Monday, August 2, 2010

Different standards of Beauty?

This next blog post has come far too late I’m afraid. I’ve been distracted, and just generally lazy, ignoring my poor blog. I suppose that since I have no way of knowing if people are actually reading, so it’s hard to motivate your own self to do something that seems only to really impact yourself, and since I already know everything I’m going to say, it’s hard to push myself into putting it into words.
This next idea on beauty is related to the all too familiar problem of differing standards of beauty. I still think that this difference is not as broad as people might think, but still, it is there. Just look at people’s opinions on actors and actresses. One actor somebody might uphold to be the idealization of masculine appearance might not be given a second thought by another.

What explains this?

A very terrible book once made a good point. I won’t mention the book title because that would be sacrilegious, and the idea wasn’t original to the book. A friend and I had discussed it at least two years before I picked up the book, so it (based on a previous post) must be a universal truth I stumbled upon before. The point was that just as parents can love uniquely and equally their children, so God relates uniquely to each of us as individuals. And because God is infinite, he has infinite means of relating. This is reflect how we each relate uniquely to the ultimate beauty. Just as are relationship with God is manifested in different ways (just compare the feminine style of worship to the masculine to see this illustrated), our perception of beauty is unique to each one of us.

This does not negate the standard of beauty, for even though we relate to God differently, there are many, many, many similarities. That’s why so many people will universally recognize certain individuals as more beautiful than others. Johnny Depp is a much more devilishly handsome fellow than I am. That’s uncontested. But not everybody thinks Johnny Depp is the handsomest man alive. The principles of harmony are at work. Depp’s facial features work together much better than mine do, but perhaps as equally well as Brad Pitt’s. Then for someone to say that he or she thinks Johnny Depp’s face is more handsome is the result of personal preference, not an absolute standard.

I don’t think this idea is too ridiculous. In fact, I think that it answers the problem most people bring up regarding taste, and furthers the idea of an absolute standard being there. That standard being God, not Johnny Depp.