Defining Beauty — Yet Again

Anvita Sudarshan
8 min readJan 25, 2022

Seeing Beauty Through the Eyes of Culture

Why do we find beautiful what we do find beautiful?

I once wrote a little piece on Objectivity vs Subjectivity (which I have since then taken down due to its long-winded rambling nature. Nothing makes a piece of writing more boring than a self-obsessed rant). I was trying to understand, through that article basically, if it was possible to obtain a purely objective perspective to life. A rather lofty goal. It’s not a new question. Every generation has propped up at least a hundred thinkers who have wondered the same thing. And I couldn’t help but end up parroting a mix of two or three such opinions as my conclusion. After all, there are only two absolute answers that such a question can really have. Yes, or no. But neither really fit the mold perfectly. And thus the rant.

But rant aside, it did get me thinking. I wrote another piece on how beauty can be defined through an absolutely objective perspective (you can find that here). On a purely theoretical level, it makes absolute sense. Reality, of course, refuses to follow any such absolutes. We are beings of conditioning, which I touched upon in that piece, but brushed aside in order to delve deeper into our more objective sense of beauty.

But however hardwired our biological sense of beauty is, fact is that we have evolved into creatures who are both biological and psychological. And as time goes on, as civilization goes on, we cocoon ourselves into our little comfort zones, removing ourselves further and further from our biological senses, and tying ourselves more fastly to our psychological senses. And culture is really nothing but our herd psychology. It is the psychology of the masses.

Now, there is a flip side to that too (like for everything). One can argue that in todays day and age of globalization, when it comes to beauty at least, our biological senses are gaining power, as local cultures become more and more diluted. But let’s get to that later. Let us first see how we see beauty in reality, overriding our biological hardwiring and giving in to our psychological wants.

Take Fair and Lovely for example. Fair and Lovely, for the longest time, was not just a set of adjectives defining the ideal of beauty, it was synonymous to beauty itself over a large section of the Indian Subcontinent, over the middle east and all over Eastern Asia. As a set of adjectives (not just the product), it also ruled European and American standards of beauty until the 20th century. However, in the 20th century, Europe and the American Continents discovered the beauty of tanned skin. While the same standard remained as it was in the rest of the world.

We might have been able to ban Fair and Lovely using the adjective that it used. But the sentiment behind it remains. Because the problem is more deep rooted. The problem is in our minds.

THE GRASS IS GREENER ON THE OTHER SIDE

See, she agrees too!

Let’s not blame patriarchy first. It is easy to do that, but it rarely ever reaches the root of the issue. It is easy to blame our issues on the other person, but we have been doing that for decades. And where exactly has that gotten us? It has given us beautiful pieces of work such as The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf, it has sold the cult of the Mad Men, but it has not solved our problem for us. Simply because a lot of the problem lies with us. We are not satisfied. We are not happy. We look at the other person and we look at not just what they have, but at what they have and what we don’t.

Simply put, the grass is greener on the other side.

Our minds are very easily played with. We let dissatisfaction creep in way too easily. A recent survey conducted by the University of Chicago shows that at least 50% Americans have proclaimed themselves as unhappy.

HAVES AND THE HAVE NOTS

One always wants what they do not have, isn’t it? Imagine a little child with a coveted toy. Another child sitting right beside it would probably not want that toy as much as she wants it now that the other child is playing with it, if that toy had simply been on display at a toy shop, or even if it was lying at home in her toy chest. Just the fact that her neighbour has it at the moment and she doesn’t, makes her want it right here, right now. Add to that the complexities of a society in certain people are born into certain affluence while the others, as it seems, are left behind. The feeling is further exaggerated then.

Historically, a good example is fair skin, in terms of beauty, since that is what we are discussing right now. Those who had the luxury of staying indoors in the harsh sun retained their original complexions, thus being a shade fairer than their counterparts who did not have that luxury. Whose fault is it? No one’s really. One cannot fault someone for being born where they were born, whether it is on the side of privilege or not. But nevertheless, it certainly breeds resentment. The difference of the two or three shades of colour breed jealousy at the unjustness of it all. The colour becomes the brand ambassador for having it all in life. And then centuries later, it gives birth to a Fair and Lovely. Seemingly harmless, but a rude indicator of all the perversions our mind has gone through in the previous generations, just because we couldn’t see straight, whichever side of privilege we were born on.

