Paper 1...Second Prompt

Jenna Tucker
Professor Yaisa Mann
WS 3413.001
October 2, 2009
Paper #1

I interviewed six different people to get a good idea of what the different generations thought beauty was. I interviewed both males and females in their early twenties, mid forties and early sixties. The two questions I asked them were how do you define beauty, and who do you consider beautiful and why. The responses I got failed to surprise me.
The female in her early twenties defined beauty as “the outward appearance of a person as compared to the norms of society.” When asked who she thought was beautiful and why she answered very quickly “Brad Pitt is beautiful because she has an amazing body, very attractive face and every man aspires to look like him.” The male in his early twenties defined beauty as “how attractive a person is” and said that Hale Berry was beautiful because “she has everything a man dreams of…an amazing body with a gorgeous face.” The woman of mid forties defined beauty as “the outward and inward appearance of a person.” When asked who she thought was beautiful and why she responded by saying that “everyone is beautiful in their own way. We may not all be as beautiful on the outside as a supermodel, but everyone is beautiful by either the way they look or the actions they take in life.” The male in his mid forties had a very similar answer to that of the male in his early twenties. He defined beauty as “a person’s attractiveness compared to societal norms” and said that Angelina Jolie was beautiful because “she is the epitome of beauty in today society. She has a great career, her face is beautiful and an amazing body that every man dreams of.” The female in her early sixties defined beauty as “the outward appearance of a person that is shaped not only by how they look but also by what they have been through.” She told me she thought I was beautiful because “you are young and have huge dreams and aren’t afraid to accomplish them. You may not fit into society’s norm of beauty but you have seen a lot in your short life and are confident.” The man in his early sixties had a similar view of beauty.
It seems that for the majority of their lives men see beauty as how attractive a person is. Both the male in his twenties and the male in his forties based who they thought was beautiful on how the person purely looks. They love the thin, curvaceous body that goes along with a face that is almost flawless. Both of these men put so much emphasis on physical appearance and did not stop to consider beauty as being how a person acts as well as how they look. This was true of the female in her twenties as well. It is no wonder that as Gimlin points out “Cosmetic surgery is one of the fastest growing specialties in American medicine” (106). There seems to be a shared idea of beauty based on the media that young men and women strive to achieve. Vida points out when speaking of sorority rushees, she says they “are primped so that they will look like the kind of girls boys like” (8). Half of the people I interviewed emphasized only physical beauty.
The other three people I interviewed; the woman in her forties and the man and woman in their sixties seemed to incorporate not only the physical appearance of a person but also the “inner beauty” of a person. They were not as concerned with simply how a person looked, they felt beauty also came from how a person acted and the things they had been through in their lives. It seems that as we get older we begin to be less superficial. We see the true beauty in people. You can be the most attractive person alive; but if you are not a good person then your physical beauty has been negated. To me this is why many marriages end in divorce. When we are younger we see only the physical, but as we age we open our minds to the physical and the spiritual as well as the actions of the opposite gender. The quote “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” does not really seem to be the case; it seems to be that beauty is based on culture.