What is Beauty?

What is beauty?

I decided write this blog to explore and challenge our view of beauty.

I will start off by saying, that I have watched many amazing TED talks addressing the massive issues with body image that we are all facing in our culture today.

These talks in general focus on how to shift your perspective from obsessing about weight and appearance to the things that actually matter.

I am inspired and in awe of these talks, but in every single one, I always find a quote that confirms one thing that I don’t agree with:

That the perfect body or ideal appearance exists.

And is more beautiful – and thus, better - than others.

That there are parts of us that are unflattering because they don’t live up to the standards that society has set for us.

And that is where I want to take it further, because I don’t agree.

Photo: Ideal Beauty over Time

I know this is a difficult subject. 

I think it is difficult to really ”get” because we’re being brainwashed from such an early age. 

I am a cand.paed.phil. so I am rather used to going deep into various subjects. I just haven’t done it with beauty before (or anything else that might actually be of importance) but I am definitely going to give it a go! Let's start with ...

The Perfect Body:

The reason I don’t believe that the perfect body exists is not the popular ”every body is beautiful”. Instead, I want to offer a way of viewing ourselves that does not glorify beauty - at all.

I have actively shifted my focus to a point where I believe I see things neutrally.

When I hear any sort of talk about being "beautiful", "ugly", "fat" or "thin", I hear not only self-objectification and a desire for perfection. I also see that the shift in perception of beauty that so many people are working so hard for is really only a shift from worshipping one kind of body to adding more body shapes to be worshipped. 

I simply don’t think adding curvy or fat bodies to the acceptable range of bodies is going far enough.

We need to go to the land where there IS no beauty.

And we need to STOP WORSHIPPING BEAUTY!

We are passing this destructive pattern that our worth is based on how we look on to kids every single time we tell them that they are beautiful.

Every time we speak those words to someone, we are in fact doing them a massive disservice. 

We are all living in a world full of visual images (that are not real, but edited) and we also deal with comments from other people (who are as brainwashed culturally as we are) and over time, we have come to believe that these things are true.

That what we look like is the most important thing in the world. 

Most of us live the illusion that we need to improve our looks to get the life we want: If we lose weight, we will be happy. If we remove that wrinkle, we will be happy. If we get those new pants/make-up/shoes/hair-do we will be happy. 

We will improve our looks, we will change ourselves and then we will be happy and beautiful.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. We have all tried it. And are we happier? Nope.

Why is that? Because our bodies or appearance was never the problem. The problem is how we view ourselves as objects instead of as human beings with more to offer than just a visual.

We still think that our appearance matters. It does not.

Nor is it more beautiful to be cellulite-free than not. Just like it isn’t more beautiful to have blonde hair instead of brown.

Strangely, when we take the discussion into the realm of hair colour, we are all suddenly in agreement: beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we say.

We know that when it comes to hair colour, different people prefer different colours. Yet this isn’t the case when it comes to the rest of our appearance.

Angry voices are yelling from the sidelines now.

Accept your cellulite! Accept your curves and your body fat!

Yup, I think we should.

But I also feel like we need to break the spell now.

We need to really ask ourselves: 

WHY is no cellulite more beautiful than cellulite? Why are stretchmarks ugly? What makes a flat stomach more beautiful than a big one?

And the answer will always be: because that is just the way it is.

Some appearances ARE more beautiful than others. Some features are ugly.

This is the common belief, even though we are now sometimes prompted here and there to ”accept” our flaws. To accept that our bodies are imperfect.

But I am not buying it.

I don’t think there really ARE any flaws. I don't think there is such a thing as an imperfect body. There are just different ways of appearing in the world.

No beauty? No ugly? But we all know what is beautiful and ugly, you say. 

And we KNOW that beauty is beauty - simply because we all agree! The first part is true. We know what we think is beautiful. We know what we think is ugly.

The second part is not true.

We don’t all agree, actually - just with the culture we are living in.

YOUR beauty ideals – a product of time and place:

The standards of beauty are ever-changing.

Realizing this is the first step to knowing that we are simply being taught by our culture what we should think.

If we think of this in terms of neuroscience, we find that whatever we focus on shapes our brains. Think of a concert pianist, and how her brain is trained to have stronger neural pathways that support musicality and dexterity.

