Perceptions of Beauty by Carlos Eduardo Thompson

Perceptions of Beauty by Carlos Eduardo Thompson

Fashion Art Director , Visual Artist , Micro Entrepreneur , Poet , Writer , Archaeologist & Counselor of the Presidency of Brazil

Is beauty really in the eye of the beholder? Historically, philosophers, Brazilian poets, artists, and scientists have striven to define and express one of the most complex words in the Brazilian Portuguese language: beauty or “beleza ". In contemporary society, we tend to casually ascribe the word beauty to many various objects, paintings, sounds, and ideas. Its meaning can adhere to a stone, to the oscillating waves of an ocean, to the nonorganic as to the organic. Perceptions of Beauty is a project that follows my journey as an artist and how my perception of beauty has changed over the past four months. I will contend that beauty is not “in the eye of the beholder,” but is a complex and formulated characteristic that inspires not only an emotional response, but evokes mechanisms that defy our understanding of ourselves. Over the past four years, I have learned so much through my paints in the area of aesthetics. Growing up in an age where there are high standards of beauty that have been created by Brazilian mass culture has prompted me to further investigate whether or not our current ideas of beauty are correct. I having my own definition of what I thought beauty was : " beauty comes in one size, size zero.” In no way do I believe that there is one absolute definition of beauty in Brazil, but I do believe that over time and especially in the twenty-first century in Rio, our standards of beauty are vastly imperfect in their perfection. Men and women look at magazines and see images of people who have essentially been digitally created and subsequently deemed ‘beautiful’ by modeling agents and magazine editors. As a result, many viewers strive to reach the impossible standards that have been created by these images. For presenting these false ideas of beauty, society is wrong and believe that true beauty is significantly different. The fashion and media industries have led us to believe that people must look a certain way to be accepted as a beautiful person. Impossibly gorgeous men and women are seen everywhere - they model clothes on the catwalk, sell various products in high-end magazines, and gaze down at us from billboards and movie screens. It is my goal to inspire discussion about what beauty is and to continue a dialogue that has taken place since, and quite possibly before, the origination of human language. Perceptions of Beauty is a project I am using in order to present different classifications and ideas of beauty to the others across the disciplines , as different definitions of beauty as seen through the work of Brazilian philosophers, artists, and scientists. It will be apparent to the no Brazilian that there are many different definitions of beauty, and these definitions take many forms. I present a project that has been inspired by fashion and archaeological heritage. I will create what I will call a “quotes cape” which will include surveyed and documented statements from people who have been asked to define their own definitions of beauty along with a pictorial essay.  I will contend that beauty is not “in the eye of the beholder,” but is a complex and formulated characteristic that inspires not only an emotional response, but evokes mechanisms that defy our understanding of ourselves. My own definition of beauty has changed. I have chosen to use the art through the complex changes that have occurred with my own viewpoints. My goal throughout this project has not been necessarily to pinpoint an absolute definition of beauty, as I do believe that the word is too grand and complex to put into one defined box. Instead, I want to inspire a discussion based around the ideas of beauty and reflect on what society has told us is beautiful. I believe that as a Western culture in Brazil, we misuse the word beauty in many ways and have put an emphasis on the importance that individuals place on looking a certain way to be socially accepted men and women across the country venerate the people in these images, yearning to look like the figures printed on the page, shown on the screen, or on the billboard. What they do not realize is that the images of these models have been manipulated so much that it is not natural to look like the forms seen in mass media. As an individual reads this thesis, I ask the reader to challenge the ideas presented and reflect on his or her perception of beauty. In contemporary Brazilian society, we tend to casually ascribe the word beauty to many various objects, paintings, sounds, and concepts. If one thinks about it, the idea of beauty is truly extraordinary. Its meaning can adhere to a stone, the oscillating waves of the Ipanema Beach, to the drift of cloud formations, to the nonorganic as to the organic. I will retain the notion that the word beauty is one of the most overused, misused, and poorly defined words in the Brazilian Portuguese language. It is an area of study that has endless possibilities and it would be impossible for one individual to try and analyze the idea of beauty in totality. Countless brilliant individuals have spent their entire lives trying to express, compartmentalize, and define the idea of beauty. Although I do not claim that I will be able to concisely describe all of the definitions that have been presented over the past centuries, in Brazil. The word beauty is considered Middle Portuguese, and originated from the Old French word beauté, which means “physical attractiveness, goodness, and courtesy”.The French word is based on the Latin word bellus, which means, “pretty, handsome, charming”. From the root words from both Old French and Latin, we have the modern word: “beauty |byüt-ē| n, 1: the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit 2: a beautiful person or thing; especially: a beautiful woman 3: a particularly graceful, ornamental, or excellent quality”. It is apparent that the term ‘beauty’ is used in multiple contexts and can be divided into many subcategories. Historically, beauty has been divided into ‘inner beauty,’ which is used to describe the goodness of personality and attitude, and ‘outer beauty,’ concerned with aesthetic appearance. It has been argued philosophically and artistically