Talk:Beauty

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[edit] Cleopatra

by modern standards, Queen Cleopatra would not be considered beautiful. Her charm lied in her personality, intelligence, ability in the bedroom. Thus, to include her in beauty is questionable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.164.168.162 (talk) 01:04, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] True Beauty

You can have a better definition of beauty when you look at a girl called Eman. She is a Bahraini Banker, she is the best explanation of a true beauty. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Greatpersian (talk • contribs) 11:37, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Picture

May i propose a picture of me for clearer illustration of the subject? If not can the picture be replaced anyway by something that is actually beautiful, as opposed to this one, which is sort of ugly imho. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Timothy Barson (talk • contribs) 17:11, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] History of Beauty

Hi, i'm new to all this, so am happy to receive advice on making edits. I made some changes to 'history of beauty' yesterday. These were reverted so i've revised them and included some explanatory notes -

Re: symetry may be ... - trimmed to avoid weasel words Re: some researchers... - as above Re: symetry, golden ratio and youth - Rhode's citation is left but the paragraph is shortened to avoid repetition, the type of research (meta-analysis) is not relevant as we are not comparing research methodologies. Re: The bluest eyes - questionable relevance. Difficulties in achieving beauty ideals are worth including and are mentioned in the preceding paragraph. Detailed examples would be more relevant in an articles on stigma or dysmorphic body perception.

I'm not sure why there are 2 articles - physical attractiveness and beauty but expect that the former is a more biological / sociological point of view where as later is more existensial. With this in mind the 'History of Beauty' section serves little purpose, especially since only the first paragraph discusses historical ideas of beauty.

It seems to be a good article and is worth keeping informative, clear and concise. I hope I can help to do this. Nernst (talk) 04:08, 26 March 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Body Weight

The article stated that the one notable exception to otherwise historical stability of standards of beauty was female body weight...yet standards for male body weight are equally unstable; compare the hefty seventeenth century Germanic burghers to the almost worryingly slender nineteenth century English gentlemen to the obese Tahitian men to current Western standard, which seems to once again have returned to the Greco-Roman standard. Hence, I have removed the qualifier "female". JDS2005 07:23, 7 January, 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Scientific foundations for human beauty

I very clearly remember some sort of documentary that included the information I've distilled into this edit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Beauty&diff=99056216&oldid=99053502

However, I can't remember WHAT the documentary was, hence this information requires citation, seeing as it adds a lot to the article, but does not stand well as a simple assertion without citation. JDS2005 07:44, 7 January, 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Scientific?": not possible

Elmo is the coolest thing on earth! back to buisness.

The scientific method is pretty much a requirement for "doing" science. . . all of the studies I've seen to date about universal standards of beauty fail the "rolling eyes test." Just chat with an anthropologist sometime and figure out what concepts you could employ that would port so easily across cultural boundaries.

Just for example: US, Europe, India, Hong Kong, Australia, Taiwan. . .what do all these places share? They don't call it "Bollywood" (or "Baliwood) for nothing! Many of the same production values (and stereotypes) that "contaminate" cultures make any sort of statement about universality suspect. (remember, we're working from an anthropological perspective here--if you want to make any sort of universalist claim, you need to demonstrate cultural isolation. If the kids all read the same textbooks, listen to the same music, watch the same movies, whatever you have isn't universal!)

I just read that the chief of one of the "primitive" tribes in Amazonia just announced to (yet another) TV documentary producer "I think I need a tummy tuck--I look too fat!" Sorry, but there is no concept of tummy tuck indigenous to the native people's of Brasil (if these tribes are really the native people, fodder for another speculative trail).

Now let's look at how our variables will be operationalized: If you are measuring "desirability to men" you fail, already. Who says that "beauty" has anything to do with sexual desire ? What about the old and equally heinous, but cleaned up for this forum "there's the girls you date and the girls you marry." So according to our operationization of the variable "beauty" we now have "beauty" as a characterization of objectivization. Would you argue that men would choose to marry those they found less beautiful? Perhaps, but now we are way out of the ballpark of any "scientific method."

Since we are talking about anthropology, let's consider time span. How long have Homo Sapiens been answering surveys about what they believe is desirable? How long have Homo Sapiens been coupling for recreation and procreation? Would science allow us to make a generalization of Time T1 to T10,000 based on data exclusively from Time T9,995? Nope.

