What is beautiful?

I love having a wide range of blogs to read, because other people are so easily able to point me toward things I would have missed on my own. Many thanks to Peg for pointing me toward a pair of posts by Daphne this morning, about the "reconstruction" of classic art to be more appealing to modern interpretations of beauty.

In Daphne's first post, she speaks of a revelation she had while flipping through a wholesale art catalogue, noticing for the first time that that classic artistic models like Botticelli's Venus and the Thorvaldsen Aphrodite are being slimmed down and straightened for our modern, marketed-to-at-every-turn eyes.

Her second post is addressed to all of the new visitors to her blog, as a result of dozens of people linking to the first post, explaining why she thinks this is happening. In short, the effort is not a concerted group effort by every repoduction artist in the industry to reshape our views of beauty, but instead an individual and yet universal decision to use the already existing general opinion of what constitutes beauty (slender and long with clean lines, basically) to make their artistic reproductions more salable.  She goes on to argue that a consumer democracy is the ultimate democratic determiner of what we as a society consider beautiful when our votes are counted with our dollars, with the bottom line being that if you have a problem with this, the course of action that will actually make a difference is choosing to buy products and services that reinforce your own interpretation of what is beautiful, rather than someone else's.

This spurred some thought on my part, and some revelations about what the evidence concludes regarding my "votes" on what is beautiful.

1. During the Great Greening Experiment of 2007, I stopped watching television, canceled my subscriptions to magazines, and didn't "browse" as a hobby.  I intentionally broke the habit of paying attention to people whose sole responsibility was to convince me to buy things.
   
   
   • I stopped dying my hair.
   • I used fewer cosmetics.
   • I wore "practical" shoes that would allow me to walk greater distances conveniently.
     
     
     • Even after 8 months of avoidance, I never broke the habit of considering vibrant non-gray hair, a keener complexion, and legs off-set by slenderly heeled shoes as more attractive -- I simply made the conscious decision to forego those elements for a greater purpose.
       
     
     
   
   
   
2. My features are plain; I'm not unattractive, but I'm not anything overly pretty to look at either.  That said, when I gain an extra five pounds, I feel grotesque. Not fat, not uncomfortable, but unattractive.
   
   
   • As soon as I note a weight increase, I take steps to rectify the gain, almost all of which involve spending money differently. If I have money available, I don't question the outlay.  This doesn't always work, of course -- as my current 16-extra-pounds indicates -- but I always feel hideous carrying the extra baggage. 
   
   
   
3. I am six feet tall, with ridiculously long arms and legs - a frame that allows me to carry more weight than a woman of average height without appearing "heavier."  Even considering that frame, I wear clothes with the goal of making myself look taller and leaner than I am. I try on *everything* and avoid cuts, patterns, and fabric designed to accentuate my figure.

Based on 2 and 3, clearly my own opinion is that "thin" is more attractive than otherwise -- moreso than an average physique let alone an overweight frame. There's far more to think about than the three points outlined above, but these make sense to list out. Clearly I've "bought in" to some general opinions about beauty, and clearly there are some that I eschew.  I believe that I think critically about the things I buy -- more out of a desire for a sustainable lifestyle than from a wish to define what others consider beautiful, although my "vote" counts in the same way in terms of consumer support for an ideal.  I am incredibly anxious about what my reactions to various ideas say about my definition of beauty.  It's disturbing, on so many levels, that I seem to have bought in to this notion that there's only one variation that's acceptable.  

First published at TheNines