We are so used to saying that ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ that it trips off our tongue in a knee-jerk fashion which pays lip-service to the notion without us pausing to really understand it. In the modern world beauty is determined by mass media in more ways than we care to mention. 

 

Films, TV and magazines force upon us a presupposed concept of what is acceptable based upon the dictates of fashion. This then spills over into everything else. I know this is nothing new, after all Botticelli and Titian made a name for themselves for painting nudes which dictated fashion. Neither Botticelli nor Titian however blanketed the airwaves of their times fostering a body image which became the norm for beauty for women and men all over the world. 

 

In a reactionary world the normal defence might be to unplug. To let our hair grow wild and our eyebrows bushy but that is a course which is neither realistic nor aesthetically pleasing. So we are trapped, in a way, by our search for beauty which is as much the result of Photoshop and clever lighting and expensive make up as Botticelli’s and Titian’s nudes were the result of clever brush strokes. 

 

Even if we agree that this is totally wrong it is unrealistic to think we can reverse the tide, particularly when mega-popular reality TV shows like Top Model hold us in our armchairs as seemingly pretty but otherwise ordinary girls strive to become the modern embodiments of our sense of beauty. 

 

What’s left then falls upon us to understand that beauty is personal as well as universal. We may watch in envy the long legs and clean limbs of models and actresses but what really makes someone beautiful is the fact that they are real. Their sense of fun, their opinions, their ideas, the way they react to a joke and how they laugh when they are surprised. The way they walk and move and talk. Their scent and their attitude. These are a million little things which make someone unique and special and make them be loved by their partner. 

 

It is wrong to be so trapped by the glitzy, artificial, pre-packaged notion of ‘beauty’ peddled by TV and video and magazines and ads and billboards that we forget that it is there as a sense of entertainment rather than a standard to be emulated. Beauty has to be, always, something intangible and almost secret, shared between two people in a way which makes their bond special. Anything else is glitzy packaging, wrapping which is designed perhaps to make a relationship attractive on the outside but which rarely works to make it appealing to those involved inside it. For that you need love and love has its own notion of what is beautiful and what is not. 

 

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