Beauty and Worth

By Yiler Huang

Beauty and worth are two of the major topics in this semester. These two ideas are also commonly discussed is society. Connections between these two topics are often being made in media, politics, and our daily life. In our discussion classes, we attempted to explore the definition of beauty, the connection between beauty and worth, and the moral issues this topic could bring up.

Beauty could be defined in many different ways. Some believe it is the physical appearance of a person, some believe it is the actions or influences a person make, and some believe it is simply one's confidence in themselves. This also brings up an intriguing question: is there such a thing as “objectively beautiful”? Media often act as a snapshot of culture of different times in history. From media, we can often see what people's ideal “standard” of beauty is in different periods of time. Looking at today's pop culture media, we can clearly see some patterns in those people who were deemed to be “beautiful” by society. These people are often slim, tall, fit, or have three dimensional facial features. For women, they often have defined body curves and slim faces. For men, they often have stronger bodies and defined facial shapes.

While it is difficult to identify where these standards are rooted it, I believe a big part of it is affected by evolution and how our ancestors thought what was beautiful. Being slimmer, stronger, or have a defined body shape often also means a person is healthy. In the past, a person's value is often defined by how much work they can do to keep themselves or others alive. These more healthy people were more attractive because they are more likely to be able to work better than the unhealthy ones. These standards of attractiveness then became a part of the culture and was passed to today's society.

Beauty standards brought up some problems in society: there will always people who are thought to be less attractive. Because beauty is strongly tied to a person's value, I believe that this might have negative impacts on one's confidence in their personal value. People would also judge a person's value based on their attractiveness, and this could be a huge disadvantage for those who are not considered beautiful in the beauty standard of today. This might also have profound influences on a person's personal development. From what I observed, people who are considered less attractive are often treated worse than those who are attractive. This could heavily affect one's personalities especially in the early stage of their life. This is because it is a fact that children would sometimes bully their less attractive peers, and being bullied would often form traumas or, more severely, mental conditions that can profoundly forge one's personalities.

In order to better understand this topic, our class edited our own pictures based on today's beauty standard. These include: bigger eyes, sharper chin, smoother skin, lighter skin etc. After editing my own pictures, it felt really strange to look at the result and I was not used to it. If I looked like how I looked in the photoshopped pictures, I think people would think I have makeups on. I also looked slightly younger in the photoshopped picture, so people might also assume I was younger if they have only seen the edited picture. I would not like to look like me in the edited picture even if I had the choice, because I think the edited version of me looked rather unnatural. The smooth skin and big eyes also made me look like a child, and I wouldn't want to look like a child my whole life.

In the world today, beauty is considered a major factor when evaluating a person. However, I don't think it is a very good idea. This is because different people are born with different bodies and appearances, and it would be unfair for those who were born less attractive based on the social standards. Nevertheless, I think the problem is not whether or not should we stop judging people based on their appearance, but whether is it even possible or not for us to not judge a person based on their appearance. Until today we are still uncertain about the roots of our beauty standard, which means it would be very hard to get rid of it before we actually figure out where it comes from. In conclusion, beauty is often connect with the worth of a person in modern society. We are unsure about why the connection between these two topics exist. While this phenomenon benefits us in certain ways, it also has negative impacts in society. Even though beauty standards are problematic, it is also important to acknowledge that it is likely a product of evolution and we are still unsure if it is really something that can be removed from our lives.