Darwin's Theory of Beauty
My Big Question: How are society’s beauty standards of females and males affecting their identity?
Ted Talks and getting in contact with people who may relate to my question are great resources for me to use in order to develop an answer for my big question. Ted Talks are a great way to get information on topic that one is interested in because they are given by someone who is very knowledgeable in certain topic and they usually use personal experiences to emphasize their point. Getting in contact with people either in real life or through social media such as twitter is a great way to help answer my big question because the people I contact may have a certain point of view or experience which I can use to my advantage.
The Ted Talk that I found very interesting and related to my big question was: “Denis Dutton: A Darwinian Theory of Beauty.” Dutton explains that “Beauty is in the culturally conditioned eye of the beholder” and “…cultures determine a uniformity of aesthetic taste.” These specific quote fits perfectly with my big question because it shows how there is no universal idea of beauty but many different ideas of beauty which are developed by cultures. Through the Ted Talk Dutton explains that by looking back in history at Darwin’s idea of natural selection one may be able to understand why humans care about beauty as well as generally what is beautiful? Dutton describes how Darwin believed that beauty was developed through the evolution of sexual selection in order to procreate as well as not eat say ones baby once its born because to the parent the baby will be too beautiful to eat. Dutton goes on to explain how there is also a generally accepted idea of what an aesthetically pleasing landscape is; that being a landscape with trees and water. By studying Darwin we can also understand that a landscape with trees and water is attractive to most humans because it represents survival. Listening to this Ted Talk was very useful because it helped me understand why humans have the ability to point certain things out as “beautiful.”
The Ted Talk did not go into detail on what different cultures consider beautiful especially in men and women however I plan to try and ask people either face to face or through twitter what their experiences with society’s standards of beauty have been and how they feel that has shaped who they are. I would love to ask Grace Neutral, a journalist for Vice, what she thinks about my question but she does not have a twitter so I may need to contact her through a different platform. I would also like to talk to anyone who I see around campus who are defying the social norm of beauty and those who are not defying it. By talking to different people I believe that I will be able to get a greater sense of understanding of how someone is shaped by beauty standards as well as what inspires someone to defy beauty standards?
