Beauty
Cosmetic Surgery - Plastic Surgery - Aesthetic Medicine - Reconstructive Surgery
«Beauty is not a quality inherent in things themselves,
it exists only in the mind which contemplates it (beauty is in the eye of
the beholder), and each mind perceives a different beauty. A person may
even perceive deformity where another perceives a different beauty »
David Hume
In the early twenty-first century obsession with beauty was growing rapidly
worldwide as much in the West as in India or China. This expressed itself
in the behaviour of individuals in relation to body care, sport and aesthetic
surgery. Beauty became the subject of an industry.
Two concepts, «beautiful" and "well" have been closely
related through the different eras of history. According to Aristotle (c
385-322 BC) the distinction between the two is: the "good" occurs
in action, the 'beautiful' is present both in action and in some motionless
entities. This led him to identify the highest form of "beautiful"
with notions of order, symmetry and harmony.
In medieval times, beautiful and beauty is about the relationships of proportion
and analogy. The "beautiful" is primarily a divine attribute.
In the late eighteenth century we find the gradual emergence of a separation
between the concepts of "good" and "beautiful." The
emergence of the "aesthetic" leads to a new concept and experience
of art. This is reflected in our present time by the existence of beauty
products and treatments. The aesthetic is "the art of thinking the
beautiful" (GA Baumgarten). Baumgarten created the term aesthetic in
a book "Aesthetica" (1750-1758) in which he defines the aesthetic
experience as a sensory experience where perfection would be beauty and
imperfection ugliness.
In our time, our world is shaped by the culture, economy and technology
of beauty. Currently there is a whole beauty industry at the heart of which
lie the makeup, personal care and of course, the luxury goods and perfumes
industries. Already for the poet of modern life, Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867),
beauty was marked by wine and perfume.
Aesthetic surgery is one of the major components of the beauty industry
but it is not the only one, within the beauty industry we find the fitness
and sports industries and that of body-art (piercings tattoos, etc.).
This world of beauty is global, and production facilities are industrial
and international. In the field of beauty we should not forget the whole
of the clothing and jewellery industry with fashion and brands at the heart
of the consumer society for beauty.
To this whole industry and the dissemination of beauty, are added pressure
from the media and advertising for the "beautiful people" that
populate television shows and magazines devoted entirely to them.
The return of beauty in our time is also associated with the discovery of
the "beauty of the world" where the ethnic object becomes an aesthetic
and commercial object. But beauty is also associated with all forms of design
and even tourism, using cultural and aesthetic justifications as a pretext.
There is also a moral dimension to the return of beauty. The concept of
good is reinforced by the concept at of beautiful. Morality and politics
must be governed by an adjustment through which the moral vision of human
beings, behaviour and trade is rediscovered. With beauty, there is a re-moralization
of society and a reconstruction of the original relationship between beauty
and goodness, with goodness taking on the value of beauty. To be honest
and compassionate is to be beautiful. And it's good to be beautiful.
The quest for beauty has a biological and life-giving purpose: the denial
of death, illness, and aging. The denial of time passing and death is an
intrinsic part of plastic surgery and the cosmetic industry. To combat its
own deterioration, the body becomes the ultimate adornment so that it can
continue to dazzle, captivate and arouse desire.
Beauty will individualize the person who possesses it and becomes a kind
of mark of life. This is a free beauty that does not make the world more
beautiful but gives it colour through ways of dressing, thinking and existing.