Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Beautiful in different cultures

It has been said, beauty is in eye of beholder. It is true, being beautiful means different to different people and different culture. What is this elusive quality called beauty? Beauty is anything that pleasures the basic senses of any person. Beauty in eastern and western culture varies so much.

Check out following reads;

Become beautiful
where blogger talks about culture issues and how to become more beautiful. You will love these tips.

Clueless beautiful This post has been viewed thousands of time and has a deep philological thought provoking thoughts in it. Here is some excerpt from the article.

"Why do we value beautiful women? Recently there was a high profile hoax online where someone pretended to be a 19 year old woman stricken with leukemia. A few pictures of her were posted of a rather attractive young lady. The result was a massive outpouring of emotional support and not a few gifts mailed to her.

In discussions after the hoax was revealed, someone pointed out that the response would not have been as great if the victim had been portrayed as a 50 year old man. If the purpose of the hoax was to attract attention and sympathy, then a 19 year old beautiful woman was nearly perfect. Somehow it seems as if the untimely death of that woman is more tragic than any other.

Indeed, this is true. But why? Why do we seem to value beautiful young women above all others?

I think this runs deep; indeed I think it is instinctive. But before I talk about that, let's discuss the ethics of it.

I can't accept on an ethical basis that any person's value should be rated based on their age, sex or physical attributes. As soon as any criterion is introduced which permits us to decide that some people are more valuable than others, then the door is opened to unspeakable evil. I see no ethical benefit whatever from such ranking. Therefore I must categorize it as a "bad" thing.

But our instincts aren't based on ethics. They're based on utility. We value beautiful young women because they are the most important members of a tribe of hunter/gatherers."

Interesting huh? What do you all think? Please share your thoughts.

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