Hatice Filiz Unverir
ABSTRACT :
The aim of this essay is to examine the main criteria affecting people’s decision-making mechanism about what beauty is to understand which factors make things beautiful in their eye of beholder. These include: evolutionary forces, social and cultural factors such as educational background, family structure, cultural norms, religions, traditions, political views, values and economic conditions, which I argue can contribute the uniqueness of human nature by introducing people to different point of views. The paper utilises various examples to reveal how people’s choices change from one person to other by analysing differences lying on human nature.
Key Words : Beauty; choices; decision-making mechanism; evolutionary forces; social factors; cultural factors; human nature; differences
INTRODUCTION
Beauty has a hold on us. We are drawn to it. We go to great lengths to get it. We immerse ourselves in it. Beauty delights us. It inspires us. It makes us ache. It sends us into despair. If myths are to be believed, it can launch a thousand ships to war. (Chatterjee, 2014: 3)
Beauty has always been a controversial subject because of its feature of subjectivity. Starting from the fact that each person has a unique nature, it can be said that people have different ways of looking at things. This uniqueness affects their ways of perceiving things which surround them. According to Berger (1972: 8) we only see what we look at—and to look involves an act of choice. In other words, people use their choices as a tool to see things. So how are our choices shaped? How is our decision-making mechanism consructed? Differences based in people’s nature play a profound role in their choices by distinguishing their reactions from one person to another. People subconsciously make a connection between themselves and what they like derived from hints not only from their unique nature, but also from the areas that contribute to this uniqueness. To understand how aesthetic appreciation works, it should have be considered along various parameters. Basically, people who live in different regions/countries, belong to parts of different societies/religions or tend to different sexual orientations and obviously have various opinions related to beauty, which builds a subjective understanding of aesthetic appreciation from one person to another. According to Kant, beauty can be described as being judged through an aesthetic experience of taste (Tanke & McQuillan, 2012: 249). Thanks to this subjectivity, humans have different taste which influences their choices and so their understanding of beauty perceptively. Thompson defines the term of ‘taste’ with these words:
Taste—whose office is to determine and pronounce upon whatever is beautiful, elegant, sublime, pleasing, or reverse of these… [Taste then] submits her performance to judgment. (Bayley, 1991: 14)
As it is stated by Thompson our taste is responsible for defining that which is beautiful according to our individual preferences. This paper will analyse main criteria influencing people’s choices by paying regard to ‘beauty’ in terms of major evolutionary, social and cultural factors.
Evolutionary factors and Golden Ratio
Is beauty a property of things out there in the world? Or is beauty to be found in our heads? Is beauty a fiction constructed by culture?… Maybe beauty is not in the object itself but in something that is happening inside us. Maybe these objects are only beautiful in our heads and work by stirring beauty receptors in our brains. (Chatterjee, 2014: 3-4)
For Chatterjee (2014 : 64) the experience of beauty emerges from interactions between the mind and the world because our brains evolved to view some objects as universally beautiful. Based on Chatterjee’s statement, it can be said that, although people have subjective discernment to define beauty, in the end the process of judgement starts with observing some common features related to beauty from a universal base. These features are based on our primitive genetic codes that are independent from our personal tastes or interests developed with external conditions. They are basically responsible for why we do what we do in an evolutionary context. For Aristotle, the main forms of beauty were order, symmetry and definiteness to be found in mathematical science (Pacteau, 1994: 23).
