Essay about Symmetry Defines Beauty

know the feeling one can have when one hears a beautiful song that brings joy to ones heart, stand in a field of flowers that excites ones eyes, or admire a face that is visually pleasing. 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 experiences through a person’s character. Beauty is defined as the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the sense or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit. The secret of beauty has been a quest of humans for centuries. It has been determined that women and some men spend up to one third of their income on products and procedures that enhance their looks. People spend way too much time looking in the mirror, scrutinizing, worrying, fretting, and wishing people could change something about themselves. People dream of looking like the girl at work because she has great hair, or the girl people meet at a party because she is skinny, with the perfect nose. This happens because people are constantly on social media. A pretty face is not a complete definition of beauty, nor is the quality of one being kind and compassionate. To contain beauty, someone or something does not have to be physically beautiful. Beauty is everywhere. Take a simple flower.

Beauty is defined as a quality that pleases or delights the senses or mind. So many people today are programmed to think that beauty lies in a person’s physical appearance. I think that beauty is in what a person sees in another person. What might make one person pretty, makes another one hard to look at.

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.

The subjective element of beauty involves judgment, not opinion. Many people feel beauty is only something seen by the eyes. St. Thomas Aquinas views beauty in both the supernatural and natural orders. Aquinas lists the attributes of beauty to be found in nature. These are; unity, proportion, and clarity. We will see how these attributes of beauty are seen through the eye and felt by the heart.

Beauty is hard to define and is said to be in the eye of the beholder, but desire for women to be beautiful and stay beautiful is a goal in our culture today. Though our society and loved ones emphasize that beauty lies within one’s character, our society also contradicts this idea because they tend to focus on physical appearance more. Beauty perception has evolved from embracing natural qualities in earlier decades to promoting superficiality in today’s society due to cultural changes such as the discovery of new beauty products and procedures and depictions made through mass and social media. The evolution of beauty from previous decades is drastic. Tracing back to the 1900’s up until the 1940’s, ideal beauty involved natural qualities

People have contributed to the physical and cultural view of beauty in societies all around the world. Each country has different beauty standards that reflect off of each other to display diversity: “Beauty is informed by values, culture, religion, background and societal influence. Concepts of beauty has change over time depending on environment, culture, etc”. Through the different standards of other cultures, societies are able to learn that there is not only one form of beauty. The evolution of beauty around the world allows people to compare opinions with another to form individual perspectives of beauty.

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

In one row, the protrusions might gradually become less curved and more pointed. In the next row, the limb-like extensions might shrink in relation to the torso. Participants mark which images they like best, and which least. They then go on to the next series of 25 drawings." This experiment will reveal what human brains are drawn to in terms of beauty. Does the brain find something slender and curvy more or less attractive than something short and pointy? Is there consistency? After the gallery guests have answered theses questions the John Hopkins University scientists can then begin to calculate what the brain is drawn to and why. Many things will be able to be accomplished as a result from this experiment. One would potentially be able to judge art based on the results, or market products based on what appeals to people, or simply better understand the functions of the human brain. McCauley's audience, readers of the Baltimore Sun interested in the studies of the psychology of beauty, eagerly await the results.

There is a science behind why people find certain mates attractive. Humans are programmed to look for certain qualities in order to find a mate that will carry on their genes.These qualities form “the standard of beauty,” and this standard will vary from culture to culture. The qualities that are considered “beautiful” are the ones that will be the most useful for surviving and producing healthy offspring.

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

Beauty is something that can be interpreted completely different from person to person. A famous quote that goes along with this perfectly is “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” I think a person’s inner beauty should be taken into account when deciding whether or not a person is beautiful. Wikipedia’s definition of beauty is, “a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure or satisfaction” while Oxford Dictionary states, “beauty is a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially sight.” As you can see, inner beauty could be paired with Wiki’s definition and outer beauty could be paired with Oxfords. Of course, there

The definition of beauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction. Beauty has negative and positive influences on mostly people. Beauty is described by the inside and outside of us. Due to beauty, our self-esteem has been hurt dramatically, especially towards girls. Beauty is not always about our outside looks but it’s about our inside personality also.

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

Together, we can lower the numbers of people dying from eating disorders and cosmetic surgeries by resisting the beauty ideal. We can choose “to not participate in the beauty rituals, to not support the industries that produce both images and products, and to create other definitions of beauty” (WVFV, pg. 232). The most crucial and easiest solution is to create other definitions of beauty. Ultimately, it is up to the individual to decide what is beautiful. What if someone decided that the only thing that could contribute to one’s beauty is who someone is on the inside? Wouldn’t our world be a completely different place? Instead of

Natural beauty, in this day and age, is a term that has many definitions because it is a controversial term. With the way people dress, act, and express themselves, it is extremely hard to find the true denotation of natural beauty. This is also true with the growing popularity in makeup in both genders. When asked to define it, people have formed their own opinions of the term along with the commonly known denotation, connotation, synonyms, and antonyms. The definition of the term also can be described and derived from my personal experiences along with others’. Though there is much evidence for and against the belief, natural beauty is more than what’s on the outside.