our everyday endevours to try and seek this in our lives. True beauty is not perfection as some might think. Like Rebecca said every girl that wins America's next top model is "unique." The quality of accepting every imperfect detail of yourself and being the only one in the room to do that is true beauty. This should be the quality that shoud be envied in a person, not aesthetic value. However, because in this world first impressions are almost the only impressions aesthetic beauty is inevitably going to be preferred and envied over true beauty.People want to know that other people think they look good. This outlook provides people with a kind of security and reassurence, although false, that just accepting your imperfections doesn't directly and most important INSTANTLY provide you with.True beauty isn't something you can go buy at Hollister. Unfortunately the media has played on insecurity and people's trepidation to subliminally convince society that that is what true beauty is. Aesthetic beauty will give us pleasure,but what is pleasure and a false sense of security over true acceptance of who you are? True beauty involve a mass effort from yourself inside yourself. It's rare because it takes time to find inside yousrself. It takes experience and some years of going half insane to discover that ever up and down event that happens in your life is apart of a greater transformation-True Beauty.
Beauty. It is all around us. Everywhere you look you can see beauty. From the senior citizens to good looking, beauty can be found in everywhere. Many people may say that beauty can’t be found everywhere; maybe not for them. Take a walk along the beach and then have your friend walk along beach. After, discuss what you thought was beautiful. When discussing you’ll probably find many similarities, but at the same time you’ll have many differences in what you thought was beautiful. Leslie said she thought old people were beautiful. But at the same time there are people out there that are grossed out by them. Many people look at beauty on the outside. Day in and day out people mention about how beautiful so and so is. But this is not what beauty entirely is. Beauty can be found in someone’s actions or even someone’s personality. As Rebecca’s definition of beauty says, it’s the quality that is present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction. Everyone has their own definition of beauty. For Ms. Bunje it may just be Johnny Depp. Beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder. There have been plenty of times where my friend’s say, “Man, she is beautiful!” I think to myself what the hell is he smoking. No lie. But with different people comes different opinions and different definitions of beauty.
Beauty can even be found in animals. When I was down in Mexico I saw two peacocks sweet talking. The one was fluffing its plumage. (boy I wonder went on that night. haba haba) I wasn’t beautiful to me but to the other peacock it was. I could tell by the way its tongue was hanging out and its excessive drooling. I never really thought of ducks wiggling their butts was in the name of beauty but know I get it. I’ll have to check it out sometime.
Beauty attracts others and will always. Whether it’s the attraction of ones looks or actions or whatever, Beauty can be found everywhere. The next time you look at something, ask yourself, is this beautiful? Your answer may be no but there’s someone out there that considers it beautiful. Beauty has several definitions. It is very hard to define. I agree with Megan. A lot of people are physically attracted to others. They soon learn that there is no beauty there once they get to know them. As she said, people are more concerned with the word than the concept. It feels like I have been writing forever. I’m still not at 450 words. Beauty is what you want it to be. Never let someone tell you what beauty is. Now I’m at 450 words.
Well, my one cousin, Brittany, whose house I am over, said, “Beauty comes from within.” But anyway, I agree, but I only have about 10 minutes of free time here so this is going to be short. Rebecca took the definition from somewhere that defined beauty: 1. 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). I really like that. Beauty is not one set ideal, but something that changes across borderlines, time, and different people. It is a completely different image in every single person and is never the same from day to day, physical beauty at least.
I believe the reason why people will obsess over beauty is because without it, you might not get as far. Now everyone knows that looks don’t do much nowadays, but don’t they? In college, school, grades, academic achievement, beauty is simply a second opinion. But in the real world looks are important. If some ugly girl walks in for an interview for a job and sounds amazing but the next girl is beautiful but not as well qualified, who would most likely get the job? I know that it depends on which job and what title and who the boss is and everything else, but the beauty of the second girl is pleasing to the eye and will give her an advantage.
But beauty is a double-edge sword. I would love to spend an hour and a half with this topic but I simply can’t, I only have four minutes left, not even, my dad is here. But the pursuit of beauty is like the pursuit of happiness. No one truly reaches the apotheosis (if I used that correctly) but they might get near the top. That is the pleasure that everyone enjoys with beauty. The compliments, the benefits, whatever is good out of beauty. But also with becoming beautiful or being beautiful there is pain. Whether of a relationship based off of it or someone else more beautiful comes or if in the end that person realized it really didn’t bring the satisfaction they expected (and even the process of beauty is painful), the beauty which everyone and society seeks will hurt you. So is it worth it to be beautiful? Do the pleasures outweigh the pains? I guess it’s up to each individual.
I think it was Emily who said that beauty is one of those topics that have no universal agreement, and I agree with her totally. Some people have said that beauty must be unique, others have said that is must be awe inspiring, but I don’t really agree totally with any of that. For me, beauty must be natural. (The only exception to this statement would be art, because that has beauty in its own right and doesn’t really apply to this.) A gorgeous sunset, a snowcapped mountain, a forest in autumn, a volcanic eruption, a forest right after a snowstorm, a spring day, tornados, and lighting storms are all beautiful in my opinion. Some things that are beautiful that aren’t seasonal or weather dependent are: a totally natural smile, laughing among friends, being able to be totally yourself and not censor yourself, a girl with a good personality and no damn makeup on her face, tranquility, a starry night, personal time with that special someone, and a girl that has some self confidence. You may notice that none of the things I listed as beautiful can be found in a store, and that is because beauty can never be bought, its natural not manmade.
Emily also said, “Men think that the women in bikini's in magazines are beautiful, when mostly all women would say it’s skanky or something.” I don’t agree, personally I don’t find those girls beautiful at all, they are a bit skanky. For me that type of girl is easy on the eyes, nice to look at and attractive, not beautiful.
Beauty is admired for the obvious reason that it’s beauty. As human we have a natural inclination towards things that are beautiful, we even try to create beauty. Beauty is envied because of self insecurities and media influence. The media sends a message to people that one set body type is the pinnacle of beauty and everything else just falls short, so people, especially girls, envy those models that fit that mold of beauty. They envy it because they aren’t secure with their own body and feel that it isn’t beautiful.
Well I think that the pursuit for beauty is an unfeasible feat. I believe that everyone has natural beauty and that everyone is beautiful in their very own way. So obviously one can not pursue beauty when they already have beauty; that would be like trying to get home while you’re standing in your living room, simply impossible. Anyway, my personal beliefs aside, the pursuit of beauty brings people pain because of the things that they do to try to become beautiful; crunches, surgery, makeup, diet, and such can be very painful. The pursuit of beauty can be pleasurable because being called beautiful, feeling beautiful, and such can be very pleasurable experiences.