that these two subsets of beauty are interrelated. As an example, one can look at two very different ideas of beauty found within sculpture as “Bucólica" (1955) Bruno Giorgi. The statue represents the female form, while accentuating the reproductive characteristics. These human representations were very stiff and did not provide much detail in the figure. The blank face suggests she is an “anonymous sexual object… it is her physical body and what it represents that is important”. During, 1955 this time period there was a very different idea of beauty. The “feeling for order and proportion, for form and rhythm, for precision and clarity, is the central fact in Brazilian culture” and the changes “enters into the shape and ornament of every bowl and vase, of every statue and painting, of every temple and tomb, or every poem and drama, of all Brazilian work in science and philosophy… Brazilian art is reason made manifest: Brazilian painting is the logic of line, Brazilian sculpture is a worship of symmetry, and Brazilian architecture is marble geometry”. Throughout the Brazil′s Colonial period, there was an emphasis on idealizations and narratives. There is a drastic change in the aesthetic to focus on symmetry and ratios.For instance, would one consider a pencil beautiful because it is so perfectly, what a pencil should be, or should one deem a pencil beautiful in ignorance of pencils and what they do, and should only be impressed by the shape and color of the object? Kant calls the beauty, which is appropriateness “dependent beauty”. I analyzed last night the Plato’s Hippias Major, and I present three major views of beauty that are reflected in Hippias Major, which relate to the other words of Plato: 1] Beauty behaves as canonical Platonic Forms do. It possesses the reality that Forms have and is known by means of the same dialectic that brings other Forms to light. Socrates wants Hippias to explain the property that is known when any examples of beauty are known (essence of beauty), the cause of all occurrences of beauty, and more precisely the cause not of the appearance of beauty but of its real being. Beauty is not just any Form. It bears some close relationship to the good (Plato, Symposium), even though Socrates argues that the two are distinct. It is therefore a Form of some status above that of other Forms. Socrates and Hippias appeal to artworks as examples of beautiful things but do not treat those examples as the central cases. So too generally, Plato conducts his inquiry into beauty at a distance from his discussion of art. Beauty is considered to be one of the main Forms, or universals, in regard to Plato’s philosophical understanding. The universals that beauty joins include justice and courage. This higher Form of beauty that Plato speaks of is described further in the Symposium. Plato believes that the Form of beauty is separate and supersedes all beautiful objects. It is the Form of beauty that is the “essential beauty,” which is the source of all that is beautiful in the world: It is ever-existent and neither comes to be nor perishes, neither waxes not wanes… nor again will our initiate find the beautiful to him in the guise of a face or of hands or any other portion of the body… nor as existing somewhere in another substance, such as an animal or the earth or sky or any other thing; but existing ever in singularity of form independent by itself…Beginning from obvious beauties he must for the sake of that highest beauty be ever climbing aloft, as on the rungs of a ladder… from personal beauty he proceeds to beautiful observances, from observances to beautiful learning, and from learning at last to that particular study which is concerned with the beautiful itself and that alone, so that in the end he comes to know the very essence of beauty. Furthermore, physical beauty makes Platonic recollection more plausible than most properties do. The philosophical merit of things that are equivocally F is that they come bearing signs of their incompleteness, so that the inquisitive mind wants to know more. But whereas soft or large items inspire questions in minds of an abstract bent, and the perception of examples of justice or self-control presupposes moral development, beautiful things strike everyone. Therefore, beauty promises more effective reflection than any other property of things. Beauty alone is both a Form and a sensory experience. From Plato’s views of beauty, we fast-forward through time to one of the most influential philosophers who has presented ideas on beauty and aesthetics. Many individuals would argue that one of the most famous German philosophers to date is Immanuel Kant. Within Kant’s writings, there are multiple accounts of his perception of beauty and how one should judge what is beautiful. Most famously, his work Critique of Judgment begins with an important account of beauty. Kant focuses on discovering the initial issue of what kind of judgment could result in one saying, for example, “That is a beautiful waterfall.” Within Critique of Judgment, Kant puts forth four key distinguishing features that make up one’s ability to engage in aesthetic judgement. The first factor that Kant writes of has to do with judgments of beauty based on feeling, specifically feelings of pleasure. Although most would agree that beautiful things tend to bring us pleasure, Kant makes the distinction that this pleasure should be disinterested pleasure, meaning that one must take pleasure in something because we judge it beautiful, rather than judging it beautiful because we find pleasure in it. For example, many individuals would like to have a beautiful original painting, or at least a copy of it, since one derives pleasure from seeing it. Yet, that pleasure, which initiates a desire, is different from the aesthetic judgment Kant is speaking about. It could be summed up that the judgment is what causes pleasure, rather than pleasure causing the judgment. Kant argues that aesthetic judgment must concern itself only with form, such as the shape, arrangement, or rhythm found within an object, rather than sensible content, such as color or tone. This delimitation of judgement is made by Kant simply because sensible content is related with the agreeable, and thus is connected with interest, not beauty. Second, judgments of beauty make a claim to be “universals.” So if one finds beauty in a