Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is defined by an objective criteria. Beauty is a science.
These are the words I left you with last week, and I plan to delve into the implications of the science of beauty.
Before a deeper investigation of this skin-deep topic, I need you to answer a simple – yet loaded — question.
On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate yourself?
You might be wondering where this is going, but it will all come together in the end. You might even wonder why this topic is at the forefront of my mind, considering the pressing issues of climate change, poverty, and the violation of human rights. With the emergence of ranking systems and the resurgence of past fashion trends, I came to an interesting point. How can we, as a society, devise a plan to better the world when we cannot comprehend the root cause of these issues?
This may be a stretch in reasoning, but everything is connected.
I promise.
From the plastic mascara tube to the influencer advocating for diversity in marketing, beauty is the center of it all. Well. Beauty may not be the red string carefully woven through each piece of evidence in a puzzling mystery, but it is undeniably one of the tiny pins on the vast board.
To better understand this convoluted and misconstrued topic, it is best to address the elephant in the room.
What is beauty? Contrary to popular belief, beauty is a measurable quality that evolved from prehistoric times to optimize the reflection of great health. Commonly explained as Eurocentric (incorrectly so), classic beauty standards were (and still are) a direct attestation of the desire to be in good physical condition. In other words, traditional beauty standards form from an innate aspiration to present good physical health.
As I have witnessed the confusion on the idea of beauty created by the transforming, transcending, and transfixing social media trends, I am most astonished by the concept of rating.
Earlier in the blog, I asked you to rate yourself on a scale of one to ten. I am sure you have reasoned your answer by saying, “I have a pretty good heart,” “I have an amazing personality,” or “I dressed well today.” You may have even disregarded this question because you think beauty is too complex to be conceptualized by a simple scale. But what if I told you the only correct rationale would be to study your facial harmony?
Scrolling endlessly through the vast number of videos, I noticed when asked to rank others on YouTube channels like Cut and Jubilee, people will quickly change the topic of assessing physical attractiveness in favor of promoting extroverted and confident characters. This redirection of focus calls attention to a larger issue in the media. The hyperinflation of confidence in social media is a direct result of its users supporting a false narrative that everyone fits in their unique mold. Consequently, these users also ignore the importance of facial harmony, which is the proportion and balance of your facial features.
Ultimately, I am not saying that teenagers on social media should wallow in self-pity and curse their genes rather, their confidence should stem from their comfort of being completely average.