Beauty: Who sets the standards?

A concept of beauty is built into all of us and involves a balance between objective criteria and subjective impressions and a capacity to perceive order, symmetry, and harmony. Beauty involves an equilibrium between the whole object and its parts, as well as the various parts in relation to each other. The absence of this balance translates into the " unaesthetic. " Since classical times, attempts have been made to define beauty. The history of the Western cultures reveals that many concepts of beauty have been celebrated at different places and times. The ancient Greeks believed that a beautiful face was defined in terms of a harmonious proportion of facial features. For them the ideal face was divided into three equal vertical sections and was two thirds as wide as it was high. In his book, Beauty: An Analysis and Classification, Alexander Walker accepted standards of beauty that were congruent with those of classical antiquity, but he also identified the need for a degree of asymmetry. The standard of feminine beauty exalted by Anglo-Saxon poets of the Middle Ages was a waxy, pale complexion so arduously sought that some women actually bled themselves regularly to achieve it. By the Renaissance, concepts of feminine beauty included not only physiognomy but also emotional and spiritual components, such as delicacy, fragili-ty, mystery, and maternal tenderness. Because of their visibility, royalty once served as prevailing models of beauty. Queen Elizabeth I and the noblewomen of her court dictated fashion by dying their hair, plucking their eyebrows, and applying heavy cosmetics to their cheeks. Before World War I, voluptuous faces and bodies were popular. Since the advent of motion pictures, the faces and bodies of Hollywood stars have often defined the parameters of our concept of beauty, whereas a few have been able to parlay their own " quirky " look in counterpoint to the prevailing standard. Clearly, neither the classical standard of ideal beauty nor any other single standard has always been in vogue. Nevertheless, our experience and instincts tell us that a kind of beauty exists that defies history. Although some " beautiful faces, " like clothing and body conformations, go in and out of fashion, certain faces in every era are considered truly beautiful.