When we think the same thing over and over, we train ourselves to believe this is the truth, and thus, we can make ourselves more and more self-destructive over time.

Photo: Ideal body over Time 

If we think negatively about our bodies and positively about the airbrushed bodies we see every day, we strengthen those neural pathways, and the thoughts become our reality.

When watching this wonderful video about how the beauty ideals have changed over time, we see that we have been living lies: beauty is NOT one thing, and we don’t all agree on what it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=26&v=Xrp0zJZu0a4

Or go here to read it instead: https://www.scienceofpeople.com/ideal-body-types-throughout-history/

What can we conclude from this: WE THINK WHAT WE THINK BECAUSE WE ARE HERE AT THIS TIME AND IN THIS LOCATION!

We are so deep in the cultural ideals that we think they are our own.

Our heads are filled up with what other people think or want us to think (and yes, some people DO want you to be really unhappy with yourself and your body. As Victoria Welsby points out in her kick-ass TED talk, "I am Fat", Americans alone spent 66 billion dollars trying to lose weight. Combine this with the knowledge that 95 percent of all diets fail and you have got yourself a fucking goldmine! And that is just a small part of this massive industry that profits from our self hate).

Now - let’s take a look at location - at what beauty is in different cultures in 2018.

I don’t have to tell you what beauty is in the Western world. 

But you may be surprised if I tell you, that in Ethiopia, body scars are beautiful. That in Japan, China and Thailand, white skin is beautiful? In Kenya, it's long earlobes and a bald head?

If you want to see more, here is the link to the article: http://www.totalbeauty.com/content/slideshows/global-beauty-standards-141201/page1

There is also a great survey called "Perceptions of perfection" that is quite interesting. It shows what the ideal body is in different countries right now: https://onlinedoctor.superdrug.com/perceptions-of-perfection/?utm_source=affiliatewindow 

The results will probably surprise you. The very skinny body is only ideal in Italy and China, while all the rest of the countries prefer a fuller figure in women.

Photo: Perceptions of Perfection

This is not to say that fuller bodies are more beautiful than skinny bodies. It is only meant to show how much ideals vary depending on location.

To Tan or not to Tan?

In Asian countries, women should be as white as possible. In Western culture, a tan is worth getting cancer over, and women are willing to fake a tan in all sorts of crazy ways.

As a teenager, I spent a lot of money on fake tanning, and in most cases I ended up looking like a carrot. Or Donald Trump.

So if you had been born in Asia, you would not be out tanning in summer - instead you would have a bike with gloves on the steering wheel so that your hands would remain white. Hard to imagine?

I do NOT believe that we have any sort of innate compass that tells us that one thing looks better than another. We see things and we hear things - and then, without it being a a conscious choice, we start preferring what we see.

Studies clearly show that the body we see the most is the one we prefer. So our visual diet is important.

Photo: Perceptions of Perfection

I have had an interest over the last decade in Asian culture, especially Japan and South Korea, and when I tell Japanese people about our beauty standards, they think we are weird. 

This is another testament to how culture plays a big part in how we see beauty.

In Japan, girls need to be white, frail, very thin, have a big nose and crooked teeth.

Say what? Yes. I will say it again:

No curves, no tanning, no teeth correction (except to make teeth MORE crooked) and ”You have a big nose” is a compliment (that I have personally received from Asians many times, along with ”You are really white!)

And that is TODAY. In 2018. In this world, but in a different culture.

I could go on about other cultures as well, but will leave that up to you to explore.

NEUTRAL BEAUTY AND SUBJECTIVE BEHOLDERS:

Hopefully, by now I have provided some food for thought, even if you’re not convinced that what I am saying is really true: that there is no such thing as beauty.

I will add, though, that there is such a thing as subjective beholders.

We need to update the cliché, then:

Beauty is in the brain of the eye-washed beholder. 

Not quite as catchy, I admit, but a lot closer to the truth, it seems.

I for one remember when I had no clue whatsoever about what I or anyone else looked like. This blissful state lasted up until I was around 10 or 11. 

I simply wasn’t yet trained to scrutinise myself or other people. 

What did I see? I don’t know. 

I think I felt more than I saw. 

