Reading 7 Understanding Human Beauty If someone were to walk right up to you and asked you to define beauty, what would you say? Would you start describing a cover girl you saw in one of the popular magazines, or colors of the rainbow? Or would you consider a soft piece of music or even a romantic poem from a lover? All these can be defined within the concept of beauty but one thing that is clear is, there is no definite definition of beauty. A popular definition of beauty is that it is a characteristic about something that gives a feeling of pleasure and satisfaction. Therefore for beauty to be understood, it must cause the senses to feel a feeling of joy, pleasure and satisfaction. From this definition, the judge of what ’ s beautiful is the person who receives or fails to receive the pleasure. How is this definition of physical beauty actually used among human beings? What makes one be considered beautiful and attractive? Is a person considered beautiful necessarily attractive? These are difficult questions which do not have a direct answer. The way the societies we live in view beauty is influenced by many things, for example, cultural factors. In the past, each culture had different criteria upon which they based beauty. There are those cultures that considered plump women to be beautiful. Others considered small feet to be beautiful. ... These have, however, changed a lot in modern times. With the development of technology and human interaction, the differences in cultural preferences have been reduced and we now almost have a standard way of viewing beauty. This is greatly influenced by top fashion houses. The images they push to the public, including the dress, walking style and physique, have increasingly become the trend that the rest of the world is expected to follow. But what about inner beauty? According to many researchers, physical beauty is always improved by a measure of inner beauty. A person may have all the necessary features to be physically beautiful but without inner warmth, the person will be seen as cold. While outer beauty and appearance is made up of factors like health, youth, skin, etc., defining what inner beauty is depends on characteristics like politeness, intelligence, elegance, personality, etc. Therefore, what we see on the catwalk is not necessarily the true representation of beauty. Human beauty is so rich in variety that we can have no set standards by which to define it and each individual is beautiful in her own way.