Research Notes and Planning

Researh Notes and Planning

Why Beauty Matters (Widescreen) [1/6]

I thought that this documentary was really eye opening describing that in victorian times "beauty was a value as important as truth or goodness" and that the "soul purpose of art, music was beauty" and that how beauty in society reflects how we percieve things and how all our archiecture is ugly and cold, with no love or appreciation gone into it and how that anything with just a utility use is not meant to last, and how architecture of great beauty has last thousands of years.

How all our art now is meant to disturb or shock (Tracy Emin's Bed) and that by loosing beauty in our culture we are loosing the meaning of life. How copies of mimicks of somehing can never match up (such as the Michalangelo Statue) because copies lack creativity and deep down we all know when something is cheapend it looses its preciousnes.

That beauty is all around us it "amplifies our joys, finds consolidaion for our sorrows" that "sacred and beauty" stand side by side, that "beauty is the sign of another and higher order. Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind you will be able to nourish true vurtue and become the son of god." It all sounds a little far fetched and religious but this documentary really touched me and really made sense, as wordsworth said "getting and spending we way to waste our powers."

"Today the human hunger for beauty is satisfied by the much-maligned fashion magazines which as glorious art for the masses." From What is Beauty.

Does beauty come from within?

Quotes from What is Beauty:

"Products, treatments, miracle-workers: this is the stuff of beauty. And beauty is the stuff of life." I found this quote quite ironic because is beauty is the stuff of life and cosmetics where the stuff of beauty then if there were no cosmetics anymore we wouldnt cease to exist. I feel that this is a very narrow minded view of someone who's always been adnorned with luxuries; its true that products can make you feel good because there's a image attached with all of them and by buying and using them you feel that for a second you can touch the image of immortality portrayed by the adverts.

Is religion the answer? "for years the church has raied against the deciet and vanity of fashion" "it goes without saying that it is a gift from on high" "the eye is the part of the human body where the soul shines through, perhaps this is why eye make-up is the only kind of cosmetic mentioned in the bible." Is beauty a spiritual thing, a gift of the divine on earth from god and fashion is the man made mimic. There are different fashions all over the world, but a beautiful face is a beautiful face everywhere.

"Most media images you see today have nothing to do with beauty, they're more about attitude" it all seems to be whats attracting attention than whats actually beautiful and I dont know why we all blindlessly follow this, making ourselves feel inadequate. It all seems like a massive circus, constantly moving on to peer and gaze in orr at the next attraction, wooed by colours and lights, a show. We would never compare ourselves with circus performers, just sit back and appriciate the show, so why does fashion have such a hold over us and our ideals...???

Goddess Beauty

Quotes from The Face of Fashion p172:

I found it ironic that ancient goddess images were so far removed from todays society and the goddesses Venus (Roman mythology) and Afroditie (greek mythology)were celebrated for everything femine, such as love, beauty, springtime, flowers, fertility and sexual love. With "the western ideal of physical beauty derived, in part from Greek art," fashions shallow view seems to be "they should consider the same forms frightful in frocks" as fashion was meant for "figures of phantasy to fit those who have distorted their forms."

Fashion and Starvation

From The Face of Fashion by J. Craik

I really liked these quotes because they gave a different light to deformation of the body in "a kind of self-loathing that exaggerates the percieved deformity of ones objective body shape" by anorexia's and bulimics. As we all seem to see a slight exaggeration or deformity of the body shape as attractive has this affected us so much that its now socially embedded into our minds where we can no longer accept the true or natural but are so used to seeing the deformities we dont know whats real anymore.

"the anorexic avoids the shameful world of eating, while simultaneously achieving personal power and a sense of moral superiority through the emaciated body" all this just seems ridiculous when likened with the starving children in Africa, its almost like a sick joke, you just think how selfish we are.

The Ugliness of Fashion

Quotes from Fashion and Eroticism:

I really liked the morbid quality of these quotes and how the idea of fashion and beauty seems to like a sick joke "postmodern fashion has gone further, taunting death with its nihilistic visions, flaunting its loss of moral restraint, its contempt for hypocritical bourgeois ideals and forcing a confrontation with inner fears." its almost as if hell is rising up and taking over because of our lack of morals and corrupt society.

"a hallucination of a world without ageing, death and decay no longer simply a part of organic life, are thrown up at the women as a special punishment of fate" it seems too close to the story of adam and eve , where they lived in a perfect world and didnt appreciate it so were cast out to age and wallow in there own destruction.

"further and further removed from the real body that is rejected for its banality, its lumpen and inevitable decay" - reating how nothing natural seems to be good enough anymore as were all aspiring to the unachievable to the immortal!

"An extreme fascination with the erotic potential of the controlled figure has become combined with an erotic vision that speaks of threat and domination." "they tempt the onlooker who usually has no means of possesing such riches, with their promise to power and cruelty." I love these 2 quotes relating fashion as a means of control, dominance and power, the ulimate temptation of sin!!!

Victorian views on Fashion and Beauty - did they know more than we do?

From Fashion & Erotisim:
I found this group of quotes particularly interesting because they almost seemed to have more direction, common sense and reasoning than anything relating to fashion today.
Particularly how from "the voluptuous mid-victorian woman, the statuesque gibson-girl type an the slender poiret flapper" is it true that women were progressing toward a natural ideal or were they simply better mimicking youth with cosmetics and the more girlish figure. Whatevers true there was a definite decrease between female beauty and maternity. Maybe simulating childlike looks is a way of distancing yourself as far as possible from accepting age and responsibility...

Then women with cosmetics, immitating youth were percieved as relating to "actresses or certain kinds of women" and cosmetics were "ligitimate for married women, but never young girls" which gives the impression that cosmetics werent completly accepted but by likening them to actresses they became an indulgement for women and eventually a nessesity. It was thought that "false and artificial beauty could destroy them"
It was also thought that "the unnatural can never be beautiful" and "deformity has through long custom become to us beauty" (which ironically is true of all cultures - a search for the unusual but as natural as possible obviously seems something your just born with and to be manufactured by man causes uglyness, deformity and damage because maybe it doesnt corrispond with the fine order of things possibly the Fibonacci code) because a deformity in nature is called evolution.

I think the Victorians got it right when they said "a narrow waist between tasty hips and a proud bosom was always admired, but even a splendid form was often transformed according to the fantasies of fashion" and that a long slender waist seemed to make women more fragile, and maybe because of natural instincts men are drawn to this to the need to protect, this could also make women statuesque like, relating them to a piece of art or Venus.

Is it infact that women change themselves into sex objects "the surveyor of women in herself is male; the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of vision a sight" as we have always had the need to be attractive to our peers and the opposite sex.

Is it that "fashion change occurs in large part because novelty arouses sexual curiosity and causes the individual to be seen more clearly again" just as we all thrive on something new and colourful I dont think that this was initially intended for fashion, but for travel and seasons and the world around us.

20's fashion was a pivital point of where female dress became "chic and casual, very young and semi-masculine and certainly not feminine and beautiful" our need for something new and exciting has always been both a hinderance and advantage. Women now seemed to lack a certain amount of sex appeal with fashion getting younger.