If we examine human beauty, according to Chatterjee’s (2014 : xi) ‘evolutionary forces’ this highlights common beauty features such as: symmetrical faces and bodies, balanced skin colour, bigger twinkling eyes, fuller lips, lustrous hair, darker eyebrows, V-shaped torso in men with waist-to-hip ratio of about 1.0 and fuller hips in women with a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7. These are considered universally appealing factors because they are related to a healthy body look in terms of the reproductive instincts of humankind. Therefore, it can be claimed that these features play a triggering role to arouse beauty receptors in our brains in the beginning of our journey of individual aesthetic judgment. These factors about human beauty based on our evolutionary forces can be influence the aesthetic judgment of an everyday object or an art piece in our daily life. According to Plato’s thinking the good, is always beautiful and the beautiful never lacks proportion—and ‘proportion’ is remarkably appealing for the human eye regarding to perception of beauty. Proportion and symmetry play a profound role in our decision-making process by triggering beauty receptors of human brain:
Our attraction to another body increases if the body is symmetrical and in proportion. If a face or a structure is in proportion, we are more likely to notice it and find it beautiful. The universal ratio of beauty is the ‘Golden Ratio’, found in many structures. This ratio comes from Fibonacci numbers. (Abbas, 2017 : 51)
As Abbas mentioned, the ‘golden ratio’ (Fig. 1&2) has been accepted by many mathematicians, artists or designers as the most harmonious proportion observed on all parts of an entirety—this is a very strong proof to measure the aesthetic value of a human figure, everyday object or an art piece.
For St Augustine, beauty was also the product of an unifying principle of number or in other words, the golden ratio (Pacteau, 1994: 239). According to St Augustine’s interpretation of beauty, it is this unifying numerical principle that represents the ‘harmonious proportion,’ or Golden rectangle as one of the common ways of application of the golden ratio, which has been used by various artists, designers, painters from the past to now. On the principle of golden rectangle, Chatterjee claims that:
The golden rectangle is formed by two sides comprised of the golden ratio. Portioning off a square within the golden rectangle leaves a smaller golden rectangle, a pattern that can be repeated ad infinitum. Connecting the points of the successively smaller squares gives the golden spiral found in nautilus shells, rams’ horns, whirlpools and galaxies. (Chatterjee, 2014: 59)
The golden rectangle can be found in architectural constructions in Mesopotamia such as the Pyramids, the Parthenon in Athens; or in art piece/ paintings such as The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo or Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. As an illustration, if we analyse the Mona Lisa with respect to the Golden Ratio, we need to draw a rectangle around the face of figure. As a consequence, it can be recognized that the ratio of the width to the height of this rectangle (=1,618…) is identical to the Golden Ratio. (Fig. 1.) Paintings which Golden Ratio applications are found to create a complete visual harmony in the human eye and impact on our perception of beauty considerably.
Cultural factors
According to Chatterjee (2014: 64) even though evolutionary factors affect our very first judgments related to beauty, cultural differences have a remarkable impact and can even change the direction of our opinions,. The fact is that different cultures have diversified values, viewpoints, norms, faith, traditions or taboos, which give them a unique identity—aesthetic judgment is mainly related to this uniqueness underlying the society. That’s why cultures’ aesthetic tastes can change from one to another. For example, in some cultures, large bodies are considered more beautiful in contrast to today’s popular skinny posture, because people believed that larger figures represent the generosity of Mother Nature and fertility, and so they bring abundance to their lands. In other words, larger figures can be seen as people’s metaphors which are related to their beliefs in a traditional base. To illustrate, Prehistoric mother Goddess statue Venus of Willendorf (Fig. 3) can be seen as a symbol of procreativity in its own cultural context because it is obvious that enlarged breasts, belly and hips in this statue recall fertility to us.
In this case, it is possible to make a deduction that in this society, there is a connection between larger figures and people’s taste in their own cultural context. In some other cultures, ‘youth’ can be considered as a symbol of the beauty because it evokes vitality and wellness whereas other cultures give importance to ‘old age’ because they associate it with ‘wisdom’ and they assume that wisdom comes with age. Also older age can be seen as a beauty element. In other example, ‘Kayans’ which are an ethnic minority group in Burma, have an interesting tradition related to beauty. They believed that a woman’s beauty is associated with the length of her neck. In this society women wear one brass ring around their necks for every passing year that they are getting old (Fig. 4). As they grow older, the one ring is added to another and this causes their necks to elongate. The more elongated neck women have, the more beautiful they are considered in Burma. This can be seen as an extreme example of modification but it is just related to different standards of beauty in different cultures.
As another example, skin colour can be a distinctive element in terms of perception of beauty in society’s cultural context. In China, there is a strong belief that pale skin is the most crucial component of beauty. This is because, pale/white skin is associated with the higher social-economical class who doesn’t need to work as a slave. That’s why Chinese women use lots of different beauty products to protect their skin from sun damage and even to make their skin whiter.
