I'd posit that, because we have to spend 50 posts discussing varying standards of beauty, whereas nobody is disputing standards of tallness, that the two are orthogonal. One can be tall relative to context, as when I went in heels to a wedding where the participants were 5'2" and 5'5" and I felt like a giraffe, but one is or is not tall, and one can measure that against medians/means of the population.
Ye canna quantitatively score for beauty. It seems more like 'family resemblance theory,' where you class several things together because they seem to belong together, but you can't formally describe any one thing they have in common.
However, I will agree that "everyone's beautiful in their own way" is as mealy-mouthed and diluting-the-meaning as "everyone's smart in their own way." If you want a word to be meaningful, then it can't describe everything in the universe.
Charlie Brown Christmas alternate ending: [link]
Language is NSFW. Also, don't watch with children around.
Okay, I think it is absolutely a good idea to give a little refresher on Pinochet while reporting on his apparently imminent demise. But do you have to preface it with "now you
may
remember his name..."
Timelies all!
Quiet day today. Catch up on some tapes, go to the supermarket, that sort of thing...
Timelies.
My day is pretty much going to be grading, and trying to do something to make my sinuses stop hurting.
I'm still a little bit too asleep to compose anything sensical about beauty.
Comes from absorbing too much media about models or cheerleaders or makeovers or celebrities without makeup oh noes.
My coworker totally just gave me the Star magazine with celebrities without makeup oh noes, and you know what? It made me feel awesome! Because they do look like crap! IOW, I do believe that most "beauty" in our society is manufactured.
At least in the last few centuries, beauty was completely worhtless next to the possibility of increasing wealth. A woman's value was the wealth of her family far more than her looks.
Definitely in the "daughter of the king" example -- I'm pretty sure the daughter of the king was more a strategic asset than anything else, at least in recent-history Europe.
In other news, Aimee should be jealous of Ellen DeGeneres -- Minnie Driver gave her a camel for Christmas! There's a real camel on-set! OK, she's not actually going to keep it -- Minnie is promoting holiday giving to Oxfam, which is doing a Heifer Project type thing.
At least in the last few centuries, beauty was completely worthless next to the possibility of increasing wealth. A woman's value was the wealth of her family far more than her looks.
I think it's a tough distinction to make, since standards of beauty have been almost always been historically defined as "what the upper class wants to look like." (And until relatively recently, money was equated with health, since if you weren't rich, you were probably starving.)
They're still valued for their beauty, its just a different standard of beauty.
It doesn't matter WHAT the standard is, beauty ends up being the #1 again and again.
Beauty as indicators of status or wealth or value to the family is, I posit, a practical definition and using physical traits as shorthand--we're back to dowry and ability to bear children expressed visually.
