Aesthetic Judgement And Aesthetic Judgment

Everyday people stare at billboards, magazine covers, movies, television, or pictures on the Internet of someone or something that they classify as beautiful. Some things people glance over and other things fascinate them. For example, when Farrah Fawcett’s famous picture of her in her red bathing suit came out; many teenage boys hung that picture in their bedrooms. Their idea of Farrah’s beauty was based strictly her outward appearance.

In another study, Langlois and Roggaman (1990) took photos of faces and morphed them together to produce composite images made up of 4, 8, 16 or 32 images. Participants rated faces as increasingly attractive the more faces that went into each image; this applied to both male and female faces. The more faces in an image, the more symmetrical they become, it seems that moving a facial image closer to the average increases its perceived attractiveness. It is likely that symmetry equates to fitness and “good genes”, these people are less likely to have been affected by harmful mutation. People with attractive faces are preferred because of the benefits of passing on these attractive characteristics to offspring. Little & Hancock propose that humans have evolved to be attracted to symmetrical faces because they indicate “averageness”, which equates to genetic health. Grammar and Thornhill (1994) found that females are attracted to males with masculine characteristics, for example: large jaw and prominent cheekbones. These features arise as a result of testosterone, which is also a handicap because it suppresses the immune system. Therefore, showing only “healthy” individuals can afford to produce these traits- advertising a strong immune system. Cartwright (2000) supported this, finding men prefer photographs of women with symmetrical faces and vice versa.

Beauty is seen as one of the most important aspects of an individual as it the first characteristic someone notices about a person. Some are treated differently due to his or her aesthetically pleasing or displeasing face and is most evident in the book Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C. S. Lewis that takes place approximately in the time period 700 to 450 B.C. In the novel Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C. S. Lewis the three central female characters, Orual, Psyche, and Redival, are all regarded to differently based on their physical appearances and this attitude is prevalent in modern society.

Everyone has a different concept of beauty. Philosophy expert, Andrea Borghini says, “Beauty is one of the most fascinating riddles of philosophy” (Borghini). Throughout life a person's concept of beauty changes many times. Scott Westerfeld demonstrated how people’s concept of beauty changes several times in the book The Uglies. After examining the book, it has become clear that to come of age a person must go through three main stages of beauty; innocent beauty, experimental beauty, and mature beauty.

Appearances matter: not only do they influence everyone's daily life, but they can predict the results of congressional elections and criminal justice trials with a startling degree of accuracy. Regrettably, despite living in a seemingly advanced modern society, people tend to fall back on primitive instincts evolved over millions of years. Accordingly, those perceived as “different” or “ugly” often immediately have negative traits ascribed to them. Indeed, in Frankenstein, Mary Shelley asserts that society assigns personality characteristics to people based on their external appearances and uses these judgments in a distorted form of justice.

“ I am not Abnegation. I am not Dauntless. I am Divergent” (Roth 442). This quotation display a certain substance people all need understand about the interior of themselves in life; people are more than one thing, one personality, and one judgement, individuals are all divergent. Divergent is a powerful word, which means that people are all different from what the world may want them to be or how they are portrayed as to the rest of the world. Divergent means, humans are not just one type of person, they are all different human beings who has many aspects that make them the person they are. In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, judgement is evident when characters, Arthur Radley, Atticus Finch, and Dolphus Raymond are misjudged for the way their community sees them, which is being judged by one aspect rather than the person 's true character. Throughout the novel, Arthur Radley also know as Boo, is misjudged by the community for being a phantasm person regardless of his considerate personality; Atticus Finch is misjudged by his children for being an uninteresting man who only reads rather than hunt, drink, or smoke despite his modest personality. Finally, Dolphus Raymond is misjudged by the community for being a drunk who is married to a black woman and has mixed children regarding his selfless personality. Arthur Radley, Atticus Finch, and Dolphus Raymond are misjudged regardless of their true reality.

Beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder, and sadly the beholder’s eye is usually warped by what society generally deems to be beautiful. In today’s society, things such as youth and slenderness are often deemed to be conventionally beautiful. One could also argue that fair or light skin are often deemed as being more beautiful than that which is not. While being deemed attractive rather than beautiful, one thing that society tends to promote when paired with two or more of the above traits is also a sexual manner of

There have been many attempts to validate our current beauty standards. For example, critics have argued that while there has been research showing the negative effects, “there are also studies that found no effect or even positive effects of these media portrayals on young women” (Arendt, et al 2). Also, while many people accuse beauty of being arbitrary, it is simply not the case. As F. Nahai states in his article "Evolutionary Beauty", “The quest to define standards of beauty is not new. One of the earliest to seek insight into the elusive qualities of beauty was the Greek philosopher Pythagoras. He believed that beauty was intertwined with static

