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Essay / Ideal Beauty - 1455
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, is a very famous quote by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford. Martin, Gary. (“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The Phrase Finder, nd Web. April 7, 2014) This quote means that many different people see beauty in their own way. Beauty can take many different forms, such as personal appearance, nature, personality, art and architecture. The values of modern society and those of the ancient Greeks contain both similar and different ideals of beauty. Today we value beauty most often in terms of hair, body shape, money, and face. The ancient Greeks viewed beauty as a sum of parts forming a coherent whole with symmetry, harmony and proportion as key elements. (Sartwell, beach) We can see the ancient Greeks' ideal of beauty given physical form through their statues, architecture and paintings. Women are the center of attention in terms of physically displaying ideal beauty. In today's modern world, women are content to resort to plastic surgery to correct perceived physical flaws, dye their hair to their desired color, or artificially tan to achieve a darker skin color. However, in ancient Greece, women stayed indoors to become paler and maintain a lighter complexion. They used sheep fat as a foundation and, like today, they plucked out unwanted hair to achieve their natural hairline. (Valentine, LaNae. "Beauty Through the Ages | Rediscovering Beauty) Each era has its own ways of defining beauty. There are many different philosophies of beauty in each era because people try to interpret the true sense of beauty Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates are three very important figures from ancient Greece whose philosophies on beauty capture that era's views on beauty P...... middle of paper ... ...r current definitions of beauty Today's Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines beauty as: 1: the quality or totality of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasantly exalts. spirit or spirit: LOVELINESS2: a beautiful person or thing in particular: a beautiful woman 3: a particularly graceful and ornamental person, or excellent quality4: a brilliant, extreme or egregious example or instance We can. clearly see the classic Hellenic elements of beauty such as purity, the value of the overall impact of a person or thing that provides pleasure to the senses, the quality of excellence. or kindness. These classical ideals of beauty were first proclaimed by the classical Greek philosophers and the fact that they are still found in today's definition of beauty has proven that these concepts are timeless and eternal..