What is Beauty

“Talking about beauty is talking about women.” Probably that is right, but guess what? Men can also be beautiful, even more beautiful than women. Talking about beauty interests everybody. You can either be beautiful or not.
But how do we really define beauty? Beauty has so many definitions that some would shock you and some would interest you. Understanding the meaning of beauty is one of the key themes in the philosophical discipline known as aesthetics, which is “ a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature, creation and appreciation of beauty.”
There is also a common theory made by men that “it is the appearance of things that are good.” This theory has been supported by many examples. This theory, however, is based only on the physical aspect of a thing. It does not follow, however that when a thing appears good, physically that is, it is also better in many aspects. It may be true when judgment is based on external appearance – but what about the inner beauty of a person that cannot be seen? This inner beauty may include qualities of a person as in being kind, generous, or humble. One factor in considering beauty is symmetry, to name a few that “the other half of the face must have regularity and balanced proportioned with its other half.”
On the other hand, a psychologist in the University of Texas at Austin, said: “beautiful women must possess a waist-to-hip ratio of about 70%,” (Singh 343) to be considered beautiful. For psychologists, if a woman has this kind of ratio it usually indicates that she is capable of bearing a child.
In the early pre-Socratic period, this theory of Pythagoras can also be found. He said that: “there is a strong connection between beauty and Mathematics that if the same objects are proportioned, the object appears as more attractive.” This also implies that people who have symmetrical and proportional bodies according to the golden ratio which are considered and recognized as more attractive than those who are not.
St. Augustine, like Plato, believed that, “beauty of a work of art .” In the medieval times the arts were mostly that of the Madonna’s, angels and other biblical structures.
Beauty fits the mind with a system of ideas. It fills the soul with series of concepts: it sows nature with seed; and it provides matter with forms. In the end, it’s not how beauty is defined that matters. It’s what’s in the heart.