Ben's Thoughts

So that little contest of mine has produced some great and thoughtful comments, stories of people recognizing beauty in places where it often is overlooked or disguised. (The contest closes on May 26th--you still have time to enter!) One of the comments turned out to be a post in and of itself--so I am taking it out of the "comments" box and posting it here. These are "Ben's Thoughts"--a man's perspective on how beauty is defined. Enjoy--and thanks for agreeing to this, Ben!


“Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.”

This near-hackneyed phrase indicates that our environment shapes how we see beauty. Indeed, our state of mind influences our ability to identify beauty and our propensity to seek it. To demonstrate this, the Washington Post did a social experiment. They had Joshua Bell, a world class violinist, play for 43 minutes in a crowded train station in Washington DC during the morning commute. Over 1,000 people passed by. Only seven stopped for longer than a minute. The author of the Post article claimed that beauty in an unexpected place isn’t recognized as beauty. The presentation matters.

However important presentation is, the content matters more. In my life, I’ve discovered that, given time, content overrides presentation. When I first went to college, awash in hormones, I was confident I’d find a wife among my classmates. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was expecting, but it was more or less what the media had promised – a gaggle of cute, bright eyed young women to get to know and, eventually, choose a wife from.

But I must admit that after looking around the room during freshman orientation, I felt slightly betrayed and a little disappointed. Where were the beautiful women I’d anticipated? (Little did I know, my future wife was actually in the room at the time.) As it turns out, nearly every female classmate in that room became more beautiful the better I got to know them. And let’s face it, judging someone’s looks on a day after they’ve changed time zones, driven or flown many miles, and lugged heavy boxes up a few flights of stairs isn’t completely fair.

The beauty of these women grew on me because a large part of a person’s beauty is beyond skin deep. I had fallen into the trap our advertisement industry has been setting for decades – I judged based on the surface (what I could see immediately), not on what was deeper. (I’m working on overcoming that shortcoming.) Only time reveals what’s deeper, which as it turns out, is much more substantial and important. Wrinkles form, makeup smears. A person you can have fun with, one who looks on the sunny side of life, is irreplaceable. To me, beauty relies significantly on personality. Someone who stops to notice the violin player – that person is beautiful. A mother who diligently and without fanfare drives her kids to school every morning – she’s beautiful. A homeless man happily greeting everyone and genuinely trying to elicit a smile and not spare change – he’s beautiful.

As our first quote reminds us, beauty is somewhat subjective. It’s not necessarily the same to me as it is to you. My friends became more beautiful the more I got to know them. I’ll apply beauty as an adjective to certain sports moments – others may find that desecrates the term. Perhaps knowledge of the underlying complexities of an ecosystem makes a forest more beautiful to a botanist. This is a paradoxical aspect of beauty I’m not sure how to wrap my head around. How can we talk about things that “everyone” says is beautiful? Can someone actually be in a state of mind that makes a sunset not beautiful? That they find a rainbow repulsive? I could certainly see depression lending itself to those feelings. Perhaps beauty also implies a sense of wholesomeness – again, something that is beyond skin deep.

I’ve heard it argued that beauty is a quantitative trait – something that can be measured and algorithmically improved. For instance, it’s been shown that the more symmetrical something is, the more we like it. The more complex something is, the more we like it. (Symmetry beats complexity, though). Patterns that reflect these traits can be predictably ranked according to “beauty.” In fact, prettier people tend to have more symmetrical faces. But counter to this, isn’t it the quirks we appreciate and find endearing? The dimple on just one cheek, the slightly crooked smile, the not perfectly straight teeth. I appreciate realism, an earthy, natural, this-is-my-raw-state type of beauty because that beauty cannot be manufactured, cannot be surgically improved, and cannot be fleeting. If you love the quirks, you will have a lifetime to appreciate them. If you love young, unwrinkled skin, you either fight a constant botox battle or give up and declare yourself (or your mate) less beautiful. Why can a person not be just as beautiful at 70 as at 17?

A natural beauty is more permanent and, in my opinion, more real than a manufactured one. The manufactured beauty has a shelf life. The iPhone4 is ugly as soon as the iPhone5 comes out. Pictures of supermodels without makeup or photoshop are a little startling. They look so average, mundane, uninteresting. But if teams of people work on their makeup, hair, wardrobe, lighting, touch-ups, air brushing, and put them on a billboard, men will drool. Are the women in the photo different than the women in real life? Would they be nearly as appealing with morning breath and bed hair? A fleeting beauty flimsily propped up is not something I’d like to build a relationship on. And if I compare my wife to supermodels, actresses, and people with plastic surgery, that’s not only unfair, but it’s setting me up for disappointment. If I look at her and see only her, seeing her beauty instead of her comparative beauty, that’s when I feel I have the most beautiful wife in the world.

In college, I wrote on my facebook page that there is no face so homely that a genuine smile doesn’t make it instantly beautiful. To me, the key word there is genuine. When joy is felt in one’s soul and is displayed in a way that make it evident to those around, that is beautiful. That’s what makes kids so beautiful – the wonder, excitement, and joy they see in the world is plainly written all over their faces.

Beauty is different things to different people. To me, beauty is impressive and authentic. And takes a lot of time to appreciate.