You Are Beautiful, Day 5

I hope you all are enjoying the series so far! I've really loved seeing the takes of other women on beauty so far, and I can't wait to read the rest!

Since I've started this project, I've been doing a lot of research on beauty. I want to experience it and understand it as much as I can, partially so I can write better posts about it and gain more meaningful insights into it, but also because the very thought of beauty lights a fire in my heart that makes me yearn to know and understand it in its fullness. I suppose that this is because, going back to Day 2, God is pure beauty, and any beauty we experience on earth is a reflection of Him. I guess that on some level, this is me longing to be in communion with God. However, I don't just desire to experience beauty, I also want to know what makes it tick, so to speak. I want to know what makes beauty beautiful, what it is that makes it so attractive.

Recently, I was able to uncover some information about a mathematical standard of beauty called the Golden Ratio. The discovery of the ratio is attributed to the sculptor Phidias (hence the use of the Greek letter Phi in the formula) whose sculptures seemed to be the embodiment of the ratio. For anyone who's curious, the actual ratio is 1:1.6180... and tends to be expressed as a rectangle, though I do not know why, as I have never found rectangles to be a particularly pleasing shape. I suppose that explains why I'm a historian and not a mathematician. I was thankful to have found the ratio, though, and I think that's because some small part of me did want a quantifiable standard of beauty. Some part of me wanted to know that beauty can be reduced to a comprehensible formula, even if I'm not the one who comprehends it.

That said, the application of the ratio to people unsettles me somewhat. Dr. Stephen Marquardt has developed a mask which supposedly outlines the most beautiful face in the world. It fits all ethnicities, and supposedly all the famous attractive people we know of today (or most of them, at least) have faces that fit this mask almost perfectly. Statues from Ancient Greece and Rome fir the mask, as do many paintings from the Renaissance through more recent centuries, aiding the argument that this is simply the mold for the most universally attractive face.

Some sources even go so far as to deny the idea that standards of beauty have been different in different times and places. As a budding historian, I'm not terribly fond of this idea. I do not deny math its rightful place in the world and our understanding of it, and I certainly will not dispute the attractiveness of the faces that fit the Golden Ratio mask, but this argument is too narrow. It leaves no place for a realistic reading of history, ignoring the factors which have caused societal standards of beauty to change, and indeed, ignoring the fact that even now there is no uniform idea of what makes a person beautiful.

Another thing that bothers me about the idea that this mathematically based mask is the true standard of beauty is that it dehumanizes individuals. It makes people whose beauty can be measured into genetic accidents; their beauty has no purpose, and is based only upon our brains' recognition of specifically calculated numbers. The other side of the idea that bothers me is the preclusion of others from being beautiful because they don't fit the mask. It does not recognize the uniqueness of persons, or account for the whole. The mask identifies one person as beautiful because their face fits, and another as not beautiful because their face doesn't fit. It has an unpleasant, utilitarian flavor, and I don't like it.

I think what bothers me most about the use of the Golden Ratio in determining whether or not something or someone is beautiful is that it removes God from the equation. God created each person to be beautiful like He is beautiful, and He created nature to be beautiful as a reflection of Himself. It is good that He has also given us a way to understand beauty cerebrally, but we've fallen into the trap of measuring beauty by the aesthetic pleasure we receive from it, and applied that mistaken standard to people. I have no problem discounting the work of Jackson Pollack if it isn't aesthetically pleasing to me, but I have no desire to discount the dignity and value of a person because he or she is not aesthetically pleasing or useful. God did not design people to be used like that.

I know I don't fit the Golden Ratio mask, and that most of the people I know probably don't fit it either, and that doesn't bother me. It doesn't make me or them unattractive, and it has no bearing on our intrinsic worth as children of God. I want to see as God sees, and love as He loves, and though I often fail miserably at that, I know that it means fighting the temptation to dismiss people because they are not deemed useful or beautiful by human standards. You are beautiful because you were brought into being from the mind of God by His love. You are beautiful regardless of any label this world can place on you. You are beautiful by virtue of your very existence, because God wanted you here, and because He loves you.

"But the LORD said to Samuel: Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature, because I have rejected him. God does not see as a mortal, who sees the appearance. The LORD looks into the heart." -1 Samuel 16:7