Beauty Worlds: About Beauty (original) (raw)
external links
Beauty - Modern fashion news, a wide selection of hairstyles and hair care tips.
A Secret Sense in the Human Nose
Scents As Aphrodisiacs
Pheromones: The Smell of Beauty
Study Finds Proof that Humans React to Pheromones
On the Evolution of Human Aesthetic Preferences
Waist-to-Hip Ratio and Attractiveness of the Human Figure
Facial Attractiveness
Celebrities and Mega Models
The Adonis Complex: Male Obsession with a Muscular Ideal
The Human Face
The Weight Loss Institute has independently researched a number of different weight loss issues, and compared several non-prescription diet pills that can assist you in reaching your weight loss goals.
Professional At Home Tooth Whitening System Professionals, movie stars and anyone who cares about the quality of their smile need to read further. 100% Guaranteed. Maximum Teeth Whitening (MTWT) delivers the exact same professional tooth whitening system (ingredients and methodology) dentists use for their patients who want the convenience and affordability of at home teeth whitening.
First published: October 2000; Revised: February 2003; September 2003, February 2004
About Beauty
by Michael Sones
June 1991 (Cover)
Vogue
Buy this Art Print at AllPosters.com
Over the past three decades the popular magazine Psychology Today has conducted several surveys on how people feel about the appearance of their bodies. The changing results make for interesting reading. The dramatic changes in American culture have significantly altered peoples' perceptions of themselves. In 1972 twenty-three percent of American women were dissatisfied with their appearance but by 1997 that figure had risen to fifty-six percent. In 1972 fifteen percent of men were dissatisfied with their appearance but by 1997 that figure had risen to forty-three percent. Thirty-eight percent of men are now dissatisfied with the size of their chests compared to the thirty-four percent of women dissatisfied with their breasts. Men are getting pectoral implants. Millions of women have had surgery to change the shape of their breasts or increase their size.
Images of Beauty are everywhere. Pictures of handsome men and beautiful women grace the pages of glossy magazines, television, billboards, consumer products and the Internet. In the developed world the preoccupation with the body and with Beauty is intensifying and the Beauty Industry, despite nearly thirty years of feminism, is a multi-billion dollar a year business.
In the United Kingdom visit any newsagent and you will find dozens of magazines on various aspects of style, fashion and health. There are several magazines just devoted to the topic of hairstyles and hair care. Men's magazines tell men how to get flat stomachs and bulging biceps. Images of slim, ultra fit models seem to be everywhere and vast numbers of women are preoccupied with their weight. Yet despite this preoccupation with beauty and despite the well publicized health risks over a third of Americans are obese. The English are fast catching up. But yet, while one third are obese, for others anorexia nervosa is a serious and potentially fatal mental health problem.
Cindy Crawford
Buy this Poster at AllPosters.com
The images of beauty everywhere are not the average man or woman. Few ordinary people can aspire to look like the images of the exceptional beauties the media present us with. The models, actors, and actresses are selected from the thousands who apply. They are statistically exceptional in their appearance. Then professional stylists and make-up artists spend hours doing their hair and make-up. They spend hours in the gym. However, in films, soaps, and sitcoms they are often placed in ordinary situations so that we all feel that they are our competition. However, as Cindy Crawford says, "Even I don't wake up looking like Cindy Crawford." A survey of 5,000 women in the UK by Real magazine published in November 2002 has some rather depressing statistics. 91% of women were unhappy with their hips and thighs and 60% were depressed by their body image. 84% of those who were normal weight wished they were lighter. Only 3% of women were happy with their bodies.
To suggest that we can either have something very beautiful and desirable if we purchase a car or look very beautiful and desirable if we use a certain hair conditioner and eye-makeup sells products very effectively. This is because it touches upon some very deep-rooted anxieties in human psychology and offers an answer to them. Feminists have blamed men and a patriarchal society. Socialists have blamed capitalists and the advertising industry. What is really going on? Why are both men and women more preoccupied, more anxious, about being beautiful these days than ever before?
Advertisement | | | |
To be beautiful is presented as being the answer to a problem. The developed countries of the world are going through a period of great turbulence. Just as the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s led to great changes in society so too is the Information Revolution of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. And it is happening fast.
For hundreds of thousands of years our ancestors were hunter-gatherers. Civilization and cities are only a few thousand years old. Just as our bodies evolved over those countless millennia in order to adapt and survive so did our psychologies. The reasons why it is so important for women to be beautiful and men to be strong and handsome are deeply ingrained in the human psyche and are the product of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.
At Beautyworlds.com we think that the increasing preoccupation with Beauty is linked with many of the great cultural and social changes of the past three decades. Anxieties about Beauty resonate deeply in human psychology. Men don't cause women to want to be beautiful nor does capitalism or the advertising industries. Cultural and social conditions can heighten these anxieties and being beautiful can be felt to be the solution. And, fundamentally, this has to do with the biological purpose of Beauty.
beautyworlds.com recommends the following books from www.amazon.com
forum
Beautyworlds.com has brand new forum and chat facilities. Find out what others around the globe think about beauty in cultures past and present here.
advertisements
3D Hairstyle Makeover Software - Click to Try
beautyworlds.com featured book
all featured books have been read by a member of the beautyworlds.com team
 Anthony Napoleon, the author of Awakening Beauty: An Illustrated Look at Mankind's Love and Hatred of Beauty, is a psychologist who has spent many years studying beauty and its impact upon both individuals and society. He has worked with both cosmetic surgery patients and beauty pageant contestants as well as conducting original research into the field. Awakening Beauty is an unprecedented exposé on the subject of beauty. It is both entertaining and thought provoking, a combination that is as unique as it is telling about the author's approach to the subject of this book. The reader is taken backstage into the worlds of beauty pageants, plastic surgery, trophy wives, murderous rage, wardrobe, makeup, Bill Clinton, the events of September Eleven and other provocative topics where beauty has had its effect. Awakening Beauty invites the reader into a world that is as interesting as it is frightening. Readers are transformed as the author shepherds them from their world into his unique perspective and expertise on beauty. Awakening Beauty includes over one hundred tantalizing photographs and illustrations. Awakening Beauty is a compendium of some of the most interesting facts in print. The subject matter of the book along with the author's unique approach to it makes this book a "must read." Get ready to re-think everything you thought you knew about beautiful women and physical attractiveness. |
|---|