So taking a seque from anthropology to statistics (since we are relying on a sampling of a very large population to allow us to ascribe characteristics to those members of the population we have not actually tested). Does each and every member of the population "all people everywhere for all time" have a known probability of being included in our sample?" um, no. Scientific research does not allow you to measure some characteristic of an animal A1, combine it with data from A4, A399, A39300, and A4 million and claim that your findings have validity *unless you can demonstrate that each of these A Animals are the same thing? Disparate things, no findings.

Moving to Anthropological Linguistics. . . Are we able to ascertain that the words used in each culture are linguistically identical? If not identical, can we ascertain exactly how they are different? Let's see, compare lots of American English words for "beauty" and assume they will linguistically map? (speaking of phonemes, here, the linguist *knows* there is no credible semantic mapping even within a language group with a rather minor geographic distribution--which drives the semanticists crazy) If it is not phonemes you are taking for your data, what are you using? You can demonstrate that two sounds are more or less identical, but if you are making all sorts of assumptions about meanings crossing language groups (and this, in turn, drives the linguists nuts) you really don't have "data" you can defend in a scientific sense. If a respondent answers "That is one bad woman!" does it mean that the picture of the woman is considered beautiful or ugly? Do you have to know their location to tell the difference? Perhaps even rely upon the data collector's judgment? Apples and oranges. Not science.

Now let's look at population ecology, epidemiology, and several related disciplines. These folks are willing to let a lot of the data particulars slide, but they really do depend on strict operational synchronization. The way I understand it (and we are moving way far from my fields) they are willing to admit some sloppiness in their data, as long as it is the same sloppiness everywhere. That is, you can count different factors in different places as alike, but you have to maintain data collection in a context-aware fashion. You can lump owls and arctic foxes together as Level 3 predators in this biome, and hawks and red foxes (I'm making these examples up, can you tell?) together in this other biome, but you have to demonstrate that the foxes in both biomes occupy similar niches in their respective biomes. That is, you can't lump together all foxes, without careful regard to their position in their environment. So, if we are headed this way in our attempt to group data from different ecologies, we simply must show that the same factors are relevant in each. Do the populations in each location have the same level of stability in their food supply? Does the representative stimuli (presumably pictures of women revealing enough to at least tell what their real body measurements are) occupy similar niches in their respective ecologies? That is, do young unmarried females in one cultural setting represent an economic blessing to their family, and a hardship to another? Are beautiful women considered in terms of household expenses to maintain, or are they expected to be self-sustaining or even contributing to the subject male's economic setting? If they function in one capacity in one society and in a quite different capacity in another society, any context-based discipline will disallow them as similar: No matter what you might call them.

I'm not even going to venture into semiotics, talking about how signs and symbols create our worlds through a variety of complex and always changing processes that constrain our choices in ways we can't (by definition) even know. I believe the point is as clear as I can make it.

There are many other perspectives, of course. I am not even suggesting that there is a particular science that needs to be followed. But there are many, many more studies produced in universities than are considered to be credible to those committed to the scientific method.

It may be that instead of "science" these researchers are working within an established discipline that maintains some other standards. Boldly I would say that the large majority of the "genetic story" sorts of studies are not accepted by geneticists, by social scientists, or by anyone else. Speculating that some gene worked in some way through the millenia is tautologically not provable. That does not mean that it should be excluded from intellectual debate, but that if it starts by claiming the scientistic (from "scientism" rather than "scientific" from "science") ground of the finality of data.

This probably sounds more harsh than I intended. But this is a topic that has done a lot of harm to a lot of people, especially those who are led to believe that their own options or self-worth are bounded by their genes. It is quite likely that any discussion about "beauty" is going to rest on philosophy, popular culture, and "the meaning of life".

To put it another way, we can be very specific and sure about something really vague, or we can be vague about something so specific it has little value in a discussion of something like "beauty." Let's not oversimplify the topic.

One last caution: There's "peer-reviewed" and then there is "Peer-reviewed." In a system where everyone has to publish in peer-reviewed journals or lose their job, wouldn't you expect to see a lot of peer-reviewed journals? Some disciplines have only a few, but other disciplines have tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journals. If six of us meet at a conference, we can set up a web site and have a peer-reviewed journal. We are all peers, after all.

