Weekly WrapUp: Beauty

Okay — who was it ask­ing if appear­ances mat­ter this week? Did you know ahead of time about this week’s week­ly­wrapup?

1. What is your def­i­n­i­tion of “beau­ty”? Has this changed over time?
Oh my. I’ve seen and heard and felt and made beau­ty. It’s what feels absolute­ly true and right when it hap­pens. There was def­i­nite­ly a time when I had a much more con­ven­tion­al idea of beau­ty that was lim­it­ed to appearance.

2. Who (famous or not famous) do you think is beau­ti­ful? Why?
I think it would be far eas­i­er for me to list those that I don’t find beau­ti­ful, but it would be extreme­ly unkind for me to do so. I pre­fer not to dwell on them, anyway.

3. Is it pos­si­ble to be both beau­ti­ful and ugly? How?
Hmm. It’s pos­si­ble to be what I con­sid­er beau­ti­ful while hav­ing an appear­ance that most would call ugly, and vice ver­sa. My per­son­al ideas of beau­ty and its oppo­site can’t exist togeth­er, though.

4. Why does soci­ety place so much empha­sis on beau­ty? Will this ever change? Why or why not?
I think appear­ances are sim­ply the eas­i­est way for most peo­ple to judge oth­er peo­ple, objects, etc. And hon­est­ly, peo­ple, in gen­er­al, are lazy, so I doubt that will change. What is con­sid­ered “beau­ti­ful” has changed and will change, but the empha­sis on it has always been there and prob­a­bly always will be there.

5. How does beau­ty vary from cul­ture to cul­ture? Is there a par­tic­u­lar cul­ture’s def­i­n­i­tion of beau­ty that you admire? Why?
That which is val­ued does vary to some extent from cul­ture to cul­ture, and even in the same cul­ture at dif­fer­ent points in time. Most of what is val­ued seems to relate to that which indi­cates eco­nom­ic suc­cess. And no, I can’t think of any par­tic­u­lar cul­tur­al stan­dard of beau­ty that I admire at the moment.