Beauty in Todays World

The concept of beauty is a controversial issue in today’s look-oriented modern society as the media constantly tries to give it a set definition. Motivated by material profit, television programs, glamorous magazines, and fashionable websites often provide their own distorted image of the perfect human being. However, due to the fact that it is a subjective and relative concept, beauty is indefinable and therefore an unreachable and utopian ideal. The idea of beauty has undergone a great amount of changes over time, and as a result it is indefinable and almost impossible to give a completely factual definition. What people considered to be beautiful years ago no longer pertains to today’s modern society. These changes can be seen especially through the changes in the preferences of the female body image. During the Victorian Era, women were considered beautiful if they were plump and full-figured, as it was a sign of their wealth. Oftentimes they wore tight corsets that made their waists unrealistically thin while accentuating their hips, breasts, and buttocks. However at the start of the 1900’s being slender became more fashionable, as women were encouraged to be more physically fit and the idea of the “Gibson Working Girl” was created as the epitome of physical attractiveness. During this time period women often bound their breasts in order to create a more slender appearance. By the 1950’s “beautiful” women were thin and had a large bustline, like Mariyln Monroe who was a size sixteen. In today’s western modern society the perfect and ideal weight of women involves being skinny and having large breasts, which is normally achieved through cosmetic surgeries such as liposuction and breast implants. Like the ideal image of beauty is unobtainable because it changes over time, it is also relative because it varies between cultures. Different cultures have varying definitions of beauty depending on their societal trends and traditions, making it impossible to