About Beauty

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” (Confucius)

Kota Bharu, Kelantan. Malaysia, 18 June 2019

If there is one thing that everyone agrees on, it’s about how impossible it is to define what beauty is, unanimously.

Aside from the classic “beauty is subjective,” and that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” it's undeniable that despite the attempts of the visual arts and literature, there is no definitive definition.

Neuroscience also questioned the subject, trying to understand how the neurons that underlie the perception of beauty work.

Professor of Neuroaesthetics at University College London, Prof. Semir Zeki, said about the concept of beauty in an interview: “I believe that there are universal parameters of beauty. I believe, quite simply, that there are minimum terms that must be met for a face to be considered beautiful. And the same is true for the body: a body in which one arm is half the length of the other cannot be considered beautiful.”

But he concludes by saying: “Nobody can give a definition of beauty that is also valid for the perception of beauty by others.”

So, we know the neurological mechanisms that make us perceive and enjoy beauty—activation of the medial orbitofrontal cortex—but then, it's still impossible to give an explanation.

Traveling to different continents and getting to know other cultures allow us to adjust our parameters for beauty: because we realize how these parameters vary from culture to culture, and from country to country.

I have frequented for many years, and still today, Asia and South East Asia, geographically and in their migrant communities living in Rome, and of course, I also know Italian and European women as well. Therefore, many times, I explained to my students, or to anyone I meet and this topic came up, of how the saying “the grass of the neighbor is always greener” is fully applicable to the concept of female beauty.

I cited the case of the complex that Asian women have about the dark color of their skin (we have seen in the previous article how Malaysians use the term sawo matang, while Filipinos kayumanggi), so it's common for Filipino women to use an acid cream that whitens, by corroding, the melanin of the skin of the face to make it whiter, and resemble the western female beauty model, only to find themselves at fifty years old with cheeks burnt and corroded by this acid.

But, for example, in her very interesting book on colors, Kassia St Clair tells how, in 1700, noblewomen died young from the massive use of the carcinogen biacca (white lead) to make the face of an intense white, full of lead—as the famous Countess of Coventry Maria, who died at the age of 27 in 1760.

On the other side, our European women get breast tumors from laying down under the scorching sun in the hottest summer hours, just to get that brownish color which Asian women believe is an indication of ugliness.

Not to mention the cases of anorexia and death of many poor western girls who reduce themselves to skeletons to resemble the filiform bodies of the models, while in Arab countries, or those of the Indian Sub-Continent, a woman who is too thin is an indication of frailty, little strength physical, poor in health and therefore not attractive. It's no coincidence that the Indian saree has the secret of its charm not only in the precious and colored fabric, but also precisely because it leaves the belly uncovered in women, which is an index of beauty for men in those places.

A very amusing book by Sarai Walker, Dietland, which was released in 2015, dismantled the classic pre-concept of the fat woman intended as inferior, unfortunate and ugly. Indeed, the protagonist claims the pride of weighing 130 kilos, denouncing the campaign of hatred towards fat people. The same writer, in an interview, is delighted that the “Barbie curvy” has finally come to the market, to try not to inculcate in girls the idea that beauty is to have a thin and unrealistic body.

When I see a face that I like, I can't resist, I look at it for a long time, I try to understand why I like it, always preferring an instinctive and physical approach rather than a rational one.

I still remember when I saw this woman in Malaysia: a doctor who works in a section of the HUSM, Kota Bharu Hospital in Kelantan.

I looked at her intensely, which is not very recommended to do with Muslim women in Malaysia; in fact, she avoided, obviously embarrassed, but luckily there were some friends of mine with me who were her colleagues, and they explained who I was and that I only wanted to make her a portrait. But there was still so much distrust in her eyes, and that questioning gaze remained even when we were alone in a room for a moment, the time of the photo. And in the end, she couldn't refuse and asked me why I wanted to photograph her, and I answered her simply because she has a beautiful face for me.

But, being a woman with a strong temperament, she did not end the question there, knowing that the point was another: “Did you photograph me because I have black-stained skin on my face?” she asked, pointing her eyes into mine, without smiling.

In that question, I believe, some know many years of insecurities and embarrassments, since childhood, feeling “different” and maybe even someone's offenses.

I replied that her face is even more beautiful for me, because that makes it unique.

Being different does not always mean inferiority or “ugly”, but it can also mean being “unique”. And that's something to be proud of.

I don't know if I have convinced her or not; however, she agreed to be photographed and keep my portrait of her. And every time I look at her, I have confirmation that she is a very beautiful woman.

Yolanda. Rome, 6 January 2010

The portrait of Yolanda, this sixty-year-old Italian woman, which I took in 2010, is still one of the most loved portraits to date by those who follow me. It's in my books and in my seminars on portraits, and every time people are intrigued by her, they ask me who she is and why she looks like that.

I answer the misadventures of a difficult life that have transformed her face into the wrinkled map of her own existence. It's not even necessary to tell her life: it is already there, wrinkled in the skin as if it were a labyrinth of pain.

And there have been some people, I swear, who in all these years have used the word “beautiful” to describe Yolanda's face.

But how can such a face be beautiful?

It's beautiful precisely because it is true. Or rather, it is the sincere description, not in words or concepts but by touch and sight, of an existence. It's the sincere, painful and true, before our eyes.

There is no make-up, dyes, or bits that can make it better than this, because that would mean making it false: just as the Malaysian doctor, if she had covered half her face with one hand during the photography, so as not to show the dark spot on her skin, she would have lost her identity and distorted the portrait.

 

I am not able to define beauty, but I know what is beautiful for me, what I like, what makes me snap and try to take with me forever, in my lens, and it's precisely the sense of truth that there is in those faces, the link—the strongest and most visible—that exists between appearance and existence.

I don't care if it's old, wrinkled, imperfect, black or yellow; it must be sincerely itself, true.

Shameless.

This is beauty for me.

Johor. Malaysia,  25 May 2019

Bandung. Indonesia, 9 October 2017

Australasian Science Magazine, July-August 2016, “The mind of the viewer: the neuroscience of beauty” by Dyani Lewis

Sarai Walker, Dietland (Mondadori, 2020)

Kassia St Clair, The Secret Lives of Colors (UTET, 2019)

Mihaela Noroc, The Atlas of Beauty (Penguin Books, 2018)

Italian version