Beauty in Nature & in Art

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THESIS: The media’s portrayal of the female body shows a bias in their thinking of beauty.


The idea of beauty appears on the back of our heads. We see it all the time, everywhere and anywhere. Our view of beauty – does it refer to something much more different today than what it used to be? How long back in time do we go? It’s not even certain enough that we do go back in time, as the same two main views obeauty always seem to have been there. In particular the image of the female body. Yet before getting any deeper into the particular body – what, and where is beauty? How is beauty born and how is it interpreted?

To make it easier, the picture of beauty can be put in two different groups. The doctrine’s view against the naturalist’s. This idea was put together by Charles Darwin (1809-82), a British naturalist, whom with his significant piece “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection” obtained the genuine attention throughout Europe. Darwin was against the idea of beauty structure being created to delight man. He (naturalist) argued the fact that we all see beauty differently, in different views in nature. This is the 19th century classification. Today’s interpretation of the “doctrines” and “naturalists” then could be matched as = “doctrines”  media “naturalists”  environmentalist . The combination then can be hard to perceive. A simple meaning to doctrines associated with media is that today, media works a bit like the doctrines; there is a given beauty that is to delight man, again in especially bodily figure, woman’s physical appearance. The media paints the “perfect” figure, mostly in concrete terms, but even so in abstract terms. In concrete terms, the media brings out in public sectors, people that look just like each other (in bodily figure) to convince the crowd what is “right”. In abstract terms, the media psychologically questions the mind of the individual, again by trying to convince the crowd. Once a large part of the crowd is convinced, it’s easier for more people to “convert” to this imagery perspective. The naturalists are referred to environmentalists because of the same reason. They believe in the natural beauty and that we’re born beautiful; that beauty is different in individual’s eyes and that beauty is everywhere and can’t be associated with one particular or a few “perfect” figures, as everyone’s figure is perfect for themselves.

We are told that we’re beautiful under any circumstances, independent of who we are and where we come from, what we look like. But again, there is a sharp arrow that burst the bubbles of this encouraging mind of ours. The media’s portrayal of us, of our body that is told by every other person that it’s unique – and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Yet, media tends to portray us even more, and shows prejudice – bias towards our insight of beauty. It’s everywhere; newspapers, TV screens, magazines, public advertisements and, basically where ever you turn. Then why are we told we are born beautiful, if we still are expected to live up to the expectations of the media, who is one of the dominant sectors of our lives? Can’t this also be called double-standards? Media wants to make us do what they visualize for us, but they still encourage us to be happy with ourselves, as we’re beautiful individuals. Beauty? Does it even exist today?
In which terms can we then say that “nature” and “art” come into the picture? Nature and art are the interpretations used back in the 18th-19th century, even earlier than that (where technology wasn’t developed and processed.) If there is a more modern way of relating the two terms, it would probably be natural beauty (for nature) and media (for art). The current term media seems a bit vague in convincing of how beauty was used in art. Let us take an example: During the 18th-19th century (and earlier), camera’s and lively taken photos were not in the public sector as it is today. Yet, a lot of art was produced, through drawings, paintings, sculptures and so forth. The painted image was, for the most of the time, not any person with whatever physical appearance. It was the loyal lady, with the body every woman nearby wished for. It was the beauty, as regards to facial beauty, which women were envying over. Isn’t media doing the same thing to us today, with more remarks and more specific body-to-be’s? There was a vision of beauty, maybe not totally identical to what we have today, but most certainly very similar to our current. For beauty in nature, another view where we can say “we were born beautiful, everything is beautiful in this whole entire universe, for we are a part of nature,” can be discussed and used as an argument for the opponent, the media.

Even though all media does is make us feel less worthy, we are still dependant on media’s challenges. We don’t actually see nature as our priority source. Michel Eyguem de Montaigne (1533-92), French Renaissance thinker preferred seeing the beauty of a human face and searching for beauty, which he thought must have been more beautiful. Questions he came about touch bases such as – if we are agreed on a bodily beauty or not? He suggests that we must know little about beauty in nature as we give our human beauty different forms. He adds to that, that with our forms we suit to fancy, isntead of keeping the main important key in mind – our health. Again, if we go back to media – does media support the idea of health or a specific chosen body form (referring to beauty)?

Of course media supports a specific chosen body form. Yet, we still follow media, we still want to be accepted in media, just by looking to a specifically chosen “bodily beauty”. We are too fearful to look through the natural view, because we think are doomed that we always will be judged by the media. The prejudice-giving media. We risk our health for the view of the beauty that we want to obtain (anorexia, bulimia or any other eating disorder…) We know it’s wrong, but we do it anyway – we can’t handle criticism in the long-term. This makes us vague and weak towards arguments of speaking or own minds. Since why would we want to look like everyone else – the same old vision, when we know that we are born, and we can be a unique person that nor media or anyone else can control over? Power to the nature, power to the beauty!


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