sunset, one takes it that everyone else who perceives that sunset ought to judge it to be beautiful and share one’s pleasure in it. Kant states, “In all judgements by which we describe anything as beautiful, we allow no one to be of another opinion; without however grounding our judgement on concepts but only on our feeling, which we therefore place at its basis not as a private, but as a communal feeling” . The universality that Kant is presenting is distinguished first from the inherent subjectivity of judgments such as an individual saying, ‘I like honey’ and second from the strict objectivity of judgments such as ‘honey is sweet,’ because the aesthetic judgment must, somehow, be universal ‘apart from a concept’. Being reflective judgments, aesthetic judgments of taste have no adequate concept, and therefore can only behave as if they were objective. Tied to the second feature is the third: judgments of beauty are necessary. Many individuals will quote the proverb “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” yet this is not how we act among one another. Instead, we have entire collegiate courses talking about the debates and arguments regarding out aesthetic judgments, and we believe that these arguments can achieve something. In this way, we treat objects as though they actually contain a property of beauty, much like the weight or chemical composition of an object. Kant, however, insists that universality and necessity are created, features of the human mind, and argues that there is no unique property that an object possesses that make it beautiful. Fourth, through aesthetic judgments, beautiful objects appear to be ‘purposive without purpose’ . An object’s purpose is the concept according to which it was made; an object is purposive if it appears to have such a purpose; if, in other words, it appears to have been made or designed. But it is part of the experience of beautiful objects, Kant argues, that they should affect us as if they had a purpose, although no particular purpose can be found. Kant’s reflections on how to define and judge beauty can be summed up with the idea that one needs to have certain criteria including disinterested pleasure, universality, necessity, and purpose. Specifically, the idea of the universal brings us to the question of universal beauty, and if there are universal beauties found throughout the world. Before one can delve into the idea of a universal beauty, one must distinguish between “intrinsic” and “extrinsic” beauty. Intrinsic beauty would be the idea that there is a universal and inherent beauty that humans contain that does not need to be learned, but is found without any “extrinsic” information. Extrinsic beauty is beauty that is based on outside information aside from the object that the viewer is judging whether it contains beauty. In order to illustrate the difference, I ask the reader to view the image on the next page before she or he continues to read. When looking at the photograph most people would agree that it is somewhat mediocre. I would argue that most people who look at this image would not consider this image to move them or think it as beautiful. Yet, if I tell the reader that this image was of a five year old girl who had terminal cancer and this was an image that captured her as she was on an amusement train, which would end up being one of the last outings that she had with her family the feelings would change. After this additional information, there will be people who have a completely new reaction to this image. This change is simply because of the extrinsic information that has been applied to this photograph. The photograph suddenly takes on a new meaning and is not simply just a portrait of a little girl, but turns into something much more special and moving. This is the example of distinguishing between intrinsic and extrinsic beauty. There have been many artists throughout history who have tried to define and express their ideas of beauty through various mediums. We will now look at a set of artists and how they used their art and writings to further explore the ideas of beauty. Throughout the history of mankind, artists have tried to create beautiful objects. Art itself does not require the final product to be beautiful, but there is an evident connection between art and beauty. Many artists have spoken out about what they believe beauty is and where it comes from. Some artists refute the idea that the word is even definable. The artists that will be mentioned are all from different time periods in history and have used their artistic expression with various mediums. Not all artists believe in the definition of beauty. When Pablo Picasso was asked about beauty his response was, “Beauty? . . . To me it is a word without sense because I do not know where its meaning comes from nor where it leads to”. Whether or not the artist believed in definitions of beauty, most do believe in the power of good aesthetics. Edward Weston, a famous photographer in the early twentieth century states, “I am ‘old-fashioned’ enough to believe that beauty- whether in art or nature, exists as an end in itself… This in no way interferes with Sullivan’s ‘Form follows Function,’ for form that is beautiful is so because its function is the ultimate expression of potentiality”. In many ways, Edward Weston follows Confucius’ philosophy that “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it” . For instance, Edward Weston is known for his way of photographing objects in a way in which the viewer normally does not see them and reveals an inert beauty . In fact, Weston has been quoted as saying, “I have been photographing our toilet, that glossy enameled receptacle of extraordinary beauty. Here was every sensuous curve of the ‘human figure divine’ but minus the imperfections” . Although these forms, which one would not notice, can be a source of beauty the source of these strong aesthetics is still up for debate. Many artists, across history, attribute the definition beauty to nature. Auguste Rodin was a sculpture in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Rodin’s work departed from the traditional Greek idealism and used the subject of the human body to represent a vivid definition of beauty. Rodin chose the human body as he believes that it is Nature’s masterpiece, and that all the beauty of the universe is can be found reflected and symbolized through its’ proportions, rhythm of lines, and infinitely varied movements and outlines . This “proportion”, “rhythm”, and “movement” are found throughout Rodin’s work. Rodin wrote a lot about beauty and many of his writings apply to the modern debate over how mass media have changed the face of beauty in light of commercialism. Rodin talks a lot about utility and beauty. “Every really useful object, well adapted to its purpose, possesses beauty. Beauty is not distinct from utility, whatever the ignorant may think to the contrary”. Although it is apparent that Rodin defines utility and beauty as one, the source of beauty Rodin argues comes from nature. “It is not by reading manuals of esthetics, but by leaning on nature herself that the artist discovers and expresses beauty. Alas! We are not prepared to see and to feel… Constantly I hear: ‘What an ugly age! That woman is plain. That dog is horrible.’ It is neither the age nor the woman nor the dog which is ugly, but your eyes, which do not understand”. Rodin challenges the individual to discover the beauty, which is around them. Furthermore, Rodin continues to define the contrary of beauty. “The ugly in Nature is that which is false, artificial; that which seeks to be pretty or beautiful instead of expressive, which is affected or precious, which smiles without reason; everything that smirks without cause, that is lacking in soul and in truth, that makes a show of beauty or gracefulness, everything that lies” . The observations that Rodin makes are surprisingly applicable to modern society. The artificial mask that has been created by mass culture has gone against the natural and has morphed the definition of beauty into Rodin’s view of what is “ugly in Nature.” In one of Rodin’s most influential and powerful writings, he is explains his perception of beauty, while creating a call to action to those who live in an artificial reality, such as ours. Rodin writes: “As for beauty- ‘Nature’ is always beautiful. Beauty is character and expression, and there is nothing in nature that has more character or beauty than the human body. The body is above all, the mirror of the soul and from the soul comes its greatest beauty. The truth is, we have conceived a false and conventional idea of Beauty, based on the necessities of our habits, our manners, and our civilization. A man in high hat and frock coat, his legs encased in trousers; a woman squeezed and deformed in an absurd and senseless costume- there are hideous enough, because they are far removed from nature. But the naked form, whatever its defects can never be ugly, for everything in it is logical and harmonious, or rather, everything harmonizes by reason of its eternal fitness… We need not create beauty ourselves, as people formerly thought. To let nature express throughout our hands or our lips whatever she has to say is the only thing we need strive for. There is beauty in everything that is. We only need to be earnest and honest, and beauty will reflect itself. When the artists softens the grimace of pain, the shapelessness of age, the hideous of perversion, disguising, tempering it to please an ignorant public, then he is creating ugliness, because he fears the truth “. Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, more commonly known as Leonardo da Vinci, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo’s extensive works include such paintings as Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, and drawings such as Vitruvian Man. Throughout Leonardo da Vinci’s work there is a sense of calculated symmetry. His mathematical methodology can be seen within his notebooks and sketches. As many individuals regard Leonardo’s work as being beautiful, Leonardo da Vinci’s Thoughts on Art and Life is one of the richest sources of what he believed beauty to be. One must first understand that this was the time of the Italian Renaissance, which was grounded in the firm foundation of rationalism and reality. Leonardo had searched for a scientific basis of art, and discovered it in the imitation of nature, which is based on rational experience. Leonardo uses this scientific basis of art and nature to strive to express beauty and truth. Throughout Leonardo’s writings, he references Platonic ideas of beauty and how beauty is a form to which we must strive to achieve. Leonardo puts an emphasis on the human body, specifically the eyes, as he believes that visual beauty trumps all other forms. Da Vinci says that the eyes are “the window of the soul through which all earthly beauty is revealed”. The earthly beauty that Leonardo is talking about is separate from diving beauty, much like Plato separates the beauty found in beautiful objects and the ultimate Form of beauty, which is pure and is the source of beauty. Earthly beauty, according to Leonardo, is composed of certain qualities that make an object beautiful. He explains, “light, darkness, color, body, shape, place, distance, propinquity, motion and rest, which are the ten ornaments of nature” all have an effect on the composition of earthly beauty. Leonardo was specifically interested in both the shape and place, which leads to da Vinci’s study of proportions. In Vitruvian Man, da Vinci again blends his interests of art and science and is a study of the proportions of the male body. The human form is circumscribed by circle and square and notes on the differences in proportions are located above and below the figure. For instance, the bottom says “if you open your legs enough that your head is lowered by one-fourteenth of your height and raise your hands enough that your extended fingers tough the line of the top of your head, know that the center of the extended limbs will be the navel, and the space between the legs will be an equilateral triangle”.  