Beauty Is as Beauty Does
As Fashion Week takes over New York City, I’ve been mulling over the obsessive hold that beauty has on all of us.
We live at a time when every part of the body can be redesigned, and we’ve reached a tipping point in our efforts to recreate who we are by recreating how we look. What then is the measure of beauty when we’re designing it?
Every culture has parameters for what is considered beautiful. Indian women don saris and bindi; the African Zoë tribe inserts wood planks through their lips when reaching adolescence. Americans make their breasts bigger, their noses smaller, their nails colorful, and their hair blonde. Why do we do this? For social confidence? Peer approval? A sense of belonging?
What we consider “aesthetically enviable” seems to change in milliseconds. Last week, we watched a Miss Teen USA contestant embarrass the nation by decimating a question about geography. Perhaps it is time to redesign the criteria it takes to win beauty contests. Perhaps the revisions should include every type of beauty: the conventional, the unconventional, the hidden, the incongruous, the subjective.
Today, I want to feel optimistic that someday beauty will be measured by virtue of who we are and how we think, rather than how we design what we look like.
Debbie Millman is partner at Sterling Brands, author of How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer (Allworth Press), teaches at the School of Visual Arts, a National AIGA Board member, and host of the internet talk show, Design Matters.
Felix Sockwell is an extremely fashionable illustrator and friend to Debbie. See him blab and her drink next week at AIGA NY’s Small Talks.
Remarks 32 total remarks were added before the post was closed.
Shane
Amen, Debbie. Unfortunately Miss Teen South Carolina is the rule and not the exception in pageantry, but it must be said that there ARE exceptions.
Maybe the Web is the last bastion for real beauty - where substance can prevail over style. The hope is obviously that both will be present, but the hope is that if you have to pick one or the other that content would be the Belle of the Ball (or the King of the Castle). We don't want to revisit the whole ugly design/popular site discussion again, but I think it might be relevant here.
I really love the new site. Great content AND great design. What a concept.
Andres Aquino
Would somebody please start a website called: EveryoneShouldBeForcedToCommunicateInUnder200words.com
With the speed and volume of how 'stuff' manifests in our lives, intelligent insights in 200 words or less is a blessing.
merci beaucoup
David Appleyard
I couldn't agree more. Great article and great insight. The concept for this site is a fantastic one and I really look forward to seeing it expand and grow over the coming months.
Jonathan Barrett
Great article. It's a shame that you felt the need to reference *that* beauty pageant. Was I the only one who did't find it that shocking or funny? Or who is finding the constant hand-wringing over "what it means" to be rather distracting?
Must be.
In the words of Bill Hicks: "No, you're just getting confused. Look again. Oh, it's a piece of shit? That's right! Now walk away."
Mind you, maybe I just don't like blondes.
Nick
A necessary counterpoint: Michael Beirut's most recent article on Design Observer.
He also references the pageant, but reaches a remarkably different conclusion. I happen to think he makes a better case, but, then again, I'm not really a designer.
John Christopher
Perhaps beauty shouldn't be reduced to one characteristic. This beauty contestant has some hidden qualities, you just didn't notice what there are yet. I find it a little bit pedantic to build your argument about hidden qualities when you bash the person in the example you use on the basis of one human mistake.
As they say: 'Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder'.
Craig Bradley
How is a boob job any different than a pierced lip; and yet I get the impression that there is some ill-defined group of folks out there which is very critical of traditionally defined beauty and efforts to attain it and yet which at the same time continues to decorate its own bodies, or at least is much less critical of those who choose this more edgy form of manipulating appearance. But I could be wrong.
Jökull
This is a terrible idea that was tested here in Iceland. If you can't compete in anything but physical beauty I say go ahead.
Shayne
A beauty contest of your suggestion would take too long. It would be nice to drill down and find true beauty in the span of a contest but alas I believe that quest belongs in your real life and not on television.
Expecting more from a beauty pageant seems unfair to the contestants who compete within guidelines and time lines.
Fiona Clark
Nice article and great idea for a site! As a creative person straight out of college, who is trying to find her feet, I can appreciate whats being said here. Thank you for giving me something to ponder!
mike handley
So we live in dumbed down society. No surprises there. But I do detect some contradictions here in the tacit approval of manipulating certain items and aspects of our appearance in order to achieve beauty...and the absurd lengths gone to in, say, a beauty pageant. Intellect is an important part of beauty in my book and the cattle markets that pass for pageants should be long dead.
How about:"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
Scott Piggott
You're making an incorrect assumption that America is willing to think. The reality is that people want to sit on the couch and turn off their brains - thus the allure of the traditional beauty pageant. And what a sweet nugget when one of the contestants proves that you are actually smarter than she!
John
I've always viewed that Miss Teen interview question as an example of a young person nervous on national TV.
I think its a little sad people view her as stupid: I want to give her the benefit of doubt. Hopefully she's not dumb, just inexperienced and nervous.
Otherwise, great thoughts.
Ian
I wouldn't have given this blog a second look if it weren't beautiful. Since it is, I've also found it insightful. And there are no distracting titties!