EVERYONE DOES IT

I remember when I was 14 and those ultra low waisted jeans were in fashion. Everyone was wearing them, from Paris Hilton to Shilpa Shetty. And so I went and got myself a few pairs too, ignoring every step of the way just how inconvenient they were. No one was happier than I was, when ten years later, high waisted jeans made a come back. Whenever I relate this to someone, I get an array of nods, some enthusiastic, some sympathetic. And the conversation immediately changes into how bad the fashion was back then. And we all express a group horror of all that we wore (never mind the fact that we all, without doubt, thought we were ground breaking at the time)

But no one acknowledges the fact that we only did that because everyone else did it. We are a species that choose the direction that our life will go into based on what everyone else is doing (software engineering, anyone? Or perhaps medicine?) Fashion is a small fry.

An interesting note? Between the years of 2000 and 2015, Butt Implants, or gluteal augmentation as it is technically called has gone up by 252%. I’m serious, 252%! That’s quite a bit. I mean, I’m all for the comeback of the curvy figure, not having Kate Moss type figure myself anyway, but this is a gross exaggeration of what we imagine a healthy human form should look like. And that can only be a result of the uncontrolled mind.

One often thinks of the uncontrolled mind as something that someone else is a victim of. But when was the last time that you had a craving for that chocolate brownie that you just had to have? When was that last time you saw those trousers online that you just had to buy? Surveys conducted by IIT, Madras indicate that 15.86% of our purchases tend to be impulse buys. So that is perhaps 15% of our day where we have have given into to our cravings. And what are our cravings based on?

Well, according to Emine Koca and Fatma Koc of the Ankara University and Gazi University (respectively), Turkey, it depends upon the current trends anywhere between 36–45% of the time. It also depends of what we think will confer us more social status, around 55% of the time. So half the time, we are constantly looking for validation from others (and we are asleep for 1/3rd of the day. So you can do the maths as to how often we are truly being ourselves). Which makes us more like to just do what others are doing, simply because everyone does it. Which is why nose jobs are so common in Iran, ear piercings are so common in India and hair straightening so common in China.

POWER AND CONTROL

Beauty has always occupied the realm of the dangerous, throughout history. At first glance, it is unexplainable. Why should some people have it, and some not? What defines it? What causes it? What causes us to notice it. Some of these reactions to beauty that we have are so ingrained that they are not always available to the articulate mind.

Imagine, if you will, a five year old, watching his mother get ready in front of a mirror. She curls her hair, paints her nails, puts on some lipstick and voila! She is transformed. It doesn’t matter why she does it at that point. It is mesmerizing. A spell has been cast. And for a child, that is enough.

But as we grow up, we have this irritating need to understand things. And what we don’t understand, we try to control. But it is not easy to control what is not understood. We can control a lightbulb today because we understand it (or rather, someone on the manufacturing line does. Most of us simply have no idea). But if we did not know the fundamentals of electricity, it would be akin to that person on the manufacturing line standing in the middle of a blazing storm and shouting random commands every moment that lightening flashes. (It is another argument, of course, that there is a very strong possibility that, that is what we have done for most of history, and that, that is what we continue to do even today. We might just be very good at fooling ourselves)

But with beauty, especially human beauty, the game is easier. Because all you have to do is control the person. And guess what we have learnt to be good at, over the last few millions of years? Mind games. We know how to get into someone’s mind. We know what messages to whisper. Sometimes we do it subliminally (hello, advertising?) Sometimes we do it with a hammer (extreme dress codes, certain social rules, lifestyles etc).

After all, if a beautiful person can launch a thousand ships, one would argue in such a case, should s/he not be controlled? Should their activities not be monitored? Are they not dangerous?

And so we set guidelines. We make rules for people to follow. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. But those ethics of moral behaviour also soon turn into yardsticks that we judge one’s beauty by.

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Anvita Sudarshan
Anvita Sudarshan

Written by Anvita Sudarshan

Author, Organic Farmer and Co-Founder of Silverfish Books Buy 'Beauty Queen' at https://www.amazon.in/dp/9390924103/

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