Theory of Knowledge

Universal Standards of Beauty

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder.

Hi Everyone!

     Last week in our TOK class we have been presenting on various topics. The instructions for this project was to pick a particular topic and create a informative and interesting presentation about it. I chose to center my presentation around universal standards of beauty. The question I was to answer was: Is there a universal standard of beauty or does it vary from country to country? Here's what I found out: 

     Around the world people's brains are wired the same way to determine someone's level of attractiveness. In most cases, we find people attractive if they have average, traditional, or common features. That's why when we see someone that has different features than we're used to, we do not immediately acknowledge their beauty. But, that's not to say that they're not beautiful. All the time people disagree on whether an individual is beautiful or not. That's why we seem to agree to disagree by following this quote: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This means that someone you may find beautiful may not seem beautiful to someone else. Based on this, I concluded that there is a universal standard of beauty, but only when it comes to determining beauty at first sight.

      However, each individual country have their own ideas of what represents beauty. For example, the Karo tribe in Ethiopia practice scarification for females. This means that they burn or cut intricate designs into the skin of a female when she has hit puberty. Once this process is complete the female is considered to be mature or of age. That is just one example of a beauty standard that can be found in a specific country . There was also a Photoshop Project that I included in my presentation to show which facial features each country finds desirable. Here's what the project was all about: a journalist sent a raw, make up free photo of herself to photo editors around the world. She asked them to make her beautiful based upon what their perception of beauty was. Below you will find the link of the video on YouTube so you can see for yourself what the results were. While the video is loading you can ask yourself what beauty means to you. Let me know in the comments what you come up with!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT9FmDBrewA

See you soon!

- Sophie F.