By: Shari Graydon
This book was excellent. It really put beauty into perspective for me. The best part of it was the cross-culture and cross-time comparisons of beauty. It’s amazing how much the standard of ‘beauty’ has changed over the years. The models back in the 50s were much more realistic looking. They didn’t look like sticks.
One cross-cultural example that will stay with me forever is the one example cited from the movie: The Gods Must Be Crazy; it shows an African bushman accidentally walking in on a beautiful blonde woman getting dressed. By our standards, she’d be considered ‘gorgeous’, but instead he finds her amusingly ugly. He thought her white skin made her look like a ghost. He thought she had awful washed-out hair.
The beauty industry is just out to make money, like any other industry and they will use any means to do this; from subtle connotations to blatant opinion as to what is ‘beautiful’ today.
- Carrie W, age 19