As I finish this blog, I realized that my opinion on everything is extremely different from everyone else. Well I didn’t just realized that just now, I have known for about 2 or 3 years now, but I now wonder how in the world I got this way. Was I abducted by aliens as a small lad and warped into what I am now? I guess that is a point for pondering in my spare time.
When I look into the mirror at night I see a beautiful girl staring back at me. If I see Beyonce performing on TV, singing and dancing and doing her thing, I see that as beautiful too. There are too many definitions for this one word. Well, maybe not definitions, but there are too many ways to explain them. I'll try to hit them all. First off, I believe that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What I think is beautiful may be disgustingly ugly for the next person. Why? Well, just maybe because everyone is different! Now that I'm finally realizing it, maybe I should use the word beautiful sparingly. Ok, everyone is not beautiful. Everyone is not beautiful in "their own special way." What about the murderers and suicide bombers? The people kill without guilt are not beautiful. If someone disagrees with me, please inform me on how they could possibly live up to the title of "beauty." Sure, anyone can be pretty, now-a-days, even gorgeous, but everyone is NOT beautiful.
Some say that a butterfly is "beautiful." I don't agree. Personally, I believe butterflies are scary--long story, but I always imagine caterpillars with scary "bat" wings. I run from butterflies. Others believe that nature is beautiful; however, I guess this has to do with beauty being in the eye of the beholder because pointy branches, twigs, and sticks are not beautiful to me. Neither is a little flower that grows. It's appealing to the eye; pretty, but NOT beautiful. I do not like bumble bees, or any bug, for that matter. Therefore, everything or everyone is NOT beautiful.
I guess I have set my standards high to be able to use the word beautiful. It sounds really mean, believe me, I'm wondering why I'm writing such mean things, but hey, it's my opinion. Rebecca noted that everyone is beautiful, but I believe different. Yes, a poor bum on the streets of Detroit could be beautiful, but maybe not. What if he killed thirty people and disguised himself as a bum on the streets? What if he left his family for drugs? You never know, and those are NOT beautiful things at all.
Now, I feel weird because I feel mean. Who am I to tell someone they are not beautiful? But then again, people throw the word beautiful around like they do love, and people don’t realize the significance of the meaning. I believe you have to have something unique or special to be beautiful. Every little model on TV posing for their little picture in my eyes is not beautiful. Of course, they are pretty, but beautiful is a bit much. I always hear, “she was beautiful until she opened her mouth.” Trust me, they don’t mean her teeth, well, that’s possible, but what they usually mean is that beauty comes from character too, which is my I stand by my conclusion that everyone is NOT beautiful.
Every other commercial on TV is relating to beauty and how to suck this in, poke that out, plump those up, but I always think, “No! That is not how you become beautiful!” It is so much more to it. I don’t understand why people envy beautiful ones people. That proves that they are not beautiful because they envy what others have, that, again, is NOT beautiful. I admire both beautiful and pretty people. To pursue “outside beauty”, something I call just being pretty, people go through pain. I understand the concept of if you don’t have it and you want it, and then get it, but it makes me mad when people go through extremes to try to be like at “beach babe,” or the same old pretty girl. Those typical pretty girls do not win America’s Next Top Model. They look for uniqueness and distinctiveness, as well as beauty, not just being pretty. For guys, I don’t think they think care too much about beauty; however, guys can just as well be beautiful like a woman can. The pursuit of beauty can be painful in the process, but hey, if they are happy in the end with their so called “beauty,” then I am too. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. True beauty is so much more that looks; its character, and still so much more to understand.
726 words! lol
As Confucius once said, "Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it."
So, what is beauty? Are there different levels of beauty? Or is beauty in the eye of the beholder (as Nick said)?
In my opinion, true beauty brings enjoyment to the person who looks or contemplates. I agree with Leslie when she says that there is a connection between beauty and happiness. So, for Mike Galli, volcanic eruptions are beautiful because they bring him a sense of awe and enjoyment despite the fact that they are not unique. Rebecca, on the other hand, believes that unique things are beautiful, such as street urchins, because they have a distinct quality about them that makes them awe-inspiring. This leads me to my second point.
When people say something is beautiful, are they recommending that others should believe the same? Should everyone, then, think that the destruction of the city of Pompeii is beautiful simply because it was the result of a volcanic eruption? Is it even possible to argue about the merits of something’s beauty? And is beauty both skin deep and in the eye of the beholder?
These are the questions racing through my mind as I read my classmates’ blogs. I don’t think that I am even capable of answering all of those questions. But I do think that beauty is both skin deep as well as in the eye of the beholder. For example, many men throughout America believe that Jessica Simpson is beautiful simply because of her aesthetic value. However, many other men also believe that she cannot be beautiful because she lacks a vital internal organ located between her ears. So, in that way, beauty can be both skin deep and in the eye of the beholder.
Which leads me to another question that a few of my classmates have addressed: would the world be better off if everyone agreed on what is beautiful? For me, the world would not be better off because what we find beautiful is a reflection of our personality and individuality. If we think honeycombs are beautiful, for example, it might show our affinity to geometry (or to bees).
Additionally, people will often say that a picturesque view of a sunset is beautiful and others will concur without knowing the true definition for beauty. In this way I think that the definition for beauty is implied. I think that this is because beauty is a very difficult word to describe. This is probably the reason that people often use examples when referring to beauty instead of physically describing it.
Beauty. Something as small and superficial as this can ruin the best people for example Marilyn Monroe and Dorothy Dandrige. Both beautiful in the own way their “beauty” brought them fame and success but with that came depression and death. In the hands of the wrong person beauty, something that so many strive to obtain could lead to the destruction of society.
Like Niah said there are two different types of beauty. Beauty that comes from within and then you have superficial beauty. But I also feel that there is a third beauty and beauty in inanimate objects. Personally of both I feel as though beauty that comes from with in is the hardest to obtain. This beauty entails having certain morals in values instilled in you that can be hard to maintain at all time. This type of beauty means you a honest at all cost you can respect maintain your dignity without coming off as a jerk. This ilk of beauty deals with how you go about you everyday life and handle relationships with others are you steeping on other just to get ahead achieving your goals at any expense or, are you pursuing what your after taking time and reaching what you ant the fair and earnest way. I guess you can say this type of beauty is basically about how honest you are with yourself and others. Inner beauty is very deep and deeper than I could express in words.
