There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.- Francis Bacon

To discover and express my thoughts more on "beauty", I answered the following questions:

1. What is so beautiful about youth?

It seems to me that a wide majority of people have always been chasing youth. Not only in today’s world, where aging creams and surgeries are a must, but youth has always been desired. There are numerous reasons to why different people around the globe find youth so beautiful. I personally believe that youth can be beautiful because youth represents innocence and purity. During one’s youthful years, they have not yet been tainted by the superficial ideas of the world. When you’re young, your own ideas and thoughts stay fresh in your mind. Those ideas stay firm and unmarked as the skin on your face. However, as you get older your thoughts and ideas seem to be dismissed by the rest of the world, leaving those thoughts as wrinkled and freckled as your skin. When you age, the effects of the world on you become more apparent. What I personally find the most beautiful thing about youth is not how firm and unblemished your skin is, or how grey-hair free your head is. The most attractive aspect of youth is that extra twinkle in the eyes of someone young. That twinkle represents a sign of wonderment and fascination that only someone in their youth, especially children, can have.

2. We know what "perfect" most likely means to Socrates by looking at ancient Greek sculpture and art and drawing inferences, but he doesn't describe this "perfect" human form. What are your thoughts on the idea of a "perfect" human form today? What is it in your culture for men? women? What are your thoughts surrounding those ideals?

From the words of the great Greek philosopher Plato, “We think we understand the real world, but because we are trapped in our bodies we can see only the shadows on the wall.” Our own visions of what the perfect human form is skewed based on the ideas and thoughts of others. Personally, I believe that a “perfect human form” does not exist at all, because nothing is or can ever be perfect. Many believe that beauty deals with how symmetrical ones face is, or how large/small certain body parts are. However, I think that these certain factors have nothing to do with beauty at all. In fact, I’m frustrated at how today’s society constantly projects the image of what a perfect man or woman looks like. In the United States, our overall idea of what the perfect woman has is the body of a stick with enhanced body parts. Men who are typically considered beautiful have a toned body with bulging muscles. I however, don’t find any of these images “perfect” in the sense that I find them beautiful or pleasing to the eye. It is becoming more apparent that the western world’s thoughts of what beauty is have had a significant impact and influence on other cultures. Even in countries in Africa, more and more girls are becoming concerned of whether they are thin enough, which has resulted in an increase of the disease bulimia in those nations. As a Filipino, I almost find it insulting the perception of beauty that people in the Philippines have. A “beautiful” Filipino woman should be fair-skinned with straight black hair. To encourage this even more on the Filipino culture, there are clinics in which you can be injected with a substance that take the pigment out of your skin. This is just an example of some of the extreme measures some people take in order to achieve this “perfect beauty”.

To me one's true beauty can only be attained once they've looked on the inside.