Here we go again: months and months of talking about diversity, love of the body, and then the appearance of a ranking (or pseudo-such) is enough to go back to judging women by their appearance, assigning them a score, putting an “above ” or “below” the other. The news in question had great repercussion in the Italian press: Jodie Comer is the most beautiful in the world and say that it is not a jury, but an algorithm. In 2022, did we need another ranking of the most beautiful women on the planet? Probably, certainly not. And they are not useful to anyone, except those who design them.
No, beauty cannot be measured
Let’s start with the basics: in the ranking composed by Dr. Julian da Silva at the Center for Advanced Facial Cosmetic and Plastic Surgery in London, science has little or nothing to do with it. It all started with an Instagram post by Dr. De Silva, who is a plastic surgeon by profession (but think about it). The calculation, he says, was done according to the latest computerized techniques of face mapping, but the assumption is wrong: how do you measure such a subjective concept as beauty? At most the algorithm establishes the symmetry of a face, and it dies there. Beauty is not measurable because it is a concept that changes over the centuries, in various societies, from generation to generation. From individual to individual, even. Beauty escapes all definition, even if we are obsessed with framing it in a pattern, in a canon, in tracing safe paths to achieve it: this size, this type of body, these measurements, this shape of the lips.
Each season has its own aesthetic ideal which, following the word literally, is not real. It is ideal, therefore, unattainable. The cosmetics industry, along with fashion, has built an empire on aspiring to a standard, shifting the focus from self-care to judging others. Dress to look slimmer. Make up your eyes to make them look bigger. Tricks to slim your face. How to apply concealer to look ten years younger. The list could go on, but you get the idea. Only in recent years, with a lot of effort, a more conscious and free way of relating to one’s own image has emerged. O positive body movement he encouraged women to look at themselves with more forgiving eyes and love their bodies as they are. Pamper yourself for the pleasure of doing so, consider health and well-being before aesthetics. The idea of beauty embraced the individuality of each person, with the traits that make them unique.
How the cosmetics industry has changed
The industry has opened up to the plurality of human bodies, with their different shapes and colors. Let’s be clear: makeup, beauty treatments and hairstyles are not to be condemned, and neither is cosmetic surgery. Each person is free to shape their body as they please and see themselves in the mirror as they wish: fashion is a game, in its infinite experiments. To be condemned, at the very least, are the pressures women suffer from outside: the comments about physical appearance, the hammered images retouched on social media, the collective obsession with eternal youth, which considers wrinkles a mortal sin. Rankings of this type respond to the same logic: reducing the complexity of beauty to a mere score, which “rewards” those who have a symmetrical face based on a century-old mathematical canon such as the golden section. Maybe they could fit in some 1950s women’s magazine, certainly not the inclusive society we aim to become.
The big misconception about beauty
Perhaps the most adequate definition of beauty was given by Immanuel Kant, speaking of “subjective universal”. A concept that takes on as many variations as there are heads that think of it. And surely no algorithm will ever be able to explain it. The blatant misconception about beauty is that our appearance is the key to success, if not happiness. That being “beautiful”, whatever it is, makes you attractive, desirable, desired. But the human being is much more complex than that: we are sensitive to the charm, to the charisma, to the grace of other human beings, among so many others. things, all the qualities that have little to do with the distance between the eyes or the proportions of the lips… And then, having reached perfection, what do we do?
Source: Fan Page IT
Barry Siefert is an accomplished journalist and author at The Nation View. He is known for his expertise in the field of cryptocurrency, and has written extensively on the topic. With a background in finance and economics, Barry has a deep understanding of the underlying technology and market forces that drive the crypto industry.