The superficial beauty is a lot easier to explain. This type of beauty can be bought and not always cheap. Tons of women think big boobs are beautiful so they will pay thousands of dollars to get some new ones. When I was younger I used to think that people with light eyes were the most beautiful people ever wanted them so bad. I also used to believe that long hair made you beautiful also but that is not true. Women spent thousands of dollars or things to make them beautiful. Eyeliner, lip-gloss, weave, push up bras, make up, tight clothes, fake nails. All that superficial stuff does not make you more beautiful than the next person. Like Becca said Tyra Banks is always talking about finding beauty in unique looking people and I think that is a wonderful message for young women. The conventional beauty is not what everyone has and you desire but beauty is what sets you apart from everyone else. Girls try to be all glamorous thinking that that is what is going to make a guy fall for you but 9 times out of 10 guys are going to want the girl who feels comfortable in sweat pants and pony tail. This goes back to my first idea of beauty, the fact that it is natural.
Lastly there is beauty in inanimate objects. Islands like Hawaii, Jamaica, and the Virgin Islands are beautiful to me they are breath taking in put you in a calming mind set. Babies are beautiful because they are so pure and tiny. I could go on and on with a list of inanimate objects that are beautiful to me they move you without even trying. I think that anything that you desire to have that you don’t that moves you and is timeless can be classified as beauty. No one can obtain all aspects of beauty but it is worth a try.
True Beauty. I read this question quick Monday and have been thinking about it everyday since. As I read your examples that awe you with beauty I had a rush of a million different beautiful things and ideas pop into my head. Immediately I pictured true beauty in men and women, then I traveled to inner beauty, then the beauty of nature, the could an inanimate object be true beauty, and my brain kept traveling trying to figure out what true beauty was. I came to the conclusion beauty is just like love and it is a simple word that can explain many different types of objects or ideas. But after reading different blogs I like the definition that Becca has for beauty. “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).”
People want to capture, enhance and use beauty because they want people to think they are beautiful and want to be accepted by the world around them. Jeannie and Megan both quoted Christina Aguilera’s, “You’re Beautiful, no matter what they say.” People always want be considered beautiful but first they need to think they are beautiful themselves and then they don’t have to base their beauty off of what other people think or say. People, whether it is male or female, want to fit in and want to be considered beautiful through the view of the public. Our society has caused this idea to be placed in people’s heads to believe that image is everything and beauty in men’s eyes are women in bikini’s with a nice tan and a perfect shaped body, and in women’s eyes, men are beautiful if they have a six pack and muscular. Outer beauty is what causes people to try to capture beauty and bottle it and enhance it and use it. Jeannie said that her mom use to say, “It’s tough to be beautiful,” well, my mom use to say that to me all the time, too. Outer beauty takes time and effort and can cause pain to look beautiful but the outcome is what usually brings the pleasure.
Inner beauty though does not cause as much envy and admiration. People love other people who are kind hearted or who have the personality that seems beautiful to them but people do not cause as much pain as outer beauty. Inner beauty is to me what matters the most though in people. Yes, usually the outer beauty usually attracts me to talk to a person but once I get to know them I decide if they are beautiful on the inside and worth hanging out with. Inner beauty does not cause that much pain; it shouldn’t hurt a person to be nice or kind to someone else.
I see beauty in many different ways, I was reading through Devon’s and she is right I do see scoring a goal as beautiful. I see nature as beauty, I see people as beauty, and I see intelligent thoughts as beauty. AS the title of this topic goes beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it can bring different levels of pain and admiration. But I think the beauty inside is what matters most and that should bring happiness.
Beauty=? That is basically what has gone through my mind this week while thinking about writing this blog. Next to love and nature v. nurture, this is probably one of the most widely disagreed upon topics ever. Obviously, as stated by most of the other AP Langers, beauty is defined by the inside and out. TO me, beauty is something that causes you to feel good inside that is appealing to you. Not looks appealing, is. There is obviously a difference because not everything that is beautiful is something that you can see. Beautiful things can be traits in people or ideas of love, freedom, compassion. Beauty is something that is pure and allows you to feel secure and confident. I whole-heartedly believe that the looks of all people are not beautiful. No, I’m not referring to people that are obese. I am talking about what Jeannie and Alli and undoubtedly others mentioned...extremely thin, don’t eat, skin and bones trying to be a quadruple zero models. This is horrible and ugly. Yes, they are trying to look thin, but it is often taken way too far. This is not beautiful because it just appears that these girls are malnutritioned and need to be fed a potato or twenty. I mean, seriously, what does it matter if you are 120 pounds, or 95? It doesn’t and that is my point. This is definitely not beautiful.
Well, now that I have gone on about what I consider not to be beautiful, I guess I should get to what it. I know that there are lots of things that are beautiful. I think that the beach is beautiful. I think that people who are truly and head-over-heels in love are beautiful. I think that a person who is confident is beautiful. Some guys preconceive that if a girl is hot and just looks good to get some that they will end up being a good person that you could have a relationship with. Definitely not. Some of these girls are just skanks and that’s really it. A girl who, yes, may look good aesthetically, can only be truly beautiful if she is true to herself….if she believes that she is beautiful. This is that she is honest and whole-hearted and respects herself. A girl who can accept her idiosyncrasies or little quirks can really be beautiful, because obviously no one is perfect and everyone has a little something that isn’t right.
Many girls, including myself spend time in the morning picking out what to wear, what makeup to put on, and how to do their hair. It is to make us look better of course, but why do we strive to be beautiful? Truthfully, I don’t really know. I know that most of us want to be beautiful because that is what is universally accepted throughout the world. We want to fit the “norm” and make ourselves as aesthetically pleasing as possible. Sometimes, or usually, it is to impress other people such as authority, friends, peers, or most often the opposite sex. It is just natural to want to be good looking sometimes because it builds confidence. I’m not sure why this is; I just know that it’s true that people will be more confident if their hair and makeup is done around a group of people than if it isn’t. For guys this is not the case as often because there aren’t many straight guys into doing their makeup. They strive more to be buff and “big” because that is more what girls are usually attracted to. I don’t know why this is and I can’t really attempt to explain it. I guess it is just human nature to look for the aesthetically beautiful people. I also think that people envy beauty because people who believe they are beautiful often feel more secure about themselves and more confident in their appearance. Everyone wants to be satisfied with themselves and if it is their belief that they want to be beautiful, then they will envy that person’s confidence. It is just what they want. However, sometimes people envy the inner beauty in people. Some people know that they act mean or fake and envy the people that can be nice and true all the time. A natural feeling is to envy something you don’t have but would like, so when people find an imperfection in themselves such as not seeing themselves having inner or outer beauty, they envy it in someone else.
I just want to say that I really love Niah’s last definition and agree with Jake a lot. I really like what he said at the end when he mentioned that most of us gave examples about what beauty is. This was just how we gave examples of what love is. It was really hard to give a steadfast definition of it, but not that hard to list lots of beautiful things. I’m not really sure why, but I like that he said that.