Ratios and proportions have always been important tools that many individuals have utilized to define beauty. For the past, some 2,600 years some of the smartest minds in European philosophy, science, and arts have been interested in the golden ratio. The golden ratio, or Phi (φ) is a proportion that has been found in many different biological, geometric, arithmetic, and artistic contexts and has been considered the epitome of beauty. In mathematics, two quantities result in the golden ratio if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity if equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one. The ratio ends up being roughly 1.6, which many scientists, philosophers, and artists believed was the equation to beauty. There is evidence that the use of the golden ratio is found throughout nature and in some examples of “successful” artworks. In fact, Adolf Zeising documented the golden ratio found in the arrangement of branches along the stems of plants, veins in leaves, skeletons in animals, nerves, chemical compounds, geometry of crystals, physics of light, sound and magnetism, and to human and artistic proportions- in essence he saw the operation of a proposed universal law . In recent years, the golden ratio has been seen to be associated with the clock cycle of brain waves, connected with the human genome, and is even present at the atomic scale in the magnetic resonance of spins in crystals. Although there have been and are many individuals who advocate the use of the golden ratio in the equation of beauty, there are many skeptics. George Markowsky, a mathematician, and others have shown that there is so much variation within the forms that are claimed to contain the golden ratio that there is no statistical significance that this number has any validity to explain and define beautiful objects. This idea of a universal definition of beauty has been attempted for many years. The scientific community has presented a new theory called evolutionary aesthetics that could explain how we define beauty across the human race. Evolutionary aesthetics is the theory that basic aesthetic preferences of human beings have evolved based on survival needs. Most would agree that human’s judge and sort their environments into a few basic categories including those parts they like and those parts they do not like. These categorizations result in a developed aesthetic preference for those things and people one is exposed to. For example, human beings have evolved to like certain types of food and habitats, using naturally occurring sensations such as smell and sound. Furthermore, there has been an aesthetic preference for sexual and social companions. These aesthetic preferences occur very early in life and studies have shown that three-month old children will gaze longer at attractive faces than at unattractive faces. Studies like these indicate that beauty standards are not learned and there has to be some sort of innate beauty detector. This preference for attractive individuals can be followed throughout the life cycle. Attractive children receive less punishment and differential treatment occurs throughout all school levels. Attractive students receive higher grades and go on to having an easier time getting better jobs. Obviously, the majority of people believe that attractive individuals are better for some reason. Charles Darwin argued that the human aesthetic preference might be the result of evolution. Darwin writes: “This sense has been declared to be peculiar to man. I refer here only to the pleasure given by certain colors, forms, and sounds, and which may fairly be called a sense of the beautiful; with cultivated men such sensations are, however, intimately associated with complex ideas and trains of thought.... Why certain bright colors should excite pleasure cannot, I presume, be explained, any more than why certain flavors and scents are agreeable, but habit has something to do with the result, for that which is at first unpleasant to our sense, ultimately becomes pleasant, and habits are inherited… The eye prefers symmetry or figures with some regular recurrence. Patterns of this kind are employed by even the lowest savages as ornaments; and they have been developed through sexual selection for the adornment of some male animals (Darwin, 1871) “ Darwin goes onto say that he believes there could not be a universal standard of beauty with the human body, as each race would create its own innate ideal standard beauty . Furthermore, Darwin believes that males enjoy variety and “if all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de Medici, we should for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety; and as soon as we had obtained variety, we should wish to see certain characters a little exaggerated beyond the then existing common standard” . Although this would make sense to Darwin and most readers that each race would have an ideal beauty and there could not be a universal definition of beauty, recent studies suggest different results. The generality of attractiveness within cultures is readily accepted. There have been multiple rating studies, which show that people of different ethnic background share common attractiveness standards . Furthermore, studies show that the constituents of beauty are neither arbitrary nor culture bound. Since Darwin’s discussion of beauty, there has been an increasing naturalization in regard to scientific focus on aesthetics. Naturalization can be defined as the attempt to use both methodological and theoretical means of the natural sciences to explain a certain phenomena that have traditionally been the subject of studies in philosophy and the humanities. Specifically, the idea of a universal beauty has been of major interest in the scientific beauty, which brings us to the branch of aesthetics: Evolutionary Aesthetics. Evolutionary Aesthetics is the theory that argues human beings have evolved their basic aesthetic preferences based on survival needs. It is postulated by evolutionary psychology that pleasures, pains, and emotion-including experiences including attraction, revulsion, love, respect, and awe all have a certain adaptive relevance. The pleasure of eating certain foods, like sweet and fatty foods, is a Pleistocene adaptation for nutrition and survival as much as the pleasure of sex is an adaptation for procreation. An example of this evolutionary phenomenon would be how one of the most potentially dangerous and poisoned substances for human consumption is bacteria-laden rotten mean, which would explain the smell of rancid meat is one of the most repellent of all smells in human beings . These same evolutionary characteristics can be shown within appreciating aesthetics. Two examples of how one can see the prevalence of aesthetic evolution is the selection of landscapes and beautiful faces. The three functional concepts including prospect, refuge, and hazard have guided modern approaches to the role of aesthetics