The Most Essential Principles of Beauty

Think why people consider things as beautiful, what the versatile laws of beauty are, and whether the objective beauty exists.

Simple Secrets of Beauty

Have you ever thought why you consider some things to be beautiful and others – not really? What has an impact on your position and estimation? By the way, what do you think about tattoos? Do you have one or several, and are there tattooed people among your friends?

Why does it matter? Because it’s the most indicative example to discuss what the beauty is. So, people are divided into two main groups:

1. those who like tattoos
2. and those who don’t

Surely, there are also those who abstained. But we can ignore them with a pure heart since likely they are lying to themselves. Anyway, they think tattoos are ugly or beautiful, even if deviation to any of these sides is really tiny.

What is the reason for treating things as beautiful or not beautiful?

Let’s look closer at this example with tattoos. Tattooing doesn’t exist without motivation that can be various: to differ from the crowd, remind yourself about some significant event (person, symbol etc.), make something “prohibited”, come out of the social boundaries, prove yourself that you can endure the pain, belong to some special social group, make the first independent decision, become a part of some kind of art. Almost endless number of reasons.

If at least one of them fits into your life view, then likely you are one of those who mark a tattoo as “plus”, or on other words as something beautiful. And vice versa, if your world outlook implies that the body is “holy” and you shouldn’t change it in any irreversible way, if you think it’s foolish to crave for standing out by the appearance, and that you can keep all the important signs and memories in your brain and heart, then you don’t consider the tattoos to be beautiful.

A simple conclusion is that we like the things that do not go in conflict with our general ideology.

Social factors

The proofs for this theory can be easily found in history and in any certain life. For instance, let’s recall the canons of beauty of the 19th century. It will be easier to talk about women because we have numerous pieces of evidence of the ideal appearance due to paintings and literature. So, at the beginning of the 19th century, the perfect woman had to look as natural as possible, with the minimum of jewelry, with thin light dresses of tender fabric, pale soft skin slender figure.

If you look this way, you are surely a representative of high aristocracy, and consequently, you have a title, money, and high social status. Why so? Because if a woman is delicate, fragile, unearthly, it means she doesn’t need to work, her pale hands and face point at the same fact – no hard work, only piano, painting, French, dancing.

And let’s move on to the far African continent where Maasai tribes live. The brighter necklaces, the higher social status and the richer a woman is. The stronger body is, the better mother is. A beautiful Maasai woman wears dozens of colorful necklaces and has a healthy, strong body.

So, the beauty standards are governed by social circumstances. And maybe the most wise one is that related to the strong body – at least it is quite close to reality.

The tricks of subconscious

No matter how much humanity experimented with beauty canons, no one can hide his true motives, instincts, and calls of nature. You can follow the beauty trends of the modern society and declare you admire abstract art, but your heart will sweetly freeze in front of Renoir’s vivid and light canvases because you feel safe and joyful. These are two of basic needs, are not they?

Women can gossip with each other that they adore intelligent, polite, slim, peaceful men, but their eyes will snatch in the crowd masculine, strong and even harsh men because they are better adapted to defending and procreation. Even if nowadays those smart heads with glasses have more chances for survival.

So when people say that beauty is relative, more correct is to say that beauty depends on the context.

Does the absolute beauty exist?

The answer is no. But there are several criteria that make anything beautiful or not:

1. Safe things and phenomena seem more beautiful than dangerous. You may doubt: what about     storm or tornado, or fire? The nature elements like these can be considered as beautiful as soon as they are far enough to harm us. If we feel imminence, our instinct of self-preservation will turn on, and we will immediately forget about thinking of beauty.

2. Anything that leads to health and life seems to be beautiful: fresh ripe fruits, clean water, green trees, rain, dew and so on and so force. However, sometimes even silvery mercury can also seem to be beautiful, but mostly healthy and safe things are considered as beautiful.

3. Healthy, strong, smart people are more attractive for anyone due to the fact they are safer and are potentially better candidates for procreation.

4. Things that help us look as a member of a flock are perceived as more beautiful. Our ancient instinct tells us that to belong to a bigger group means to survive. And only very independent and strong (or a little bit crazy) people dare to challenge the society.

And if sometimes you feel lack of words to explain what you think about the music you like, and why it really appeals to you, or why you suppose a movie to be beautiful, just ask yourself, which sides of your personality and your world outlook they support, which emotions cause. Likely you will find out that they at least do not destroy you, and even help you to be or feel more alive.

Beauty is not objective and not separated from people; it is a huge part of social life. And exploring the standards of beauty of different social groups, historical periods and geographic areas, we get fantastic opportunities for better understanding of this incredible world.