So after writing this entire blog, I’m still not sure that I actually defined it or came to any definite conclusions, because it was honestly something that I didn’t believe was possible. I guess I will attempt to sum up what I think, though, so here it goes:
Beauty is inside and out. Beauty is new and everlasting and touches your heart. Beauty comes from the depths of your soul to express who you are and can be shown through the aesthetically pleasing features of your body and mind. Beauty is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, so isn’t it virtually impossible to define universally? I think so.
Wow, that last sentence seems a little too deep for even me to understand, and I wrote it. Haha.
Beauty=? That is basically what has gone through my mind this week while thinking about writing this blog. Next to love and nature v. nurture, this is probably one of the most widely disagreed upon topics ever. Obviously, as stated by most of the other AP Langers, beauty is defined by the inside and out. TO me, beauty is something that causes you to feel good inside that is appealing to you. Not looks appealing, is. There is obviously a difference because not everything that is beautiful is something that you can see. Beautiful things can be traits in people or ideas of love, freedom, compassion. Beauty is something that is pure and allows you to feel secure and confident. I whole-heartedly believe that the looks of all people are not beautiful. No, I’m not referring to people that are obese. I am talking about what Jeannie and Alli and undoubtedly others mentioned...extremely thin, don’t eat, skin and bones trying to be a quadruple zero models. This is horrible and ugly. Yes, they are trying to look thin, but it is often taken way too far. This is not beautiful because it just appears that these girls are malnutritioned and need to be fed a potato or twenty. I mean, seriously, what does it matter if you are 120 pounds, or 95? It doesn’t and that is my point. This is definitely not beautiful.
Well, now that I have gone on about what I consider not to be beautiful, I guess I should get to what it. I know that there are lots of things that are beautiful. I think that the beach is beautiful. I think that people who are truly and head-over-heels in love are beautiful. I think that a person who is confident is beautiful. Some guys preconceive that if a girl is hot and just looks good to get some that they will end up being a good person that you could have a relationship with. Definitely not. Some of these girls are just skanks and that’s really it. A girl who, yes, may look good aesthetically, can only be truly beautiful if she is true to herself….if she believes that she is beautiful. This is that she is honest and whole-hearted and respects herself. A girl who can accept her idiosyncrasies or little quirks can really be beautiful, because obviously no one is perfect and everyone has a little something that isn’t right.
Many girls, including myself spend time in the morning picking out what to wear, what makeup to put on, and how to do their hair. It is to make us look better of course, but why do we strive to be beautiful? Truthfully, I don’t really know. I know that most of us want to be beautiful because that is what is universally accepted throughout the world. We want to fit the “norm” and make ourselves as aesthetically pleasing as possible. Sometimes, or usually, it is to impress other people such as authority, friends, peers, or most often the opposite sex. It is just natural to want to be good looking sometimes because it builds confidence. I’m not sure why this is; I just know that it’s true that people will be more confident if their hair and makeup is done around a group of people than if it isn’t. For guys this is not the case as often because there aren’t many straight guys into doing their makeup. They strive more to be buff and “big” because that is more what girls are usually attracted to. I don’t know why this is and I can’t really attempt to explain it. I guess it is just human nature to look for the aesthetically beautiful people. I also think that people envy beauty because people who believe they are beautiful often feel more secure about themselves and more confident in their appearance. Everyone wants to be satisfied with themselves and if it is their belief that they want to be beautiful, then they will envy that person’s confidence. It is just what they want. However, sometimes people envy the inner beauty in people. Some people know that they act mean or fake and envy the people that can be nice and true all the time. A natural feeling is to envy something you don’t have but would like, so when people find an imperfection in themselves such as not seeing themselves having inner or outer beauty, they envy it in someone else.
I just want to say that I really love Niah’s last definition and agree with Jake a lot. I really like what he said at the end when he mentioned that most of us gave examples about what beauty is. This was just how we gave examples of what love is. It was really hard to give a steadfast definition of it, but not that hard to list lots of beautiful things. I’m not really sure why, but I like that he said that.
So after writing this entire blog, I’m still not sure that I actually defined it or came to any definite conclusions, because it was honestly something that I didn’t believe was possible. I guess I will attempt to sum up what I think, though, so here it goes:
Beauty is inside and out. Beauty is new and everlasting and touches your heart. Beauty comes from the depths of your soul to express who you are and can be shown through the aesthetically pleasing features of your body and mind. Beauty is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, so isn’t it virtually impossible to define universally? I think so.
Wow, that last sentence seems a little too deep for even me to understand, and I wrote it. Haha.
Sorry that i commented twice. It's obviously the same comment. My computer just doesn't like me.
It is a fact that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. It is a must because no two people think exactly alike, thus meaning that everyone sees things differently. Sure I could put up the definition of beauty from the dictionary and say what’s the point of saying what I think beauty is if it is already defined. However, why let someone else make up the meaning of this word. If a person wrote the dictionary that means that the definition will be in some way the opinion of a human being, which also means that it can be different from how I look at it. I would have to say that I cannot quite define what I think of beauty as. It is more complex than something I could just jot onto a piece of paper. My perception of beauty is something that lives inside me, covertly, that I cannot dissect, just as I cannot explain exactly what is truly going on inside my head at any given moment. All I know is that when I see it, I know what it is, even if it were the first time encountering beauty, I will be aware of what has hit me. It will make itself obvious to me at times when I would never expect it, because my perception of beauty is something I cannot control.
However, I do think that I can make an attempt to figure out why acquiring beauty is so important to many people. Many feel the need to be the best and compete against every other person, possibly just for attention. People love to feel loved and are always trying to be the most admired being known. I am not saying all people are like this, however the ones that feel this necessary are probably the ones who envy and admire the object of “beauty”, or at least what is beautiful to them. By pursuing this goal of beauty some may feel accomplished about them selves, however others may only hate themselves more until they reach the ultimate level of beauty. Which is totally manipulated by the society, anyway. We decide what Is beautiful as time progresses and this is how it has been for many, many, many years. Even the need for people to join the bandwagon of fads is involved with the ultimate search for being beautiful. Crazy hairstyles, new ways of dressing, things like this give people some sort of satisfaction as far as becoming beautiful goes.
Thinking about beauty also makes me think about which ways beauty is actually portrayed. You do not need to fill some sort of requirement or task to be necessarily beautiful, at least naturally wise. Just being yourself and being happy with yourself is something that can lead to instant beauty. By not trying to be someone else, that is beauty. By loving life, and taking it to its fullest potential, that is beauty. Wearing pounds of makeup, or dressing like the richest guy in town is not what beauty is, it is just a poor attempt at being someone you may not be just to get the attention, so you can think that you are beautiful. People will and have gone through a great amount of trouble just to make themselves feel the fake pleasures of being beautiful in society. It has happened probably since the beginning of humanity and will go on till the end of human life.
