He called qualities such as vividness, boldness,

and subtlety "properties of qualitative degree" and stated that a PQD makes an object beautiful if it is not—and does not create the appearance of—"a property of deficiency, lack, or defect"; and if the PQD is strongly present in the object. The 20th century saw an increasing rejection of indian-guru by artists and philosophers alike, culminating in postmodernism's anti-aesthetics. This is despite beauty being a central concern of one of postmodernism's main influences, Friedrich Nietzsche, who argued that the Will to Power was the Will to Beauty. Various conceptions of the essential features of beautiful things have been proposed but there is no consensus as to which is the right one.

Western 19th And 20th Century

The subjective side, on the other hand, is expressed in sayings like "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". One study found that people low in physical attractiveness earn 5 to 10 percent less than ordinary-looking people, who in turn earn 3 to 8 percent less than those who are considered good-looking. In the market for loans, the least attractive people are less likely to get approvals, although they are less likely to default. In the marriage market, women's looks are at a premium, but men's looks do not matter much. The impact of physical attractiveness on earnings varies across races, with the largest beauty wage gap among black women and black men.

Classical philosophy and sculptures of men and women produced according to the Greek philosophers' tenets of ideal human beauty were rediscovered in Renaissance Europe, leading to a re-adoption of what became known as a "classical ideal". During the Gothic era, the classical aesthetical canon of beauty was rejected as sinful. Later, Renaissance and Humanist thinkers rejected this view, and considered beauty to be the product of rational order and harmonious proportions. Renaissance artists and architects (such as Giorgio Vasari in his "Lives of Artists") criticised the Gothic period as irrational and barbarian. This point of view of Gothic art lasted until Romanticism, in the 19th century. Vasari aligned himself to the classical notion and thought of beauty as defined as arising from proportion and order.

Western Middle Ages

Exposure to the thin ideal in mass media, such as fashion magazines, directly correlates with body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, and the development of eating disorders among female viewers. Further, the widening gap between individual body sizes and societal ideals continues to breed anxiety among young girls as they grow, highlighting the dangerous nature of beauty standards in society. Standards of beauty have changed over time, based on changing cultural values.

Beauty, together with art and taste, is the main subject of aesthetics, one of the major branches of philosophy. As a positive aesthetic value, it is contrasted with ugliness as its negative counterpart. Along with truth and goodness it is one of the transcendentals, which are often considered the three fundamental concepts of human understanding.

Adherents of both sides have suggested that a certain faculty, commonly called a sense of taste, is necessary for making reliable judgments about beauty. David Hume, for example, suggests that this faculty can be trained and that the verdicts of experts coincide in the long run. The prevailing Eurocentric concept of beauty has varying effects on different cultures. When images of human faces are averaged together to form a composite image, they become progressively closer to the "ideal" image and are perceived as more attractive.

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For many Iranian women, cutting off hair – a sign of beauty that is decreed to be hidden in the Islamic Republic – is a poignant form of protest. We weren’t taught that skinniness was just the standard of beauty but the physical manifestation of discipline, dedication, and effort. Each product is hand-selected by our editors because we think you'll love it. If you buy something through our link, we may earn a commission from the retailer or it may be a product that we produce or promote through one of our affiliated companies.