The author, John Marek, is a writer and executive director of the Anson Economic Development Partnership.
You’ve probably seen the quote “Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder” on a T-shirt or a sign, most likely in a bar. The phrase is designed, of course, to elicit a laugh, but I think we have to ask ourselves, is it funny because it’s true?
Philosophers have mused about the nature of beauty for as long as there have been navels upon which to gaze. Societal and individual standards change, and fashion trends come and go, but does the nature of beauty itself change, or is beauty an immutable equation? Some derivation of golden rectangles and Fibonacci spirals?
To answer that question, I think we must first make a distinction between attractiveness and beauty. Attractiveness is a very personal and individual reckoning based on our memories, influences, experiences and, perhaps, physiologies. Beauty is a more generally held set of assumptions about color, shape, movement and flow. It is usually said, for instance, that a
landscape of the sun setting over the water, reflecting shades of purple, red, orange and yellow, is a beautiful scene, while the sun setting over a concrete viaduct is less so. That a ballerina performing “Swan Lake” is beautiful, while a drunkard staggering from a bar – perhaps wearing a beauty is in the eye of the beer holder shirt – is not.
While we may seek a single, universal definition of beauty, actually finding one would likely be catastrophic. Imagine if everyone in the world found the same painting, the same book, the same song to be the pinnacle of beauty. Then imagine if that song was “Baby Shark.”
There is a scene in the movie “American Beauty,” where a young videographer shows his girlfriend footage of a plastic shopping bag animated by gusts of wind in a dark alley. Nothing about that footage conveys any of the traditional elements of beauty, yet the motion and flow somehow transcend the material aspect. Is it beautiful? It’s undoubtedly mesmerizing, but is that the same thing as beauty or just another form of attractive?
Perhaps that’s the point. Maybe our difficulty in defining beauty is tied to our tendency to group too many things that are merely pleasing or esthetic or titillating under the broad category of beauty.