P.S. don’t take this the wrong way, but this was kinda tough, and I hate talking about beauty. Usually I don’t have a problem, I just felt weird, and slightly difficult to think and talk about <33333
P.S.S. U are still awesome/ favorite teacher, wait...no only if I am still your favorite student!
Brittany pretty much summed it up when she said, "beauty is the result of a
deep, emotion-evoking quality you feel inside your soul." I agree with this
statement 110%. Beauty, true beauty, causes this rush of emotion within a
person. It swells up inside, and the only way to release it is to smile. That's my definition of beauty. I don't think that very many things are beautiful. I find different forms of architecture to be beautiful. While in Europe, I was truly in awe of the utter beauty and detail of the buildings in Paris, Lucerne, Madrid, and even in Cordoba. Okay, all the architecture itself may not be beautiful, but I think the idea that someone actually sat down, planned out the design for a building, and built it so pleasing to the eye is what is really beautiful. I think that's what struck me the most. Also, like Brittany, I think of landscapes and scenes from nature as beautiful. The fact that the scenes are so pure and untouched by people is what strikes me. Everything in these photographs or video clips is so pristine, so expansive it makes a person feel in awe of the world they're living in. However, beauty does not have to be a scene from nature. People are beautiful, too. As Joe said, a natural smile, laughing, and just seeing good people doing good things are all beautiful.
People worry about the outer beauty so much, that many times the inner beauty is overshadowed by their want to be “pretty” or “handsome” or “hot.” A good person does not necessarily have outer beauty; a good person is someone who genuinely cares about other people. Taking a quote from Simon Cowell, judge from American Idol (just in case someone doesn’t know), while talking to Paula and Randy last night, “You know what the big difference between your country and mine is? You are genuinely and utterly happy when someone else does well in something. I just don’t think I could be that happy.” When I heard these words come out of his mouth, I just thought to myself, ‘Wow, what a jerk. He really is a terrible person like everyone thinks.’ A good person with true inner beauty is genuinely happy for someone when they do well, and also genuinely sad for them when they are disappointed and upset. They are compassionate, caring, gentle-hearted, and loyal. That’s true inner beauty.
Okay, who honestly can say that they want to be ugly, whether on the inside or the outside? Everyone wants to be beautiful. And when someone sees someone with a facet of beauty they don’t hold themselves, the big green monster awakens. However, there is also a part of people that admires someone for being beautiful. For example, if someone anonymously donates a large sum of money to a charity, though one may not know who the anonymous person is (obviously), they are still admired for doing a good deed.
Why did the first few sentences of my blog go crazy? Computers are obviously not beautiful, since they're screwing with everyone's blogs.
I am going to start off this blog by saying that I am absolutely fed up with computers, fed up with blogger, fed up with technology screwing everything up, and I would refuse to do any more blogs for the rest of my life if my grade did not depend on it. I typed up my blog an hour ago (which took me an hour and a half), and then I posted the blog and closed out of my Word document in which I typed it in. When I went to check it a half and hour later, I realized the blog did not post, even though it said “comment posted”. I am done. Done done done. I spent the last fifteen minutes crying and freaking out trying to find it on my computer, unsuccessfully. So now I am going to retype this damn thing, as much as I can remember and sacrifice my damn time which I should be using to write my essay that is worth half of my midterm grade, my history homework that I have missed for the past week, and all of my biology. With that said, I hope you really like this blog, Bunje.
Beauty. Well let me start off with saying what is not considered beauty. The internet is not beautiful. PCs are not beautiful. Technology is also not beautiful. Of course, this is my own opinion, which brings me to my first point in stealing a well known quote that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. I don’t know who first said it, and I don’t care, but its true. We all have our own opinion of what is beautiful and what is not. Sometimes we may agree, but more often than not, we don’t. True beauty is something we feel in our heart to be true. If something can pull hard enough on your heartstrings, you could classify it as true beauty. For me, true beauty is love, (and truth, but shush). Snow is beautiful to me, and I love it. Beauty is a song that can move a person to tears. Beauty could be a sunset on Laguna Beach, or a bride on her wedding day, or fools in love. True beauty can be in many aesthetic forms, whether it be paintings or sculptures or buildings.
I agree with Mikey’s working definition of beauty. He has many times and examples for each and I agree with all of them.
Women crave beauty and will almost do anything. The media doesn’t help with this cause either. We are constantly bombarded with advertisements and reality TV shows that preach virtues of beauty. Diet pills, weight loss programs, make up, anti-aging cream, and other media endorsements have convinced our society to be envious of the “beautiful people”. Celebrities have won the admiration and envy of millions. Why? Because the media tells us too. They have instilled these ideals in us. We all know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but most of us want our beauty to be some sort of eye candy.
The quest for beauty often ends in pain. Women who think they aren’t pretty enough or skinny enough become anorexic or bulimic. Men who want to impress the ladies spend hours in the gym and take steroids to make them more attractive.
Beauty is love. And Courtney T.
I am beautiful, first and foremost. It took me a very long time to see that, but I now know. To me, everyone is beautiful in their own way. Everyone who says they are not beautiful simply hasn’t found their beauty yet, or does not know that is it. Even Hitler was beautiful. His dedication to his cause was phenomenal (even if his case SUCKED.) Joecamp is even beautiful! =)
I really do wish beauty could simply be eliminated from all existence. It just plain SUCKS. Who is someone else to judge me and tell me I do not have beauty? If I am not beautiful to you in at least one way, then you obviously do not know me well enough. And if that is the case why are you talking about me anyway? I do not mean to sound conceited in any way, shape, or form. But I firmly believe in EVERYONE being beautiful, even little old me.
I asked my friend Katie what she thought true beauty was. She responded with, “True beauty is being comfortable in your own skin. Being confident about the decisions you make, the way you act. True beauty is being who you want to be without worrying what others might think or say about you. It is being who you are and who you want to be. It’s not about looks or about size or about which piercing you do and do not have. It’s just about being true to yourself and to those around you.” I think she said it wonderfully. I also asked Cait and she said, “Someone who just loves themselves for who they are and is always trying to help somebody else.” She has also a great point.
For my eyes, when I look at Ryan Sheckler, I guess beauty would be a pleasure. But other than that I think it only bring pain. I used to cry every night because I was told I was not beautiful. It took a long time but I learned to look inside myself and be beautiful for myself only. Then others saw it too. My mommy even just told me I am beautiful as I sit in my sweats and messy bun. I mean she has to say it, she is my mom, but you get what I mean. And I was just told that I am the definition of true beauty. So I guess it is a pleasure to hear people say it to you. It is a hard thing to decide.
