The Scheming of Beauty: Is Beauty Subjective or Objective?

Whether it be the model on the Victoria’s Secret advertisement plastered ceiling-to-floor in a mall’s wall or the most pristine landscapes of the beachside, beauty plays an inherent role in the day-to-day perceptions of nearly everyone. It may often seem as if what the aggregate populace agrees upon as “beautiful” seems to align– bringing many to contend upon whether or not beauty is innately subjective or objective. Yet, it remains incontestable that beauty is a mixture of both– many neglect the ability to deconstruct beauty to being both a product of subjectivity and objectivity. 

Let us first dissect the realm of subjective beauty. Subjectivity, as we define it, is the quality of a perception being evaluated upon personal and individual metrics and values. Paramount before anything else is the emphasis on personal metrics here: each and every person will inevitably have their personal filters, their personal tastes, and personal perceptions of “good” or “bad”—these operate entirely individually, given that each human being is a separate entity. 

Where does the basis of this originate? What is the seed to the root, to why everyone perceives things differently? Consider how each person comes to be who they are. The first (and perhaps most prominent) moment in which we all differed from each other was birth. Within every single person on the planet upon birth, all persons were fundamentally different, even in biology. Varying allele traits led to some with green eyes, some with ginger hair, some with quick analytic skills, some with slower reflexes, and characteristics stretching beyond, essentially dictating the absolute foundation of our beings. At this point in time, there are already substantial differences between each and every person on the planet. Biological factors like these pre-existingly control certain traits we own, certain things we are good at, which inevitably mold our development in later years. Despite how seemingly similar some people may seem, they, ultimately, cannot be and are not the same. 

Yet secondly, each person is fundamentally shaped and molded by factors that manifest after birth– that is to say, attributes such as the familial environment you grow up in, the socioeconomic class you are born into, the principles of those you look up to, and the sources of information you are exposed to. These exposures invariably sculpt the concepts you deem valuable and the ones that appeal to you. Perhaps one was raised with a mentality in a conservative household that beauty is a sign of vanity and immodesty; and that all should shy away from expressing it as much as possible. Or conversely, one was born into an upper-class family that exhibited little restraint in splurging on products precisely of that description, such as cosmetics, designer brands, or high-end jewellery. In any case, it must be noted that neither of these are explicitly wrong– but merely different interpretations of the same concept due to different surrounding factors. Yet what holds common between these two mentalities is the irrevocable fact that anyone, born and raised surrounded by people and media that perpetuate these perspectives, will begin to embrace it with a well-founded affinity, as if they had developed it themselves. For those surrounded by that conservative environment, they’ll likely cling to it as if it were first nature, and for those in the neoliberal one, they’ll find it difficult to shy away from untethered spending habits

To most crucially, the random assortment of experiences in addition to innate differences all encapsulate precisely why subjectivity exists in the first place. It is precisely due to these variances that the vast majority of people will find it incredibly difficult to agree on the same evaluations of beauty for everything. Even if perceptions overlap sometimes, they will always be fundamentally, inherently, different. Yet, how is it the case that beauty standards exist? Why has society violated this seemingly inconfundible fact, and collectively agreed that nature landscapes of vibrant sunsets and oceanic blues are breathtaking, that blonde-haired girls with blue eyes are gorgeous, and that van Gogh’s “Starry Night” was revolutionary in the histories of art? If the perception of beauty is subjective and shaped by fundamentally different factors and different tastes, how do evaluations of beauty align almost with suspicious ease?

The answer is quite simple. If unmeddled with, beauty would, invariably, be subjective due to all the above illustrations; yet the reason this is not the realistic case is due to societal standards. These, thus, form objective metrics that much perception beauty does, overarchingly, play into. From the dawn of time, social standards & norms have emerged from the collective echoing of certain actions, interactions, and reactions. When a majority of people acted in a certain way towards something, those in the minority tended to feel out-grouped. Consequently, their mannerisms adapted to what is socially seen as optimal in order to prevent exclusion– to prioritise the feeling of belonging above all. 

This applies to beauty quite seamlessly– let us begin with the origin of “beauty”, as a concept. The first traces of beauty were discovered millenia ago, in Ancient Greece and Rome. Revered thinkers like Plato identified physiognomic metrics in which beauty was founded upon– that the most attractive faces consisted of faces in harmonious proportion. The formation of the concept of beauty, from this, set a further precedent for more attributes to be categorised as beauty: blond hair was admired, reddish lips were vied for, and chins were round and smooth. Beauty became a socially valued concept; it was placed on a pedestal in a manner similar to bravery, or smarts. Greek parents began to fix statues of Apollo and Aphrodite in their rooms in order to birth a beautiful child, and women began to rouge their lips with imported plant roots to fulfil the socially agreed-upon standard. 

Although the Greek people were each indubitably unique in their own ways, they were, nonetheless, homogeneously melded under these incredibly eerily similar values. It is due to this, due to the human nature to chase the feeling of inclusion at all costs, that pseudo-objective standards emerge in society. The dominance of the majority leads to the repulsion of the minority, as it has thousands of times historically; and the minority eventually conforms. 

So, what forms the big picture? Let us then tie this back into the subjective experience previously elaborated on. Subjective experience is ultimately programmed by objective factors determined by the majority’s agreement in a certain area. The perception of an objective standard then fluctuates from person-to-person due to innately different lenses of brain chemistry and preferences. For example, historically-cemented social structures fixed the beauty standard in much of Western media to be thin, hourglass bodies and flawless skin being beautiful. The result, as expected, has been the vast majority of people perceiving these types of appearances as so. However, perception under this narrative is subjective nonetheless– one’s individual perception of this narrative will never be wholly identical to another’s; one can think an individual under this type is incredibly beautiful, but not want to have a relationship with them, whereas another can want exactly so. 

Oftentimes, subjectivity and objectivity may seem diametrically opposed. Yet when unravelling the threads of our perceptions, it becomes clear that the two are interdependent– not only do they coexist, but work together to form the perception of beauty we each possess.