Most universities have rather complicated "tiers" of journals in which the lower-tiered journals are deeply discounted (often capped at the number of points journals of this tier can be counted for promotion and tenure decisions. Problem is, with so many thousands of journals in a field (let alone the journals that are interdisciplinary) it is increasingly that anyone else in your department will be reading the same journals you read. How can a university even know which journals are "hot" this year? Discovery and understanding is not a linear thing.

Just to make things even more confusing: Even the most highly regarded journals send through "way out there" pieces every now and then. It keeps folks from becoming too comfortable and sometimes (even) it represents payback for some past slight, real or imagined, or a tender spot for some developing area of research.

Nothing should be taken as "settled" or even "known" until it shows up as prevailing against attacks and counter-theories. Even then you never can tell. While Wikipedia is not "perfect" let's not stake too much on a single study. If there is a body of literature out there representing a variety of opinions and perspectives, then it surely should be added (with other supporting or disconfirming citations as well).

Roy 18:03, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't be shy, Roy. Tell us what you think. ;) I don't believe anything about the article claims to have scientific proof, so I think your criticism is somewhat misplaced. There is a fairly substantial empirical literature on physical attractiveness, however, which I would argue is one facet of beauty. I think the real problem is that beauty is an incredibly difficult concept to get ahold of, making this article extremely difficult to write. The section you tagged is rather incoherent and disorganized, and tends to conflates ancient history and evolutionary psychology under the vague title of "beauty and culture." These points should probably be separated out into their own sections where they will be much easier to address. In the meantime, I'll see if I can find a citation or two. --Jcbutler 15:48, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Update: I've added several references and done some reorganizing. I think the theme of symmetry may help to unify some very different ideas, such as the ancient Greek view of beauty and the evolution of attractive faces. This is definitely a work in progress. --Jcbutler 18:07, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Beauty pageant winner image revert

Miss Virginia Teen (2006) – physical attractiveness, such as beauty, is an important part of human bonding.
Miss Virginia Teen (2006) – physical attractiveness, such as beauty, is an important part of human bonding.

It seems that User:Jcbutler has reverted the addition of an image of a "beauty" pageant winner in an encyclopedia article on "beauty"? I find that ironic. Possibly JC can explain himself or herself here. --Sadi Carnot 06:09, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi Sadi. I deleted the image for two reasons. This article is about beauty in a general, social and philosophical sense. A picture of a beauty contest winner would seem to be a better fit for the article on beauty contests. My second, more substantial reason is that the image is blurry and of poor quality, having been cropped and magnified from a larger photograph.
That said, I'm not entirely averse to a beauty pageant picture on this page. I think we could find a better one, and maybe place it under its own heading or perhaps "effects on society", rather than aesthetics. Any other opinions? --Jcbutler 17:21, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
As to your first objection, more than 3/4th of the page is devoted to a discussion of measurements of physical beauty in people, e.g. waist-to-hip ratio, clear complexion, large eyes, symmetry, the golden ratio of facial features, averageness, lack of blemishes, a perfect nose shape, plastic surgery, taller height, eating disorders, muscular development, sexual dimorphism, etc. Need I go on? A person who wins a beauty contest, typically, possesses physical features indicative of these traits. The other half of beauty, in human life, relates to neurological development in such areas as virtues, e.g. mother Teresa, Mozart, etc.
As to your second objection, the list of free beauty pageant images available to use is here. If you find a better one, please suggest it.
Some books you might want to read on the subject of beauty, as you seem to be interested, are Nancy Etcoff’s 1999 Survival of the Prettiest – the Science of Beauty, Gillian Rhodes and Leslie Zebrowitz’s 2002 Facial Attractiveness – Evolutionary, Cognitive, and Social Perspectives, and Brian Bates and John Cleese’s 2001 The Human Face. In the latter book, for example, chapter four is on beauty. Beauty, according to this chapter, "lies in a blend of Greek philosophy, evolutionary biology, mathematical formulae, babies, sex, and personal chemistry." The pictures they use in the opening page of this chapter, to represent beauty, are actors George Clooney and Brad Pitt, model Iman, and violinist Vanessa-Mae. I hope this clarifies my position. --Sadi Carnot 19:35, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I find that person in the picture very ugly. This article on "beauty" needs a complete makeover.141.155.149.184

[edit] Minor Picture Edit

I removed a picture that was oddly protruding out of one of the first sections in this article. It was awkward, and really didn't contribute to the article that much. 24.145.221.25 05:44, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why only Human Beauty?