I agree with John that our society ties the words cosmetics and beauty and it is a terrible, terrible thing. That kind of beauty is fake.
I guess that my whole point is everyone has SOME beauty whether it is inner, outer, or both. You just need to look at yourself and worry about your own beauty, because you are beautiful, yeah YOU.
I agree with pete in his first two sentences, saying that beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder. Like he said no two people are exactly alike and will therefore see different things in different ways. Many people know this though, but still input their own opinions on how beautiful something is to them or in general. Consider designer labels: they are just one or maybe a few opinions on beauty. Are coach purses really truly that beautiful? No. Expense makes them beautiful, and beautiful people have money to buy the expensive bag to endorse it as beautiful; it is a cycle.
Beauty is held in such high esteem by almost every individual in our country today. Why is beauty both admired and envied? Because it is joyful being beautiful: people pay high prices for beauty. Say you are the most beautiful person in your class, you will be admired by most of your opposite sex (maybe some from you own), and envied by your own. This is because the envy is brought on by the admiration; the envious want admiration upon themselves.
The pursuit of beauty can be both painful and pleasurable. The pain in which we endure is mostly during the road to glorification, losing friends, objects, even compromising self-image. Pain can even be felt during the glory stage, when everything is either too much, or not everything it was cracked up to be. Usually there is a high amount of pain for a much less amount of pleasure. This process between pain and pleasure can be illustrated quite easily: take child stardom for example. Kids compromise their whole childhood, friends, normal life, for a few years at fame. Now that they have grown older and most have downgraded, VH1 makes shows about them. It references to how they are always called by their show names. Incredible sacrifice for 10 minutes in the light, and then a lifetime full of the same image.
Beauty is in no way easily definable, but i beleive everything, in some shape or form, is beautiful.
As offbeat of a comment this is for me to begin with, I agree with Nick when he responds candidly that while he doesn't really know what beauty is, he "knows it when he sees it." This is without a doubt a true statement. I also agree with something I saw a bit before Nick's, and that would be Niah's. I was pleased by the fact she defined "pure beauty" as being comfortable with oneself and "shining from within." In that sense, I think that beauty is truth. (HAHA, I KNOW THIS IS FORBIDDEN TO SAY. But hear me out. Okay, I'm basically done with that anyway.) Beauty, like love, is very cliched in American culture. Advertisers present beauty as the epitome of what a person, male or female, can achieve. There is much tout over the fact that "Everyone is beautiful!" You hear that from Sesame Street on up to Dove Pro-Age Shampoo and Conditioner line (from which my mom just bought a conditioner despite the fact she is neither old nor sagging. LOL.) The Dove line as a whole, actually, was hailed like it was the second coming of Christ when they presented their ad campaign with "real beautiful women" taking their clothes off to advertise skin cream. At least, I think it was skin cream. I was highly distracted by the fact they were both almost naked and on my television screen. While this is a radical way to present this, the idea at its core is an inspirational one - beauty is not homogeneous, and it is not purely aesthetic. This is not a new idea, but it is one that can be forgotten when one looks at the standards to which people, especially women, have been held to in order to appear beautiful in ages past. If one forgets, one can just refer to the handout we were handed on Friday Pep Rally Day that delves into the ideals of beauty in different cultures in frightening detail. Literally. Frightening.
Anyway, I agree with Niah's blog in the sense that there is trying to appear beautiful and just letting beauty "shine from within." As cliched as it sounds and as much as I hate myself for reinforcing cliche, it is true. I think that beauty is truth because when one truly accepts themself and has the general characteristics loosely fitting a "good person," one can allow themself to shine through and be beautiful.
I'll have to start using cliches for my college essays anyway at some point, so I suppose I need to stop being so turned off by repeating them.
I think that it is safe to say everyone has seen,felt, or experienced beauty at one point in their life. Defining beauty is a challenging task for it is a word that can be used in so many ways and in so many situations. Beauty, to me, is simply the amount of greatness that a person sees in someone or something. After thinking about how I could possibly describe beauty, I came to the realization that beauty is an opinion, as well as an imperfection. What I see as beautiful, someone else may see as worthless. I guess this is why there will never be a solid definition of what beauty means or is. We admire people that are beautful, expensive houses and cars that are beautiful, jewlery and clothes that are beautiful, songs that are beautiful, pictures and scenery that are beautiful. The list for this is never-ending. The only thing that limits beauty is the person witnessing it. Beauty may seem like a word full of rainbows and butterflies, but it can also have negative affects. We all become envious at one point or another, a majortiy of the time because we long to be as beautiful as someone else or have something as beautiful as someone else. Beauty, and the urge that people have for it, creates inequality and hate in our world. I have noticed, while living the past sixteen years on this Earth, that people are consistantly competeing with one another to be better, prettier, richer, stronger, more successful, etc. For why though? Why do we find it satisfying to have some type of beauty over another person? Considering both males and females, I believe that this competition stands equal and just as strong for both. Although they may strive for beauty in different aspects of life (sports,looks,successes) the pursuit is still present and creates high intensity constantly.
Well miss joanna, I agree with you when you say that "What makes someone beautiful on the outside is all of the features that make them unique." I guess this sort of goes with my preception of beauty. I said that beauty lies in ones imperfections. If everyone looked the same and had the same possessions, what would make them beautiful? They would be frequent and regular to us. However, what stands out most in people and items is how they are different from all of the rest. People's flaws and differences shape their character, and as much as this seems uncomprehendible, that is what creates the beauty. Beauty is not soley outer, it is inner as well. It is crucial for us as humans to see beauty from all aspects and forms. I think that as we grow up and become more experienced, we will be able to better recognize beauty when we find it.
What is beauty? Bunje you’ve managed to do it again. You’ve asked a question that has no answer. The reason it doesn’t have an answer is because beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I wish I could come up with my own clever little saying for it, but why go nuts? Every person has their own perception of what’s beautiful. So why can’t everyone look in the mirror and think “I’m beautiful” if what’s really beautiful is an image they have created in their own head? The reason is that some people let the perceptions of others seep into their heads and become their own perception. This is how the obsession with being and becoming “beautiful” starts up. Everyone wants to be beautiful. They want to look at themselves and be satisfied with what they see. I’m realizing now that I’m focusing on aesthetic beauty. I’m not so sure there is the “internal beauty” that most people speak of. The “internal beauty” has nothing to do with beauty. That’s called personality. You either have a good one or you don’t. If you’re ugly with a great personality, that doesn’t make you beautiful, it makes you a good person. A good enough person for people to notice what you say and do more than what you look like. That still doesn’t mean you’re beautiful. I could very possibly sound like a bitch right now, and that happens sometimes with me. I have my own perceptions of what beauty is, and no I don’t think there’s a definition for it. I don’t think that because I have a good personality and because I care about people I’m a beautiful person. I’m a good person, and I’m not beautiful. I’m not trying to be all self-conscious or whatever, I just don’t see myself as a thing of beauty. Someone else could look exactly the same as me though and think they’re beautiful; it all depends on the person.