Nate
Ah, "who we are" and "how we think"... as if these were not vast, yawning questions that were not themselves the cause of the multifarious articulations we humans try to make in response.
We all love outward beauty and we make a mistake by vilify such love: what we don't like is bad taste, and the tendency to reward crude, damaging aesthetic statements and punish more unusual, esoteric ones. Aren't the outward appearances we design attempts to describe "who we are" and "how we think", after all?
What we want is to teach people to use that language more self-assuredly and more beautifully. To say not "I'm afraid and I'll do whatever it takes to belong" but to say something bolder... and maybe better.
Josh Silverman
beauty is brevity.
thacker
It is human nature to be attracted to physical beauty. Having been around one too many beauty pageants, hell could be defined as being locked up with a bunch of vain beauty contestants and only one bathroom with one very small mirror.
Today, I want to feel optimistic that someday beauty will be measured by virtue of who we are [...]
Yes, ma'am. And I wish for :::headlilt::: hmmm... World Peace.
Nelson Wissar
Have you ever noticed those persons that are not pretty-standart, and it is just a matter of time that you know them better, deeper, and you take a second glance and you see them beatifull? Thats inner beauty. Instead, you have also meet very "first-glance" beatifull persons that later look ugly. There is a more deep, intuitive beauty that we have repress in the name of progress... Where is this progress taking us? I think it is time to rethink the answer and the way we percieve the world. In my modest opinion.
Shane
Everyone in the world opporates under ONE single motivation.
Happiness.
Everyone wants to be happy, so they spend their entire life in the pursuit of happiness. So custom designing our bodies is because too many people are mislead and believe that if their physical appearance was perfect then that will help them achieve happiness.
Sadly happiness is never the end result. It's far too often that people fall into the snares of instant gratification, where they are deceived by their appetites into believing that if they fulfill or quench their appetites they will be happy.
Their is only one true path to happiness. None of which has anything to do with any physical appetite.
Greg K Nicholson
I think choosing a beautiful design for yourself does demonstrate who you are.
Fiona Clark
"Your eye expands up to 45% when looking at something pleasing."
Thank you, snapple fact #165.
Red Proctor
Miss America didn't understand the question.
dan matutina
very nice article. :D and done in 200 words or less. bravo. the thing i like about this type of writing is that it's very direct to the point. and oh, the illustration is superb!
sameer
this tell how our youngsters are being educated in the educational institutions.
we should know how these youngster are being given education.
we can say that beauty without brain is not good.
:)
Gemma
Society has turned 'beauty' into 'money' and marketed our self respect, acceptance and self worth upon it. We get messages all day, every day, through every medium that 'if you're thin/blond/fitter/dressed this way or that then you too could have money, fame, a partner, a house and be happy'. Its like training a dog to salivate when hearing a bell - we're trained from birth by society to find things that are marketed at us beautiful and desirable. Its human nature to want to fit in, and to fit in we buy into the message that these things are the 'norm' and to get them all you need to do is fork out your hard earned cash. Its the nature of society. Then again, maybe I'm just a pessimist!!
Personally I find the simplest things the most beautiful. If something does its job well and manages to look good while doing it (iPod anyone?) I'm a happy bunny. Same goes for people. Too much make up or bling is really off putting as it screams insecurity.
Margherita
Beauty parameters change according to trends (and personal taste). Why can't we accept the fact that we judge first with eyes and then with mind? Inner beauty, inner beauty, just words.
umm yeah
Beauty is already measured by more than what someone or something looks like. This is not a novel idea. However, if you know nothing more about something other than what it looks like, it is the only criteria you have to measure how beautiful something is.
Should no one admire a building without knowing whether it's internal structure, or the manner in which it was built is deemed beautiful?
I don't see anything wrong with measuring external beauty at all. This post just sounds like typical grousing by non-externally-beautiful people that feel slighted by society.
Let's not try to make this an overly intellectual conversation. You can be beautiful on the inside, and ugly on the outside, but don't expect to be recognized on an international television show for it.
J. Douglas
200 words? Who has time for tha
Pat
Beauty will always be about proportion.
Scott
It stains a very human instinct to relegate external appearance to a mere factor of impression, rather than a centerpiece. If we start handing out awards for inner-beauty, we'll be hard-pressed to find anyone who is ineligible. But I guess in a society where everyone is told they're special, that doesn't really matter.
Some people are prettier, smarter, funnier, and more capable than others. There's nothing new about these notions, and we reward people for these attributes all the time. Try as you might, getting rid of a televised beauty pageant won't even begin to change this. I know your message is a broader one, but it's trite and, in many respects, wholly irrational.
Next time, turn the beauty pageant off when it offends you.
Brian
I think beauty can be everywhere, in so called "ugly" things, and even in the more obvious choices, like a pretty teen USA model. I think the poster Scott below hit the nail on the head though, don't whine because you aren't beautiful, or complain because the world thinks things are beautiful that you don't agree with. Just be happy with yourself.