Why are we focused on human beauty? For a general wiki, you think this would include things about all types of beauty, in nature, art, animals, etc. Can someone please include some fact about these subjects? 69.80.163.152 14:47, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, right in the first paragraph, the articles states that "Beauty is a quality present in a thing or person" and that beauty "is a quality of a person, object, or idea..." (emphasis mine). The article then goes on to mention beauty in plants, nature/landscapes, buildings/architecture, music, and proportions in general (not just the human kind), among other non-human aspects. The article doesn't even focus on the human aspect of beauty until the tenth paragraph, which discusses symmetry.
Of course, if you still think this article would benefit from sections dedicated to other-than-human beauty, please be bold and write them! --Mary quite contrary (hai?) 15:08, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This is part of Sociology

The beauty-related topic in philosophy is call "Aesthetics," not this! There's not even a Stanford encyclopedia entry on this. "Physical Appearance" is a related topic WP Sexuality should work on, not this!

WP Sociology should handle this article. Thank you.141.155.149.184

Aesthetics is not the study of beauty and actually has very little to do with beauty these days. Instead, postmodern thought largely dismisses beauty as having anything to do with aesthetics and art. Rather, it is preoccupied with concepts such as taste and expression. Beauty is a philosophical concept. Its relationship to sociology, if any, is a matter of philosophical debate (within the branch of aesthetics). While current consensus seems to be that beauty is a social construct, that does not mean that beauty is a "part of sociology". Soldarnal 06:03, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hideous

why does hideous redirect to this article? 84.161.251.249 09:22, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Fixed temporarily. --Mary quite contrary (hai?) 18:20, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

That's because opposites attract;). Gooogen 17:57, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Ugliness needs its own article. It's just as developed of a concept as beauty. I was really surprised when it redirected here. That's ridiculous, considering the amount of obscure facts and trivia on Wikipedia. I never edit or discuss on Wikipedia but come on folks. "Intelligence" and "Stupidity" have separate articles. Beauty/Ugliness is a very similar idea. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.228.133.167 (talk) 03:07, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How Can We Make The Pictures Non-Objective...

Attractive to everyone?

Thanks, DarkestMoonlight (talk) 15:36, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

The obvious choice is to have no picture of the girl you happen to like. Weregerbil (talk) 20:41, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Human beauty

User:Xenonvision insists on adding this image [1] of Gisele Bündchen as an example of Western idea of beauty. I think Bündchen looks mannish and is not facially attractive. What's worse, the pic Xenonvision prefers is truly awful, which I think even her fans would agree with (I think it was removed from the Gisele Bündchen article when someone tried to add it).

I'd replace the pic with this one [2] of Monica Bellucci, but I'd accept a compromise, like the Nefertiti bust [3] that was in the article until removed by Xenonvision.

I think today's female models often have peculiar, masculine faces, which many people (heterosexual males in particular) do not find attractive. Actresses like Bellucci fit the conventional idea of beauty in Western culture a lot better.

In any case it's bizarre to say that Bündchen as seen in that hideous pic represent the Western idea of beauty. If shown only that picture, how many people would say that she's beautiful? If there needs to be a picture at that point of the article at all, it should be something less controversial. Victor Chmara (talk) 22:08, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

We'll never get consensus on a single female that everyone thinks is beautiful (especially contemporary models). I think the Cleopatra bust (or some other artwork symbolizing beauty) is better. OhNoitsJamie Talk 22:23, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
  • A photo of an individual should have a reliable source attached to it. But even then, its inclusion will most likely be subject to recurring, heated debate and since sources calling any given notable model or actor/actress "beautiful" are easily found, people will probably continue to insert an image more to their liking, which is definitely a bad idea. Reyling on schematic drawings, and examples from the arts are far better suited to explain rather than decorate the article content. dorftrottel (talk)
Image:MMONROE1.jpg
Marilyn Monroe
I think that a Marilyn Monroe picture would be better. She's a true beauty icon. Xenonvision (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 01:52, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
I second the Marilyn Monroe suggestion. Victor Chmara (talk) 13:08, 14 May 2008 (UTC)