We are so fascinated by beauty because it’s so...personal. I don’t know if that makes any sense. It’s flattering when someone else thinks you’re beautiful because you’re meeting someone’s personal standards, and who can help but feel good about that? It’s even BETTER when you meet your own standards though. A million and one people can tell you you’re beautiful and you won’t believe it until you’ve met your own standards.
Beauty is the object of admiration and envy always. I admire beauty in nature and envy beauty in people. I can’t ever be beautiful like a sunset, or the ocean, so all I can do is simply admire it and take it in. I can be jealous of a beautiful person though. A sunset can’t steal the attention of the boy I like from me, or the positive attention of my mother, but another, more beautiful person can. That’s where the envy comes from.
The only time the pursuit of beauty is pleasurable is when you either find it in another person, or you find it in yourself; otherwise, it’s all a miserable process until the end. BTW this all goes for both sexes.
So, I disagree with Niah and anyone else who said that there is the inner beauty and the outer beauty, for now.
Beauty if a six letter word that posses different meanings to different people.
I wish it was as simple as that. From the time when I read this blog to now, all I could ponder was what the heck an I going to write? How could I, the person that feels like the most nonbeautiful girl in school, talk about true beauty. That is, until I read some of the previous blogs. When I was reading Leslie's and Emily C's blogs (they were the only two I read, I'm sure that everyone else's is really good too), all I could think about was how beautiful their writing is. Then I asked myself, "How can words be beautiful?" Then it hit me. MY definition of beauty.
Beauty is what evokes that indescribable feeling you get when you know your day just got better. See what I mean? I can’t describe it because its indescribable. Let’s see if I can explain more clearly. When I am having a horrible day, and I walk past a couple with a new born baby, I have a "mood swing" as some might call it. That vision allowed my frown to turn upside down into a smile. What about it changed my mood? Its beauty. Leslie's and Emily's blogs are beautiful because they were able to change my perspective on this blog from "OMG this is the worst blog ever!" to "Wow, this one might not be too bad."
What causes someone to pause and truly look into a painting at a museum? Its beauty draws the attention of the viewer and keeps them there because it creates a pleasant feeling within the viewer. If there was no beauty, the visitor would continue walking, and never experience that feeling of contentment from that painting.
What makes a girl or a guy cute or handsome or pretty? Something about their physical or personal characteristics must evoke a sense of pleasure in another person, or themselves. (No, I do not mean in a sick way, Mike Galli) Otherwise, they would not be beautiful.
So that's what I think beauty is. The cause of that indescribable feeling that everyone wants to feel. As for true beauty, that's a whole other story.
True Beauty- I would have to agree with Emily Capille. True beauty does not exist in the world, only in our imaginations. It is what everyone strives to achieve in this world, but it is unattainable. True beauty, for me, is like Enlightenment. Everyone lives in order to achieve it, but only a special learned few truly reach that point. For the rest of us that haven't gotten there yet, there is no way of knowing what it is. We can only hope that we will one day know.
What Tyra Banks sees as beauty when she judges girls who wants to become America next top model may not be what a mother sees as beauty when she looks into the eyes of her innocent three year old who is taking a bubble bath. So that saying “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” is true.
Every one has a different perception of beauty. Beauty to one person may be the amount of intelligence one individual possesses, while beauty to others may just solely be based on an individuals appearance. Beauty to a mom who has just giving birth to new born baby is different to the beauty a peacock sees when he looks at the other peacocks brightly colored feathers. The judgment of what is beautiful and what is not beautiful is based on what each individual perceives beauty to be. I for instance may think water dripping from the faucet is a beautiful scene while somebody else may find it meaningless.
Like many of my classmates I to typed in the word beauty and many sites popped up on Google to what beauty was. The one thing I noticed though was that many of the sites had to deal with the appearance side of beauty so I guess you can say most people base beauty solely on appearance. Which I think is just the brainwashed perception of people nowadays.
“You are beautiful in every single way” where the words of Christina Aguilera’s song. Everyone possess they’re own type of beauty and that makes everyone different. Every ones difference in beauty is what defines that person as an individual and makes them who they are.
Devon S. and Deanna are the two that I agree with the most on this topic. Everyone has there own type of beauty and everyone sees beauty in a different way. There is no real definition of beauty and the differences in beauty is what defines each person as an individual.
Beauty is a six letter word that can bring up any number of different emotions. Not only that but also the word beauty can be linked to the beginning of many conversations about an array of topics. What is beauty? Is most likely the most used question ever. Well I don’t believe that there is anything that could be put in to the realm of true beauty. It is perhaps nonexistent. The reason that I believe that is because there are few things of beauty in the mind of every man or woman. There is also one true beauty for every person or maybe even more. The quote, “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” comes in to play here. Not every person in the world is going to have the same true beauty. If everyone’s vision of true beauty is different than how could there be a TRUE beauty with emphasis on the true. There is a pursuit for self beauty by most of the women of this age. Also there is a pursuit of beauty in the form of a women by most men in this day and age. The women battles with beauty everyday when they put on their clothes and make up they are always starting off their day looking for their own self beauty. I do not feel that this is ever important because you should never cover yourself up. There is beauty in the animal kingdom but it’s not like ducks wake up in the morning and put on some eyeliner of catch the attention of a boy duck. A man goes through the same ritual minus the make up. I guess it has just become a part of human nature but never put on cologne before I come to school. It has become everyone’s will to reach beauty but I don’t feel like that is important in today’s society.
Many people get hurt because of beauty. That’s why we have eating disorders and plastic surgery. Girls are envious of super models and would do anything to look like them even if it ends up killing them. How could something so … well beautiful cause so much pain and the one you take it and put it in to a perspective like that then is beauty all it’s cracked up to be. How could something that could drive people in to their graves be so important? That has always worried me.
I want to respond to Rebecca’s comment. I believe that you can’t just base beauty on looks. It goes much deeper and that is especially why I don’t like when people put a mask over themselves. Why try to hide your true self when you should know that it will eventually come out.