People often judge or misperceive others appearances in a less than equal manner before they even know the true nature of the person. Every day we make assumptions by what we can see physically. Even in the supermarkets, we distinguish good products from bad products based on how they look. We are apt to choose good-looking products because they don’t have flaws, cracks, and bruises. Moreover, we assume them to have good qualities and good tastes. Actually, taste doesn’t deal with its looking. However, we bias in favor of assuming human nature. Since people judge human beings based on how they look, it is called prejudice. In fact, prejudice just disadvantage

When I was only a little girl, I had been told that true beauty came from within. Yet as I grew up, I noticed that looks mattered. From their attractiveness, race, age, or gender, anyone’s image was always up for scrutiny. Under those circumstances, I grew up thinking that if people were to judge me based on my appearance, that I should judge them the same way. Though, as I became older, I at some point learned that how a person looked wasn’t always in their range of control. A person simply isn’t born with the choice of picking what they look like, nor are they born with the choice of having a genetic disorder or disease. In that case, I believe that nobody should be defined purely based on what they look like.

Biologists believed that facial symmetry should be attractive because it may signal mate quality. Rhodes, Proffit, Grady and Sumich (1998) manipulated the symmetry to figure out the effect on attractiveness. 4 versions of a picture were created. One was perfectly symmetric, the others were a highly symmetric version, normal level of symmetry and a low symmetric version.64 subjects rated these faces. The results clearly stated that perfect symmetry was significantly more attractive and low symmetry faces were unattractive, more over the males found the perfect symmetric faces more appealing as potential life partners, so facial symmetry does play a role in mate selection. In the second experiment the authors compared the attractiveness of faces at three symmetry levels. These were normal, high and perfect. The subjects were shown two versions of the same face at different

The readings for this week consisted of summaries in Applerouth and Edles (2016), excerpts from Discipline and Punish by Michael Foucault (1975), “Social Space and the Genesis of Groups” by Pierre Bourdieu (1982), “Outline of a Sociological Theory of Art Perception” also by Bourdieu (1968) and Orientalism by Edward Said (1978), as well as the article “Towards an ‘optics of power’: technologies of surveillance and discipline and case-loading midwifery practice in New Zealand” by Deborah Davis and Kim Walker (2013). All of these readings center on “Poststructuralism”, which Applerouth and Edles (2016) describe as being a response to “Structuralism” (Applerouth & Edles, 2016, pg. 644). Applerouth and Edles (2016) state that “From the perspective

Beauty sets standards for society through appearance, especially in younger generations due to use of social media and picture editing. “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder” is a saying that has been around for ages (Plato, n.p.). It is an accurate phrase because of contrasting views within particular individuals. Beauty is present in the good deeds of community members as well as the unity exhibited through dreadful events. It is a flower bud breaking through the dirt into the fresh, spring air. To clarify how beauty is viewed, it is often times the exposure of evil accounting for the new appreciation of something beautiful. After recognizing the privileges we acquire, the existence of beauty is revealed and expressed more easily. In current society, appreciating beauty is substantial to

What is beauty? How do we decide who is attractive and who is not? Society is full of information telling us what is beautiful, but what fact is that information based on? The topic of beauty has been studied, analyzed and controversial for centuries. We all know the feeling you can have when you hear a beautiful song that brings joy to your heart, stand in a field of flowers that excites your eyes, or admire a face that is visually pleasing. As human beings, we are all drawn to beauty, but what is it that makes something beautiful? The controversial issue that surrounds beauty is that some believe that true beauty is defined by someone’s outer appearance, while others believe it is something that is experienced through a person’s

Zadie Smith’s On Beauty is filled with characters who all readers can relate to. The novel focuses primarily on the Belseys, who are a mixed race family living in Boston. During the novel, the Belsey family members undergo challenges and situations that shape and mold their identities. The father, Howard is in the middle of a mid life crisis struggling with lack of success in his career, feeling stuck and his infidelity to his wife, Kiki. Kiki is also struggling with aging and coming to terms with her changing body as well as the unknown fate of her marriage following Howard’s affair. The Belsey children, as well as Vee, the daughter of Howard’s rival Monty Kipps, struggle with their own coming of age stories as they emerge as young adults. One main struggle that all the female characters have in common is body image. The burden of a woman’s body remains a main premise throughout the entire novel as the characters define their worth and have their worth defined by others based on their physical appearance. The female body is viewed by characters in different ways based on gender and age. The men in the novel view women’s in terms of their sexual worth. The older women in the novel have a more realistic view of their bodies and even find value in their aging bodies. On the other hand, the younger women struggle with negative body image as well as their sexual power as they begin their journey as women.