Is beauty really subjective?

[Fallen Angel]

Do you think beauty is subjective i.e. in the eye of the beholder, or is it objective?

For example, I don't think many folks would say Charlize Theron is ugly.



Nor would many folks say the hunchback of Notre-Dame is beautiful.



Yet, on the other hand, some European folks find African/Asian women ugly while African and Asian men find them beautiful, or even other European men.

What do you think, maybe a bit of both? :

[Weltschmerz]

Originally Posted by Fallen Angel

Do you think beauty is subjective i.e. in the eye of the beholder, or is it objective?

It is subjective rather. But I don't think there's such a sharp difference between subjective and objective. There is a difference between true and false though.

For example, I don't think many folks would say Charlize Theron is ugly.

She is not so beautiful either, in my subjective opinion.

Nor would many folks say the hunchback of Notre-Dame is beautiful.

He looks like a poorly requisited actor rather than anything else.

Yet, on the other hand, some European folks find African/Asian women ugly while African and Asian men find them beautiful, or even other European men.

Miss Bahamas here is beautiful to my eye: Miss World 2007, Contestant Pictures

But most women with wildly foreign looks are not attractive to me.

What do you think, maybe a bit of both? :

Somewhat a false dilemma perhaps, but well worth talking about.

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by Fallen Angel

Do you think beauty is subjective i.e. in the eye of the beholder, or is it objective?

You mean: in the eye of the beer-holder?

On a serious note, I think it is both. The very fact that of two people one will sometimes call some person beautiful and another one will say that the same person is ugly, seems to confirm the thesis that the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. On the other hand, almost eveyone will say that, for example, the hunchback of Notre Dame is ugly (independently of whether he is just a poorly requisited actor or not), which would appear to confirm the second thesis, namely, that beauty is the objective thing.

I say both views, taken to their extremes, are pretty naive and false. There are some very general standards for beauty which include regular facial features, lack of mutilations or tokens of disease (like eczemes etc). Then there are other, less universal, standards of beauty, which are mainly culturally specific. I think that these are crucial for determining of who is beautiful and who is not, in a given cultural/societal context. Somewhere large hips are favoured, somewhere not etc. Then in the respective cultural context people as individuals, bearing in mind the general standards, make their own choices of who is for them beautiful and who is not. There certain considerations of inner beauty come into play (the look in her eyes etc.), even the way someone speaks or walks can be beautiful for some person and not beautiful or outright ugly for somebody else. Someone can pay more attention to hips and less to facial features, the other one vice versa etc. In this sense the beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

However, there is another issue here, namely, of what beauty isn't. Beauty certainly isn't that what is being aggressively advertised by the media as beauty. It is not dependent on beaty contests and their results. Denis de Rougemont in his book Love in the Western World (L'amour et l'Occident,good book, I recommend reading it), referring to the modern contests of beauty (Miss, Queen etc.) and to the attempts to apsolutize their results as standards for beauty, calls it some kind of vulgar(ized) Platonism, whereby the idea of beauty has been mistaken for some specific fleshly form thereof, chosen between other forms on the ground of some quite arbitrary criteria.

The modern media seek to impose their "beauties" as the standards of beauty in general, as if they were obligatory for everyone. Very often you hear that the winner of some beauty contest is this or that country is being called the most beatiful woman of the respective country, which is preposterous and perverse.

[Breogan]

Originally Posted by Fallen Angel

Do you think beauty is subjective i.e. in the eye of the beholder, or is it objective?

Beauty is completely objective, maybe one of the few objective things in the world.

For example, I don't think many folks would say Charlize Theron is ugly.

Only the ones with some visual distortion or mental insanity.

Nor would many folks say the hunchback of Notre-Dame is beautiful.

The referred ones above.

Yet, on the other hand, some European folks find African/Asian women ugly

Good for them.

while African and Asian men find them beautiful

Good for them.

,or even other European men.

Shame on them.

[Monolith]

What about chubby chasers? For them, beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder.

[Marcus Marulus]

Originally Posted by Gnist

Cherlize Theron is not so beautiful either, in my subjective opinion.

In mine neither.

Originally Posted by Breogan

Beauty is completely objective, maybe one of the few objective things in the world.

No, it isn't. At least not completely.

Originally Posted by Monolith

What about chubby chasers? For them, beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder.

Isn't this a bit of a too kinky?

[Marcus Marulus]

Another discussion with similar theme:

What is beauty?

[Carnyx]

If chubby is another PC word for obese, then it belongs to the domain of deviance. And deviants don't like beauty, they like ugliness like all perverts.

[Berrocscir]

Hey, there's nothing wrong with big beautiful girls

[Marcus Marulus]

In some parts of the world fat girls are preferred to thin ones. And in Europe too, in some epochs of history, thinness was not particularly appreciated. Take a look at paintings of famous painters, where women of well-defined bodies abound.

I am not talking about the pathological obesity caused by junk food and hormonal disbalances, which is another matter.

Maybe the modern obsession with female skeletons is a sign of true deviancy.

[RolloDesaixDeBurgh]

I don't think beauty is subjective. I think it has to do with objective things like symmetry in the face and body. For men in the body it's the shoulder to waist ratio and for women it's the hip to waist ratio. A face that approaches perfect symmetry also looks the most attractive generally but there are different standards for male and female faces also outside of symmetry that lead to judging one attractive or not. I won't go into what other factors besides symmetry in male and female faces are attractive though.