Victorian wear. Obviously beautiful.
When someone asks, “What is beauty?” the general response is ,”Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Now that’s perfect in all, for something beautiful is typically labeled that way because it generated a positive, emotional experience which is different for everyone. Or is it? It would make more sense to say that beauty is in the eye of the culturally cultivated beholder, someone who has been molded by the values of their society. Didero argued in his 1769 personal essay: “Regrets for My Old Dressing Gown – Or a warning to those who have more taste than fortune” that the beauty placed on objects by society or men is not true beauty. It’s value is not great for it lacks humility, reality, and is unnatural. This beauty is fabricated, mocked up so people will be drawn to it for they are familiar of its purpose. Didero explains that society has taught itself what is beautiful and what should be valued, and also that society has taken advantage of what is beautiful by selling and exploiting it.
But can men be subjected so easily, can beauty truly be what it is said to be? Scientifically speaking, yes. There is a theory that “Beauty is an adaptive effect which we extend and intensify in the creation and enjoyment of works of art and entertainment.” The man who came up with this theory was not a philosopher, or poet, but a scientist, Charles Darwin. He linked his understanding and study of evolution to define what we consider beautiful. Below there is a link to a TED video which explains the theory in extreme detail.
http://www.ted.com/talks/denis_dutton_a_darwinian_theory_of_beauty.html
The speaker begins to explain the theory at 3:00. But overall explains how natural selection led to the adaptation of fear of certain things as humans, and even what we pleasure as humans.
