The Science of Aesthetics

I must say this. I am listening to a mac miller instrumental and chilling in the London humid heat. Glowing and shit. OK. 

Dictionary.com's definition of  aesthetics:

1.      pertaining to a sense of the beautiful or to the science of aesthetics.

2.

having a sense of the beautiful; characterized by a love ofbeauty.

3.

pertaining to, involving, or concerned with pure emotion andsensation as opposed to pure intellectuality.

Now that I've finished copying and pasting the first three definitions of aesthetics, I will dive in. 

There's something so electronic about the word aesthetics. I've read a few articles on the Eurocentrism of beauty. It seems like we are programmed to accept this 'look' that is paraded through fashion week, advertisement campaigns, warping our own ideas of image and we punish ourselves when we don't fit into the mould. It reminds me of the VO5 extreme style advert. Well, only if you let it.

Yes, beauty is a science; there are multiple facets to the concept of beauty. However, I don’t consider beauty to be predictable and I think it’s taken far too seriously to equate it to knowledge or a science. I've contradicted myself there, as I've chosen to see both sides of the coin. 

I’ve found that anything that looks broken, unusual, and doesn’t fit in, I am drawn to it and I dub it as beautiful. I see beauty as more of an emotion rather than a physical description of an individual’s appearance. I cannot categorise it or label it as good, better or best. I guess you can say this is my notion on beauty; a person exudes beauty, they don't look the part they just are.

For instance I think my feet are beautiful. I’ve had an abundance of critics say otherwise and I’ve even had someone offer to buy me a pumice stone. Large toes and broken skin tells a story. I love walking. Hey, it’s what I do to clear my head and unfortunately my feet suffer from terrible shoes, bad posture and an inability to balance. And who has time to slave away over feet that no one will ever see except you happen to be in my house or for some reason or another I chose to wear open toe sandals (of course I use the pumice stone when they are going to be exposed).

It could be that I am deliberately fighting against an ideal that is constantly shoved into my face in advertisements, my fashionista friends and so on. I don’t like it. Every shop I go into is a clone of every other shop. I can’t be original anymore. My look is seasonal. If you have noticed, everyone is trying to be different and inevitably we all end up looking the same. On the other hand, I just find it difficult to call anything ugly, there most be some beauty inside there somewhere. 

Appearance is important. It’s the first thing we see but who are we to decide what is beautiful or not. A friend of mine asked what the complexion of my partner was and after hearing the reply, suggested I was dark enough already and maybe I should go lighter. Why do we do this to ourselves? I also find it laughable how exotic Alek Wek is but yet she still gets flack for her look. I wish she walked the runway during my primary school days. I also cringe at the fact that I mentioned earlier that 'unusual' was associated with beauty. I feel nowadays models are awkward looking, waxy human mannequins just for us to gawk at, which I applaud and despise at the same time. Essentially the model doesn’t matter the clothes do (the clothes that go up to a size 14 and rather cater for a minority of the western civilisation). I watched The Wright Stuff (A British talk show on current affairs) recently and one of the topics asked whether fashion boutiques that targeted plus sized individuals encouraged obesity. For me it doesn’t. What do you want them to wear? A huge grey t-shirt from Marks and Spencer? Yup they’re always grey, black or white, God forbid colour.

Emotion trumps appearance.That’s my take on Aesthetics. It sounds like a medical procedure doesn’t it?