Who is beautiful? What makes someone beautiful?

What is the meaning of beauty? How do you conclude that something is beautiful? We wake up about Makeup more easily when we find somebody doing it in strange ways! Did you ever realize that the eyes do not make the decision of what is beautiful. It’s in the mind behind the eyes, and such concepts in the mind are developed by culture, upbringing, nation, surroundings…

What beauty means to you?

A little girl looks at her mother, sisters, and other ladies in the family, relatives, nearby & society. She listens to their talks, their comments, and their love & jealousy with each other and thus develops a concept of beauty. This all sets in her mind layer by layer over years, as she grows up. However, nowadays media also plays a big role in this development process.

Then while growing day by day, month by month, year by year, she unknowingly starts imitating them. Copying their makeup, their get-up, their behaviour without ever giving a thought to WHY AND WHAT, OF ALL THIS. She never thinks about her actual requirement or Inner development of the concept of beauty. She anyhow wants love, respect & recognition thru this SO-CALLED BEAUTY.

Boys copy elder males

Similarly, a boy looks to his father, brother, friends, and other males in society and thus starts developing a concept of how a male should be. How he should react to different things, how his body should be, what is smart, and what are his responsibilities towards family, society, and religion. He unknowingly imitates their behaviour and thinks that HE KNOWS. Then he starts believing that “these are his concepts” and can give a good fight for this, verbally or physically!

How beauty is measured?

There is no set measurement scale for true beauty, it’s measured in totality. You must have read or heard about specific body sizes to look beautiful. It is true up to some extent as a fit body looks beautiful, but the real test comes when the mouth opens up or how they respond to a particular situation!

Life gives testing situations to everybody. How a person reacts, and responds under pressure is a testing parameter. A physically beautiful woman talking rubbish or losing mental balance in testing times will look ugly and thus fail the test.

Do you tell your children – what is beautiful?

Do you tell your child what is pretty or what is lovely? Further, it’s also important how do you know what is pretty or what makes an attractive face. How do you make these concepts in your mind and at what age and who told you?

It’s not that these little children are listening to you especially, if you ask them to listen then they will not. All the activities, talks (loud or low pitched) & everything that is happening in their surroundings is unconsciously noted in their mind & in that special fashion. They are playing here & there, grown-ups are discussing their matters, and words are coming to the ears of children also. Thus everything is being fed into their mind.

With every passing day, they are growing up and considering “this all accumulation of information” as their own or KNOWLEDGE! This knowledge base (including a lot of rubbish) grows with age…and slowly these informed people, full of knowledge about everything, start becoming part of society. THEY BECOME SOCIETY.

What does beautiful mean? Is beauty subjective or objective?

So when a person looks at somebody, then within hardly 1-2 seconds, a conclusion has arrived about his/her beauty or smartness. Means a decision has been made – whether to look more towards him/her or no need at all! How that conclusion was arrived at? All the required data about that person was collected by our senses within a fraction of a second. And that data sent into that knowledge base (accumulated in our mind) and a conclusion arrives within another fraction of a second!

So, usually, beauty is subjective as the effect of the above factors is very deep and long-lasting. Only a few people develop the concept of objective beauty and that too, much later in life. However, differences of opinion may still exist because of the nature of this topic.

This all game continues without awakening towards this unless we find something extreme and then start the inner digging about the whole concept! In some tribes or cultures, people are doing such things with their bodies & make-up that those of other cultures may immediately look at them. It is not because they are looking attractive to them BUT WITH SURPRISE and to find out and analyze “WHAT THEY ARE DOING & WHY”?

Mursi tribe women with Lip plates for beauty!

Mursi tribe women from Ethiopia stretch their lips to extremes by wearing a large lip plate which they start wearing when teenage to become more beautiful. These plates are made of clay and are quite heavy but they wear it for tradition and BEAUTY. However, some people may call it sadistic beauty.

Image Credit: Rod Waddington from Australia Wikipedia

While being a teen, they start with little tiny plates and slowly over years, the size of plates go on increasing, some remove it while eating but the expert ones can eat while wearing the plates! The young ones, while seeing the experts must be dreaming to become an expert like them someday!

Kayan tribe women have long necks to look beautiful!

This tribe lives in the hills of northern Thailand at the Myanmar border. They are famous for their Giraffe women. The girls of this tribe start stretching their necks by wearing small rings. The number of rings goes on increasing with age and with that increases their neck!

This all starts in childhood by imitating the elders and with the desire to become BEAUTIFUL. Now, who tells a little girl that she should wear a ring on her neck? Probably if some little girl would resist then her friends & grown ones must have been questioning her(or looking at her as if she may be a stranger) all the time and asking questions like – “Oh, you are not wearing a ring? Will you not? Don’t you want to become beautiful, start now else it would be too late! EVEN THEIR DOLLS WEAR RINGS.

Effect of other’s perception about them

The mindset of boys and males also develops that way as per the mindset of their tribe. They have seen only such necks, they also must be appreciating girls with longer necks. This attraction & appreciation of another gender also plays a big role in keeping their mindset stuck in some particular traditions. Once this neck becomes large then they have no option but to bear it for the rest of their life.

The males of different tribes are also doing different beauty procedures and the woman of their tribe may find them more attractive but since this article is about BEAUTY, here I would like to remain focused on woman’s traditions as men remain focused on being macho or handsome.

We, the people of the modern world, connected with media may find some of these makeup traditions as STRANGE while those people also may find others as STRANGE!

Has Beauty anything to do with Depression and Anxiety?

The shape of the body & face depends too much on the parents & geographical location. If you develop certain assumptions about beauty, then your mind starts comparing with other women.  While alone, if you look in the mirror, at your clothes size, and other such factors, then immediately your mind arrives at a conclusion about your present state of beauty. Then you get impressed or depressed with that conclusion.

You go to the market, parties, and family or friends gatherings, where you start comparing with others and again going into highs or lows about your beauty. Ageing is a continuous phenomenon and as your body shape starts changing, maybe fat, wrinkles, or anything else, your perception of beauty & image again comes in danger!

You may become jealous of other women or suffer from depression or anxiety about the possible results of all this. If you think that whatever love you get from others is because of your so-called beauty, then change in those beauty landmarks will start taking you into an endless circle of depression and tension. You will start assuming that now by & by, you are going to lose all the love and focus that you had been getting because of that beauty.

Is True beauty inside or outside?

The outer face is just like hardware which has taken shape broadly according to your parents and climate. The impact of the software inside (which also keeps on updating regularly) reflects on your face, especially the eyes, and that makes real beauty in long run.

You may enjoy – Strange life of Conjoined twins Abby & Brittany Hensel

Times keep on changing and in fact, change is a continuous process. The reason for starting a particular tradition, may or may not have remained relevant. Circumstances, surroundings, and requirements keep on changing.

Some procedures are started by people having a particular depth in some psychological or other field but with time, that person is gone & nobody actually knows – why that procedure is being performed now…but, sometimes that procedure is continued for ages by half or uninformed people as a tradition.

How beauty is defined around the world?

You must have seen different beauty competitions going on around the world. Passing the physical beauty criteria may be a must, but the ultimate decision is arrived at with their responding capacity and inner beauty.

However, this topic is very wide and readers from around the world enjoy this topic, so I would like to know YOUR OPINION also. Feel free to share your opinion in the comments.

• Reference: https://timeless121.blogspot.com/ (My old blog)
• Featured Image Credit: Barbara Olsen – https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-woman-and-a-young-girl-smiling-at-the-camera-7880382/