美しい - Uncommon in everyday conversation when describing people?


Recently, in a conversation with my Japanese tutor (a native Japanese speaker)
I brought up the word 美しい in regards to praising people and its usage in day
to day language. She mentioned to me that it is not really a word used in
normal conversation, as it was rather outdated and a bit too over the top,
which would make some people think you're joking. Other such related terms
like 美貌 or 美顔 are also not used frequently either.

She told to me that キレイ（綺麗）is a much better choice and can even be seen as the
highest level of praise in regards to beauty.

While I've certainly heard this argument before from online discussions and
other native Japanese speakers, it still confuses me a bit because I still
hear native Japanese speakers use 美しい when praising people.

Some phrases I heard recently are:

[code]

    今日も朝から美しいね。
    
    食べる姿は美しい。
    
[/code]

Is this a generational thing? Is the current generation simply bringing back
an old word? Or am I simply overthinking the problem?

Any insight you can offer me would be greatly appreciated.




I can see your tutor's point, but I think they overstated it a bit. 美しい might
not be as popular a term as キレイ, but there are still plenty of people who use
it. Also, I'm guessing your tutor is older than 30. As far as I can tell, most
young Japanese girls these days would prefer to be called かわいい or 美人 than any
of those other terms.

It also raises the question of how to compliment men's looks. Probably most
guys would like to be called かっこいい or イケメン instead of alternative terms like
ハンサム、男前 or 美男.

Basically, words go in and out of fashion all the time. Right now, 美しい might
be somewhat out of vogue, but I think it's going too far to say it's outdated
or over the top.