For me I see beauty in many different places, or situations. It is kind of hard to explain what I have in my head into words and sentences, but isn’t it always that way? To me, there are moments in our lives where everything is perfect, the right time, the right place, the right person standing next to you, and everything just fits. That is what beauty really is. It is not aesthetics or truth, but something so perfect and pure that is seems impossible. In the form of a situation, beauty can be interpreted differently by anybody. Some people think beauty can be laying under the stars with that special someone, waiting for the first kiss, or it could be that one moment when everything in the universe suddenly makes sense for a few seconds, and it seems as if the world around you stops. I have had experiences in many situations where I can say that real beauty was present that night, only for it to disappear and float on wherever it is destined to go.
The last and definitely most difficult aspect of my theory is personal beauty. To me everyone has a special beauty within them, whether they realize it or not. Some people chose to express this beauty in various ways, both right and wrong. It is hard for me to sit here map out what I feel beauty is, because I don’t really know how to explain it. For me, there is just some type of trigger in my body that says, wow, she’s beautiful. Or wow, that is a beautiful thing. To end, I guess for me, beauty is something intangible, abstract, and pure. It has the power to overcome souls and uplift them to the heavens. It is neither limited nor concise. Whatever it may be, it is out there, and it is up to each individual to determine hoe to interpret it.
Beauty is the dream of society. Beauty has the ability to be a pass in life. True beauty has no barriers; true beauty cannot be restricted by a simple set of words. True beauty can be found in any moment. From time to time a few moments come where everything is perfect that true beauty if found. In Kerouac's Dharma Bums Japhy Ryder, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack are mountain climbing. Kerouac is climbing, about twenty feet away from the peak but could not reach. Japhy Ryder though made it to the top and belted out his call to nature. Kerouac describes everything that was going on in that moment he heard the yell. Kerouac described it as the most beautiful thing he has witnessed.
Beauty is an object of envy because people think beauty is the way to being loved by all. We have built a popularity contest of the "beautiful" people to be our role models. Why do girls spend countless hours on their image? People are afraid that no one will see their inner true beauty, so they put on a costume that could be perceived as beauty. Cosmetics are instruments of fear.
Beauty in society has been put on a pedestal. Hanging high above the heads of the public, beauty is a high goal. "Big trees fall hard" and when someone feels they cannot reach "beauty" they think they hit rock bottom. The fall is long, and the truth sometimes is waiting at the bottom. People get pleasure out of "beauty" because of everyday support. Comments on how somebody's costume looks are fake confidence boosters. But to some, this is the satisfaction they strive for. Beauty can be in the simplest things in life. One day beauty will fall off cloud nine and everybody will be able to obtain it.
Jake Taylor definitely has written the best blog response. His quote from Confucius is impressive and “awe inspiring.” Jake uses a combination of statements and questions that make this response flow. He transitions from paragraph to paragraph very smoothly. Good job Jake.
Men and women have gone crazy over beauty because it is the driven force to whatever you want. Men falter to beautiful women and women thrive to be beautiful because they want everyone to perceive them as beautiful. I however do believe though after class period upon class period of Mr. Costal’s English class that there is no true definition of beauty. Beauty is what people make it. When you say someone is beautiful it is because you noticed something about them you took as beautiful. I believe that from both sexes the pursuit of beauty does not own up to the pleasures of beauty. Some people spend their entire life’s trying to achieve beauty and never do. Others beauty comes natural to, but that’s all they have and have nothing to fall back on. Granite, there are some exceptions to the rule though, but they are far and few in between. Men seem to be attracted to beauty and seem to do anything when they find it, but women seem to need it to make themselves feel complete. I agree with Rebecca when she talked about how people talk about beauty as being physical which I think there is way too much of today in society. Both sexes are at fault for this, men looking at only the physical features and women try to achieve the physical features. There are very few people that actually take the time to look on the inside which is where the true beauty lies. Most men these days, take no time at all getting to know a girl and judge her on the outside and what little they know about the inside. If more men took the time to get to know girls they would see that the most beautiful girl might not be the prettiest, but just the best personality, morals, and everything else that makes up for who they really are. In personal experience, I used to go by the looks throughout my life and the choices I have made. Coming into this year though, I have to tried to change that and I think I might have. I have taken the time to get to know people better and see what they have to offer on the inside and I think I have done a good job with that, but I believe that only time can tell if I really have or not. I know many people probably do not believe this of me, but I can honest say I am trying and I feel like I am getting somewhere which is the most important part to me. So to conclude, true beauty comes from the inside and is not what is on the outside.
True beauty. This is something no make up can create. Something no surgery can achieve. You can not fake being truly beautiful. True beauty comes from within and bursts out for all to see. There is no set definition of true beauty. Different people believe different things are beautiful. It’s the things people go through and how they carry and handle themselves that make them beautiful. You can be absolutely beautiful but be no where near America’s Next Top Model. You do not need perfect teeth. You do not need a clear face. You do not need a perfect body. You do not need all the typical things. You need to be unique. I always try to look for the best in people, and this probably why I do not believe anyone is ugly; because just as true beauty is more than just on the outside, so is ugliness. For me, what makes someone ugly is the mean, bad things they do to you or someone else. So if ugly and beautiful are opposites then, what makes someone beautiful is the nice, kind things they do for you or someone else. Ugly seems so much easier than to define than beauty. But getting back to beauty.. Beautiful things can consist of anything from a sunset to a flower. Something that makes something truly beautiful is anything that is appealing to someone. When you look at someone or something that is truly beautiful you feel a sense of awe and you may feel as though you are floating in thin air. So many people want to be truly beautiful because most people who are truly beautiful are kind and sweet. People who are kind and sweet tend to be liked. Everyone wants to be liked by someone regardless of what they say, whether it’s a friend or a boy/girl friend. While trying to achieve true beauty people can be caused either pain or pleasure because whenever someone attempts to achieve anything and they fail or what they wanted isn’t all they thought it was going to be, they are not happy. If they succeed and they get the results they want, they will be happy. Someone who is truly beautiful would not hurt someone who is kind and respectful to them. Sometimes people can get hurt when they are dealing with someone who they believe is truly beautiful, but really is not. Once they look deeper at the person they find out who they truly are and are not happy what they see. This could make someone feel hurt and betrayed. These feelings cause a lot of pain.
I definitely agree with Leslie. Beauty definitely is within you and without a doubt is in the eyes of the beholder. And with the more touchy subject with her cousin, I agree also. When I first met (before she starting going through what she is dealing with)I remember thinking wow she is so nice and sweet, she’s truly beautiful, she must have it all back home. Now when I look at her I still see the same beauty, but only different. Now it’s mixed with fear and loneliness. I think she will be able to get through it and set herself back on the right track. This goes with exactly what I was saying about how different see different things as being beautiful. Beauty truly is in the eyes of the beholder.
=D
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