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.
Ooh, I know what next week's cupcakes will be (assuming I more or less stick to the rest of my diet, which is the deal I've made with myself):
Ginger Pumpkin: Ginger cake with Pumpkin buttercream topped with Candied Ginger
Mexican Hot Chocolate: Spiced Chocolate cake with White Chocolate buttercream topped with Cinnamon Mini Marshmallows
Godammit, Brenda. Now you know I'm just going to have to make a trip down for cupcakes.
what about certain African cultures (and Polynesian too, I think) that find fat women the prettiest. Because fat has another meaning in those societies--healthy, from wealth, and probably good childbearing stock.
From what I've read, some of the Polynesian cultures are falling prey to Western advertising. Samoa is actually starting to see cases of, if not anorexia, extreme dieting and attempts to attain a more westernized standard of beauty, i.e. thin.
Hi again.
FLEAS! and not the mommy of casper kind.
Msbelle! Have you met him yet?
