What is beauty? How can a person tell if something is beautiful or not, if someone is beautiful or not? Some people might find a deep meaningful novel beautiful while some people might find the feeling of seeing their loved one after so long beautiful; there is no rule to define that. Beauty is a very subjective thing and while many people might define it in a different way, Margaret Hungerford defined it in a very beautiful way in her novel ‘Molly Bawn’. According to her, “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder” (Hungerford, 1978).
Merriam Webster defines beauty as “the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit” (‘Definition of Beauty’), whereas according to the definition of Cambridge dictionary, “the quality of being pleasing, especially to look at, or someone or something that gives great pleasure, especially when you look at it” (‘Meaning of Beauty in English’)
For me, beauty is not just a word or a physical feature that a person or something possesses but it is a feeling, an expression that tells how you feel towards something. You can find beauty anywhere, it’s everywhere and yet it’s nowhere. It all depends on your perspective and how you are seeing the things. It also depends on your mood and condition, for example, you might find the sunrise a beautiful scenery on a trip to the mountains where the you can see the sun rising from the back of a mountain but you might find the scenery of sunrise not so beautiful on a Monday morning after a whole night of fun with friends, reminding you of the work that you need to attend to. This puts a new perspective on the definition of beauty.
The world is changing and so are many things with it. People used to have different standard of beauty in the past but in the modern age everyone is looking at it from their own way. It is a beautiful time to be alive, where you can choose yourself that what the things that you find beautiful are and what the things that are not. You do not need to stick to a standard but you can create your own standard and in fact, you don’t even have to create a standard. It’s all just a state of mind and you can be flexible according to your own will.
Taking the example of a person, some people would say that they find a lighter tone of skin beautiful while some people would say that a darker shade attracts them. Some people would love the long hair of person entangled within itself while some people would like no hair at all. Some people might find the tallness of a person attractive while some people would find shorter people cute. Some people would like people having skinny bodies while other might like a healthy chubby person. It surely has no boundaries on who is beautiful and what makes someone beautiful.
When I hear the word beauty, the first scene that comes in my mind is the one that I witnessed during my last trip to the nature. Imagine that you are riding a bike in the mountains, there is a range of mountain on one side of the road and on the other side there is a deep canyon with a river flowing in it. You can hear the river flowing and it’s like it is following you as you move along. There are a few birds in the background that you cannot see but only hear them chirping. The wind is finding its way across your helmet and giving you a rush. You take on turn on the left and then there you see the most majestic view in your life. The sun is setting behind a mountain and the whole sky is lit with a fading yellowish orange light with shades of blue and blood red in it. That is when you say to yourself that this if the life worth living for. Now that is what I would say something beautiful.
There is beauty everywhere around us and yet there is no beauty around us at all. It again all comes back to the perspective you have and the eyes you see the world with. It has no limits and it has no restrictions. It is the beauty of the word beauty that you can define it in your own terms and you can mold it according to yourself. Now, that is something beautiful.
Bibliography
Definition of Beauty. (n.d.). Retrieved from Merriam Webster: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beauty
Hungerford, M. W. (1978). Molly Bawn. Meaning of Beauty in English. (n.d.). Retrieved from Cambridge Dictionary : https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/beauty