Tuesday, October 17, 2006

What is beauty?

This Friday, I'm leading a discussion in one of my English classes on the topic of beauty. The questions are basically ones about who decides what is beautiful, what makes us feel beautiful, and is an obsession with beauty something that only women must deal with.

Some random observations regarding the definition of beauty:
  • painted toenails are beautiful?
  • Cleopatra's nose - if that was at one time beautiful, I want to go back to Antiquity in a time machine where my nose can be appreciated for the thing of beauty that it most certainly is. heh. heh.
  • Rubens' paintings of women v. pictures of a Milan catwalk
  • When did the mother goddess look go out of style? And why??
  • Audrey Hepburn is clearly a beautiful woman. But I must say I prefer the look in this Renoir - no gaunt cheeks or hollow clavicles here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rachel, beauty is a societal/cultural issue. What one culture finds beautiful another may find repulsive. Perhaps beauty is truly in the eye of a beholder. I might paint what I view as the most beautiful scene ever done, yet find lots of people that will find it tasteless and a waste of canvas.

P.S. Cleopatra's nose can't compare to yours. :-)

Rachel said...

I find it interesting how the earlobe hole things and piercings are becoming so popular when people used to say they felt sorry for African tribes who did similar things.

I actually saw a woman in Italy this weekend with a classical nose - the kind that starts in the middle of the forehead. It was amazing! She looked exactly like Cleopatra or some other classical Greek/Roman woman.

1GodApostolic said...

I like Pauls comment. Oh and you are so conceited. don't we look cute /lol\.