I wasn’t aware of looks as anything else than a matter of fact kind of thing, such as "I am tall, I am blonde, I have blue eyes".

I didn't think any further than that. 

A funny example of how little looks mattered was while worshipping the talent of one of our favourite girl groups, the mixed-race soul trio TLC, my best (and very white) friend and I had NO idea that the three mulatto girls looked any different than us. 

We would often role play as them, and discuss who should be who depending on who looked more like which member.

There was no visual similarities, yet, we didn’t know this. We had no concept of skin colour or beauty.

Can you think back to a similar time? It was definitely a happier time for me.

We are, as we have seen, well-trained in finding flaws and distinguishing between WHAT WE ARE TAUGHT is beauty and WHAT WE ARE TAUGHT is ugly.

So when I say ”beauty doesn’t exist”, I mean a universal beauty based on appearance. 

I believe that beauty is a neutral and subjective term. We confirm these things that we have learned by checking in with our family and friends and hear what they think, and when they think the same as we do, we rest assured that we KNOW what beauty is.

It can be helpful to consider this idea:

Experiences do not determine your feelings. Your feelings, on the other hand, do determine your experiences.

When you are living your life and are faced with challenges, such as having to decide what YOU think is beautiful, this is no different from the weather.

If it rains on 10 people, you will find a range of interpretation for what that rain means as well as how that rain might be navigated.

For some, rain is just another bad thing to happen to them that day, as they think bad things always happen to them.

That same rain, to another person, is a nice surprise that brings fun and opportunity to play. They are therefore not inconvenienced by rain.

Yet others will barely notice the rain, because they anticipated it and prepared with appropriate clothing or an umbrella. They know that rain happens and that it isn’t personal.

So is rain a bad thing? A fun thing? Something that just happens?

The answer is: neither. Rain is a neutral thing.

And we can see quite clearly that it wasn’t the experience – the rain – that determined the quality of experience.

Instead, the experience is determined by how we feel.

I think the same is the case with beauty.

Our experience of beauty does not determine our feelings. Our feelings determine our experience of beauty.

That means that what we are looking at is neutral, just like the rain.

A body is a body. There are no bodies that are more beautiful than others. But there are feelings in all of us that we attach to our experiences, and these determine how we feel.

We might feel that it is a bad thing to be fat, because that is what we have been told numerous times, and we have come to associate fat with unhealthy, even that isn't the case. Unhealthy, then, is the feeling we get when we think of an overweight body. 

So if we experience a visual that shows us an airbrushed body, and we feel that this is beautiful and this is not challenged by other views or feelings originating from ourselves or others, then we have developed a static symbol. 

We are being challenged with finding our own sense of beauty very early.

Half of 3 to 6 years old girls are already worried about being fat, while roughly a third wants to change something about their bodies, shows a study by the University of Central Florida. This means, that we are forced to attach symbols to terms like "beautiful" and "ugly" before we can even think for ourselves at all!

We all have a range of emotional symbols in our lives that we attach to various experiences - and the more ways we can interpret the same thing - for example rain - the less static these symbols are.

The more static the symbolism is, the more we are locked in the same reactions.

This emotional language determines much for us.

If we ONLY have the one, static symbolism that rain is something bad and personal, we lose the opportunity of thinking of it in any other way, and we have subscribed to bad days if it rains.

But if we can expand our range of interpretation, if we can learn to perceive the same experience in more ways, we can free our symbols.

Rain may then include a new range of emotions instead of just one.

If we allow ourselves to perceive things anew and allow them to be what they are - just neutral - our symbols can grow, expand, be replaced and updated.

When we start viewing our bodies with more symbols than just "I hate my belly" or "I am fat", or "I am old", we free not just our symbols, but ourselves.

Our cellulite might go from being a crippling factor that stops us from going to the beach to just something that is unwanted. 

From there, we can expand even further, until we reach the point where we are able to see that the cellulite is just the same as a thigh with no cellulite. It is only a visual experience, and how we feel about it is determined solely on our emotions and reactions towards it.

This means that we have the power to change our own views - and by doing so, we are able to pass this on to our surroundings.

This is a powerful motivation for me. I want to influence people around me to love themselves. And it should not be despite our perceived flaws or imperfections, because those, I hope to have now proved 

DO NOT EXIST.