An eye for beauty

When I was at school, maybe 13 or 14, I noticed something with my friends. When one saw a girl that he liked, everyone else started liking them too. Girls that previously who had not been on the radar were now getting attention from the group and being talked about as being beautiful by a small group of young teenage boys. But, beauty is in the eye of the beholder isn't it?

It seems that the beholder's eye is much more influenced by the conventions of the group and this is of course obvious when we look at cultural norms for what is found attractive. Each region has an average of what body shape or face type is in for the time being. The fitness body with toned arms and low body fat in women is unlikely to have been seen as attractive by the group a couple of hundred years ago. Cultural norms of what is beautiful are much more powerful in the decision making process than most of us would like to admit.

We like to claim individuality but even our decisions on what we find beautiful is influenced by the group with which we identify. We choose partners based on these associations, repetition learned, the expectation of the way things should look. It is not that a cultural norm completely dictates the mind but it does nudge it heavily and we become inclined to shift our decision pathways in a similar direction.

I have always wondered what a man born into a racist family, community and lifestyle feels when he sees a beautiful woman of another color. After being primed toward disgust, I have a feeling that before the mind, the programming and cultural learning kicks in, she is just a beautiful woman. Colorless. It quickly gets lost, buried in justification and excused away by the weight of habit, but in that split second, lies truth.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and when the mental guard, the social programming, marketing and magazine covers do not have the chance to react, what is left is beauty. Beauty in all things. The preferences we build are likely less ours and much less sensitive to the world than we want to believe. It is the constant conflict between us and reality that obstructs the view of beauty that is always present.

Beauty is the simplicity of life being observed for what it is rather than what one expects it to be. Complexity deconstructed. But, we all build detailed preferences, we all train ourselves to choose one over another, favorites. And, like the 13 year old boys up above, social proof plays a large role in what the framework looks like. But, paths can change direction, restrictions be broken, learning forgotten and one can get a wider view of all the beauty that is contained in our world and beyond.

Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]