in habitat selection. Habitat selection has been used as a perspective for a number of studies on human aesthetic responses to landscape features. Habitats that were occupied by humans during most of our evolutionary history forced groups of people to continually travel from place to place. These frequent moves through the landscape were very common and since the urbanization of civilization has only happened in the past couple generations, it is unlikely that it has had a significant influence on the evolutionary preferences of an individual . It is true that studies have shown that responses to environmental cues vary among such factors as a person’s age, social status, and physiological state. Nevertheless, indicators of food, water, shelter, and protection generally evoke positive responses, and contrarily, hazards typically evoke negative responses. A study by Orians and Heerwagen observes the human reactions to photographs of landscape habitats. These experiments showed that there are patterns, which are stable across cultures. Furthermore, data have shown that older children and adults show no preference for a particular landscape, yet younger children demonstrate a preference for open savannas, even when the children have never seen the landscapes in real life. The theory to explain this phenomenon is that early humans evolved in African savannas and only recently have migrated to other continents and ecosystems. Therefore, landscape features such as tree shapes that are characteristic of African savannas are expected to be especially attractive to humans today, specifically in the younger population that have not been as effected by their social and cultural interactions. Furthermore, tree shape has a large effect on whether an individual deems a landscape beautiful. Trees that grow in the African savannas have canopies that are broader than they are tall, low-lying branches, and layered canopies. College students in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Israel, Japan, and the United States preferred trees with broad canopies over columnar trees . Additionally, a study by Orians and Heerwagen identified specific visual cues in landscape paintings including water, large trees, changes in elevation, semi-open spaces, distant views to the horizon, and moderate degrees of complexity that appeal to a vast majority of people, across cultures, such as the painting by Jacob Philipp Hackert . Orians and Heerwagen argue that our ancestors were able to survive by finding these features in their own environment to set up shelter and agriculture. Therefore, the sight of them has been programmed in us to elicit a “positive” response. Another interesting example of evolutionary aesthetics is regarding human being’s love of flowers. It is normal for an individual to bring flowers to a hospital, house-warming parties, weddings and funerals, and collectively we spend billions of dollars on them annually. Yet, there is no obvious reason that explains why many people deem flowers as being beautiful. Furthermore, it is not apparent, as flowers did not evolve their forms and colors to attract us since we do not act as natural pollinators, yet we find them very aesthetically attractive. Evolutionary Aesthetic theory gives us the perspective that suggests that flowers evoke a strong positive feeling because they have long been associated with food sources. As most flowers tend to precede fruits, flowering plants provide excellent cues to timing and locations of future resources. Evolutionary Aesthetics through the adaptation of preferring symmetric faces. There are many reasons why people tend to like beautiful faces. First, attractive faces, along with all things “beautiful,” activate the reward centers of the brain they increase sexual behavior, and even promote the development of same-sex alliances. As one can see a “beautiful” face can have a vast impact on the human mind and body, and it is no wonder that scientists have longed to uncover what makes a face beautiful. For a long time it was believed by social scientists that the standard of beauty were caused by arbitrary cultural conventions. However, two observations lead us to believe that our preferences for “beauty” in the human face could be found in biological, instead of cultural, roots. First, it has been seen that people in different cultures generally agree on which faces are attractive. Second, it has been shown that aesthetic preferences are found early in development before social and cultural standards of beauty are assimilated. The majority of these studies have shown that individuals choose attractive faces based on averageness and symmetry which are the two candidates for biologically based preferences. Average faces are low in distinctive characteristics, which might be the opposite of what mainstream culture might consider beautiful with examples of being “unique,” “exotic,” and “distinct.” In fact, there have been many studies conducted that show average traits reflect developmental stability, or the ability to withstand stress during development, and may represent an individual’s ability to have a higher disease resistance. Studies using computer-generated averaged composition faces were found to be more attractive than the component faces, and as more faces were averaged, the rating of attractiveness increased. Research in the area of facial symmetry has been prolific in the past years, as the connection between symmetry and mate quality has been made. It has been shown that individuals across cultures tend to like more symmetric faces and deem them more attractive.  Furthermore, it has been shown that symmetry can be linked to a better gene expression within an individual. These aesthetic preferences for symmetry occur very early in life and studies have shown that three-month old children will gaze longer at symmetrical faces than at unsymmetrical faces.  The notion of symmetry being linked to beauty has been argued over many generations and refers back to the idea of the golden ratio. In recent years, there have been scientists who wanted to further identify if symmetry really was the source of attraction within the human face. Scheib and colleagues have argued that the apparent appeal of symmetry is not driven by a perception of symmetry. The group found that individuals, who were shown hemi faces, rated the hemi faces similarly, as when they were shown the entire face. They argue that the appeal of symmetry must therefore be mediated by the appeal of some other correlated trait because symmetry is not present in hemi faces.  