Beauty
“One is apt to overestimate beauty when it is rare,” Mark Twain
Since the beginning of time, people have been baffled by beauty. What is beauty? Why
does it exist? What makes them beautiful? According to Mark Twain we can even
‘‘overestimate it.’’ With something as simple as beauty we tend to over complicate it, but why?
The definition of beauty is this: "the quality present in a thing or person that gives
intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as
shape, color, sound, etc.), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else (as a personality in
which high spiritual qualities are manifest)". So why is it that we cannot just understand that
definition and know exactly what beauty is, I mean it’s plenty simple.
So with the definition of beauty out of the way we can move on to the question of what
makes a person beautiful. When a baby is first born and its eyes open to see what new place it is
in, it is amazed. The baby is frightened by its new surroundings and cry’s. In only a few short
weeks the baby understands beauty in its simple form. It sees its mother who feeds and nurtures
it. It feels the bed in which it sleeps is nice and comforting. What the baby is experiencing is
simple beauty. As the child begins to mature, he or she will start to view things in another
perspective. At first nature is what draws their wondering eyes, then people. Eventually the
child will start to look at the opposite sex and view them in a way that will help them choose a
future partner. The best example of this is someone in high school. A young man or woman
who sees one person who they believe is beautiful may not be what everyone else considers
beautiful. But how do we determine who is beautiful and who isn’t. Studies show that when we
see someone we instantaneously rate them based on appearance, size, and race. What determines
this is a part of the brain called the fusiform. It sees a person as beautiful or average which helps
us recall them in our memory. This same part of the brain also helps us describe people we
know, like family, friends, and people we come in contact with.
But we still haven’t answered the questions of why beauty exists and why we
overestimate beauty. First, beauty exists simply because it can. God designed a perfect universe
with beautiful things. And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.
(Genesis ch.1 vs.31) So the question isn’t really why does it exist but how does it continue to
exist. The answer to that is simple, because we continue to want to describe people as beautiful.,
but isn’t it more of what’s on the inside than what is on the outside. Yes but at the same time no.
If a man finds a woman that is beautiful on the inside he may not like her outer appearance.
Although sad, it is true. We continuously view beauty as an outer thing. If we could look
onward towards an inner beauty the world would be a better place. This is what Mark Twain
was trying to say in his quote. So many times we forget about the true beauty inside a person
and look towards outer appearance. It is so easy to overestimate beauty when it is in its rarest
form, love.
Beauty is the inner eyes of the beholder. What a truth there is to this simple saying. Not
only does it you decide how you look but also how other view you.
"Bible Gateway." BibleGateway.com: A Searchable Online Bible in over 100 Versions
and 50 Languages. Public Dominion, n.d. Web. 30 Oct. 2012. <http://www.biblegateway.com/>.
“Eden, Dan. "What Makes Us Attractive? What Is Beauty?: Viewzone." What Makes Us
Attractive? What Is Beauty?: Viewzone. View Zone, n.d. Web. 30 Oct. 2012.
<http://www.viewzone.com/faces>.
"Beauty." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 30 Oct. 2012.
<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/beauty>.