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Suffering for Beauty's Sake
| Article
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11395 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
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11 / 1986 |
2,609 Words |
| Author
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Ettagale Blauer
Ettagale Blauer is a freelance writer based in New York. |
What Is Beauty?
Throughout history, people have willingly suffered incredible pain to achieve the current vision of beauty. All their attention has been directed to changing their physical appearance by altering the shape of the various body parts or the surface of the skin. Yet of all the tortures they endure, none addresses itself to the question of the beauty that comes from within-the glow of the new mother, the vibrant beauty of a new bride, the rapturous look inspired by love. While most cultures of the world pursue physical perfections, some also look to the mind and spirit as the source of true beauty.
The history of civilization embraces a worldwide, eons-old desire to appear beautiful. But beauty to one culture is disfigurement to another. The ties that bind us are the urge for beauty and the quest to achieve it, no matter how much suffering, even torture, it entails. The leitmotif of the phenomenon is that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, and torture is the price we willingly pay to achieve it.
Standards of beauty are imposed on those undergoing these tortures through various societal pressures. The reigning aristocracy (a status usually determined by wealth) often sets the style for beauty and may be the only segment of society that practices it. In other cultures, the tortures of beauty are practiced universally, acting to mark the practitioners quite literally as belonging to those groups.
Suffering for beauty takes two forms: permanent changes in the physical shape and appearance of the body and its parts, and permanent
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