Social factors
From past to present, people have a tendency to belong a social group or class to establish themselves and get respect from the society. Schools where we study, political opinions we chose to support or occupational sectors we work in, help to place our position slowly but surely in the society. Our family background, educational qualifications, political remarks, economic conditions and even religious opinions are accepted as social factors which build diversity of views from one person to other. This variety therewith affects people’s views on beauty. As a result of this, people develop different filters to percolate their standards and it causes multifarious opinions related to their tastes. Hume’s Of the Standards of the Taste tells us that beauty is not a quality in things themselves: “It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them” and for Hume each mind perceives a different beauty and each individual will give in to their own feelings, without pretending to regulate those of others. So for Hume to seek the real definitive beauty is a fruitless enquiry (Tanke & McQuillan, 2012: 186).
Have you ever seen a couple on the street and thought that one partner is more beautiful than the other? Or have you ever encountered a group of people passionately talking about the subtle meaning of an art piece in an important exhibition while you could not find any reason to define it meaningful? Apparently, in the first example, it can be mentioned that spouses in question have mutual liking, which means similar tastes and so they chose to be together. In the second example, again, it can be mentioned that people having a common conversation about an artefact and have a similar way of aesthetic appreciation of things. Hume’s opinion about beauty emphasizes this difference between people. According to his view, there is no point to define the ‘ultimate’ meaning of beauty as a common belief because it is all about different point of views that people acquire during their lifetimes. To illustrate this, because of the fact that a person receives an art education in earlier times of his life, s/he is more likely to be able to interpret meanings of art pieces, allegories hiding in the depths of paintings or metaphors to represents the underlying meanings. Thus it can be claimed that the more knowledge people have, the better understanding about things they develop. In this case, their artistic backgrounds push an individual’s critical thinking skills forward and therefore they can build their own aesthetic judgement. Based on this example, it can be said that different educational backgrounds affect people’s interests by shaping their tastes differently because it develops their ability to look from multifarious perspectives to things. Therefore, these type of social differences also influence people’s beauty criteria.
CONCLUSION
As a conclusion, to answer the question of my essay, it is important to analyse to what extent beholders react to things differently. Although evolutionary factors have a huge role in leading people’s opinions to find and appreciate the beauty at first sight, cultural and social factors can chance the direction of decision-making process substantially. Thanks to these factors such as family structure, educational background, traditions, financial status, interests or social norms; people can evolve their own tastes uniquely. Therefore, everyone has subjective opinions about beauty which takes us to the answer of this question. Apparently, ‘beholder’ is a key element to determine the beautiful. Although it is a subjective judgement, it shows us where should we look for the meaning of beauty in the eye of beholder.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abbas, S., 2017. Golden Ratio: A Measure of Physical Beauty, India: Resonance, 51-60.
Bayley, S., 1992. Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, New York: Pantheon Books, 14.
Berger, J., 1972. Ways of Seeing, London: Penguin/BBC, 8.
Chatterjee, A., 2014. The Aesthetic Brain, New York: Oxford University Press, xi-64.
Pacteau, F., 1994. The Symptom of Beauty, London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 23-239.
Tanke, J. & McQuillan, C., 2012, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Aesthetics, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 186-249.
Silka P. 2017 The Value of Golden Section in Contemporary Art, Art History Blog, (11/12/2017) https://www.widewalls.ch/golden-section-significance-art-mathematics/
Rachel Blunt, 2012, What is Considered Beauty in Different Parts of the World?, Life Blog, (11/12/2012) http://clubfashionista.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/what-is-considered-beauty-in-different.html
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure 1 : http://royalens.com/golden-ratio/
Date access: 11.12.2017
Figure 2 : https://fractalenlightenment.com/15668/fractals/digging-deeper-into-the-golden-ratio
Date access: 11.12.2017
Figure 3 : http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/sculpture/willendorf.php
Date access: 11.12.2017
Figure 4 : http://clubfashionista.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/what-is-considered-beauty-indifferent.html
Date access: 11.12.2017