Beauty and Women

A detailed Summary of Beauty and Women

Since the beginning of man and through the rise and fall of many different civilizations there have been differences of opinion on what makes someone beautiful, or more importantly what characteristics of women are attractive to men. The answer to this question is perhaps the billion-dollar question. I say this because the answer to this question is sought by women every day through billions and billions of dollars of plastic surgery, beauty products, and stylish clothing. Put simply, the main question that I am discussing is, are there some things that all women have in common that makes them attractive to men?

This question arises from the fact that although I, as a man, do have preferences in personality and appearance in looking for a mate. I can still find things about all women that are attractive to me, Whether it is an aspect of their personality or something physical, like nice eyes. It is this habit of most of the men I know to look for the good in girls that make me wonder what exactly makes women in general beautiful?

Before any of this can be seriously thought of though, we must first consider the concept of beauty in relation to women. The question here is of course, is our concept of

Finally, are there some things that all women possess that make men find them attractive? For the most I think so, but based only on the environment in which you live. We, as men in the 20th century can no more speak for beauty in the middle ages than men in the middle ages could speak of beauty now. What men find beautiful has changed so quickly that what was once found attractive in a woman 40 years ago is considered some what unattractive now. Basically most men of the same environment can find some beauty in most women

beauty innate or is it defined by our own individual tastes shaped by life experiences? Thinking along these lines, we must go all the way back through history to ancient Greece and Plato, who wrote in The Symposium:

This is where the debate over beauty, especially that of beauty in the mind, gets tough. In his Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant attacks Hume by explaining that although the mind does decide beauty individually there is no need for a collective agreement on what is beautiful for something to be truly beautiful. Instead he explains that there is something that makes most people see the same beauty in something. The thing that makes most people see common beauty is common sense. To Kant anyone that does not see the common beauty that most people see is lacking something that makes them human (Sahakian, 45-48)

Basically Hume's idea on beauty in women can probably be broken down into a few simple premises. First all men see beauty in some aspect of a woman. The human mind has different tastes because of the environment in which the person grew up in or lives in. Most men who grow up or live in the same environment will usually have the same taste in women. Therefore although the human mind makes its own decisions on beauty, most men of the same environment will usually find some of the same things beautiful in a woman (Solomon, 613-614)

So basically to Plato there was one great form of Beauty, or absolute Beauty. The beauty of a particular person is our starting point for discovering absolute Beauty. The ultimate goal in loving the beauty of another is for our soul to see the eternal Form of Beauty and to contemplate Beauty continuously. One can only assume that Plato believed that all women

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Approximate Word count = 1527
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History