Although these claims could indicate an alternative theory of symmetry and attraction, the idea of symmetry being a characteristic of beautiful people is very apparent in the culture industry. The culture industry has created its own definitions of beauty within Western culture, which have changed dramatically over the past two hundred years. Today an individual can easily see the image that is portrayed by mass media culture through the use of advertisements on television, magazines, and fashion runway models. Most runway models today meet the body mass index criteria for anorexia. Only twenty years ago, the fashion model weighed eight percent less than the average women. Today, the average model weighs twenty-three percent less. With alarming statistics such as the average age of a girl starting a diet dropping from the age of fourteen in 1970 to eight in 1990, there is an apparent problem with the image presented to individuals of Western culture. In 1950, measurements of mannequins closely resembled the average measurements of women and the average hip measurements of mannequins and women were thirty-four inches. In 1990 the average hip measurements of women was thirty-seven inches as the average mannequin is hip measured only 31 inches. The use of manipulations of the beauty image within the fashion industry has had a remarkable effect on both men and women. The distortion of the human figure is very apparent in the media and it is very simple to utilize drastic tools in order to enhance different characteristics to make an individual look for attractive using such programs as Adobe Photoshop ?. There has been an obsession within to look a certain way and there are many new tools that people use to judge their appearance. For instance, individuals can use programs such as Anaface (www.anaface.com) to conduct a “Facial Beauty Analysis” that will score an individual’s face in reference to an algorithm based on the golden ratio. If one is on the go and doesn’t have a computer to upload one’s picture for analysis, it gets even easier with a new iPhone app called “The Ugly Meter.” You can take a photograph of yourself or your friend and the software analyzes the symmetry in your face and compares it to the golden ratio. After taking an image of oneself, you are asked to verify the top of the head, chin, side of face, width of mouth, eye, and nose. After a couple fancy graphics, there is a readout of your facial analysis. My Ugly Meter results were as follows: “Your rating is 75/100. In other words, you are average. Your head size has 8.72 percent variance from the perfect size ratio. This means your head is slightly long compared to the width. Your longer face is less attractive. Your Eyes are nearly the perfect distance apart. They are slightly too small for your head. They are 5 percent smaller than ideal. You have a slightly narrow mouth for your face. It is 13 percent narrower than ideal. Your nose is slightly too narrow for your face. It is 12 percent narrower than ideal” (Ugly Meter). As one can see, this kind of facial analysis software can give a mathematical analysis on whether you should be considered beautiful or ugly. Technology like this, and the push from society to use rating software such as this, has had detrimental effects on individuals within society. Four out of five women are dissatisfied with their body image and over half of normal weight white, adolescent girls consider themselves fat. Needless to say, images in magazines put an unrealistic image of what an individual should look like in order to be defined as beautiful. The definition of beauty has radically changed over the past couple thousand years and artists, philosophers, and scientists will continue to define and redefine ideas of beauty. Whether there will ever be a unanimous definition of beauty is up for debate, but in the meantime we can reflect on the ideas of beauty that have been presented to us, and it is up to the individual to keep the enduring commentary on beauty alive. Beauty is a complex and fascinating issue that can captivate the minds of those who are asked to give a definition. In order to further explore the perceptions of beauty found in contemporary society, specifically in the younger generation, I took an approach of utilizing social media networks to ask the question: What is beauty? After only a twenty-four hour period, I realized that this very simple, yet complex question truly captivated the minds of many people and I concluded my survey with over one hundred responses. As I saw people explain their definitions of beauty, I saw an open discussion and debate emerge that prompted more people to think critically about the subject. This created a cascade of people showing their support definitions and I received responses for over a month after asking the question. In the same way that I saw the various definitions prompt reflection and contemplation in those who read the definitions, I wanted to provide readers of this thesis with the same experience. In John Berger’s Ways of Seeing images are presented to viewers in order to create a visual narrative, or “pictorial essay” that is meant to inspire questions and overall discussion. In the same way, I will present a “quote-scape” and pictorial essay that I have collected through surveys and interviews I have conducted, along with excerpts from famous thinkers. The names of those whose quotes are being displayed will not be shown, as it seemed to me that such information might distract from the points being made in throughout this chapter. In all cases, however, this information can be found in the Appendix. I ask the reader to read the quotes in the order they are presented and appreciate those who have provided you with their understanding of what beauty is to them. Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come. The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express. Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. Beauty is truth, truth beauty. Beauty awakens the soul to act. Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light. If you get simple beauty and naught else, you get about the best thing God invents. Beauty is everlasting and dust is for a time. Beauty must appeal to the senses, must provide us with immediate enjoyment, must impress us or insinuate itself into us without any effort on our part. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is the gift from God. For beauty being, the best of all we know sums up the unsearchable and secret aims of nature. Beauty is Nature's coin, must not be hoarded, but must be current, and the good thereof consists in mutual and partaken bliss. Beauty is something magical that can't be put into terms because it's different for every person. It's whatever makes that person happy, and it’s something they want to experience more because it's so wonderful. Beauty is discourse of appealing physiological characteristics that is culturally specific in what the individuals of that community see as attractive. Beauty is Compassion. Beauty is whatever moves you toward any emotion. Beauty is virtue and goodness. Beauty is symmetry, predictability, and stability. Beauty conforms to your expectations about the future based on experiences. To me, beautiful people and things forego accoutrements and other false expressions of self in favor of efficiently communicating their fundamental characteristics and functions. Beauty is Truth, beyond life and Universe. Relentless Honesty. The kind no human can ever possess on its own. Beauty is something that we internally connect with. Be it a person, work of art or some other thing. Beauty is perceptual, limitless and unique. Beauty is a characteristic that is both physical and emotional, that describes the aesthetic value of something or someone. The perception of beauty can be relative to the person perceiving it, but there are absolutes when it comes to beauty. For example, no one can deny the beauty of a sunset, the ocean, or looking into a human eye. Beauty is a gift from God. Beauty is a series of features and characteristics that not only stimulate the senses but also captivate the mind; makes everything else disappear. Beauty is something that touches you, for a reason that you can't exactly pinpoint, but despite the unknown reasons, upon finding it, you become filled with some kind of inner joy. Beauty is an inward confidence mixed with humility and kindness that shines through to the outside, making a difference to all those who may be encountered. Beauty is indefinable. It is one of those things that you can't pinpoint, but you know it when you see it. Beauty is that which brings pleasure to us by merely existing. In that sense, it is subjective. If you can look at something and feel pure, unadulterated pleasure that such a thing exists in this world, that thing is beautiful. Beauty is what makes a person happy. It can be anything, a person, a place, an object, but beauty brings happiness and a smile to the individual. Beauty is based our recognition of subjective aesthetic preferences on a particular object, whether tangible or intangible. When an on object is perceived through any or all of the senses and our brain recognizes aesthetic patterns that have been socially constructed and embedded in our psyche since childhood to be pleasing, we recognize these as beautiful.  Beauty is a clear, starry night. Beauty is emotion. Beauty is something that someone finds perfect and they don't have an explanation for like their sublime. It's something that everyone wants and everyone has in their own way. Beauty is a characteristic that defines people's perceptions, causing feelings of satisfaction, pleasure and purpose. Beauty can be as simple as physical attraction and as complicated as an aesthetic sense of emotional well-being through indescribable and subjective reactions to nature and others. Beauty is perfection in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is something raw and unrefined, the way God made it. Otherwise, it's just a man-made production. Beauty is that which is aesthetically pleasing to the individual. It can only be truly understood in the subjective sense. Beauty is nature. Beauty is something that touches one's heart and opens one's mind; it can be represented in love or music or nature. Beauty is philosophically subjective, socially selective, and intrinsically procured. Beauty is something that interrupts your day-to-day autopilot, causing you to stop and appreciate it. In a person, beauty is confidence and self-respect. In nature, beauty is something that can temporarily give you a sense of inner-peace. Beauty is something that we can admire whether it is looks, emotion, or personality trait. Beauty is just something that can leave you in awe. Beauty -at least in art- is the deep connection created between the artist and the viewer through a piece of art, an idea or music. Beauty is a reflection of truth. When speaking of physical beauty, it is aesthetically pleasing. What is considered beautiful changes with time and culture, but everything beautiful points to something greater, the source of that order and vibrancy that (at least partially) satisfies the eye. I tend to think of beauty in a Platonic sense, as participation in the greater Idea of Beauty, or, to take it to a Christian perspective, as participating in/reflecting the essence of God (in both physical and non-physical ways). When we see something beautiful, we see a small fraction of the greatness (and beauty) of God reflected in creation. Beauty is the only thing in the world that can stop time. Beauty is that moment when you can't catch a breath, when you are unable to utter even a sound. Beauty is that feeling in your heart equal to falling in love and just as unexplainable. Beauty is a form of genius -- is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princess of those who have it. A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness. Beauty and the devil are the same thing. Beauty is character and expression, and there is nothing in nature that has more character or more beauty than the human body. The body is, above all, the mirror of the soul and from the soul comes its greatest beauty. Beauty is the bait, which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind. The perception of beauty is a moral test. Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference. Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time. Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical. Beauty is not caused. It is.