Anyone ideas for a class presentation on beauty or cultural standards of beauty?

Question

I need to do a presentation on something regarding beauty, focusing more on how different cultures view beauty and I don't want it to be totally boring. It needs to be about 25 minutes long and I need a way to involve the audience so they don't die of boredom!!

Answer 1

Different cultures view beauty basically the same way. I always get a laugh by looking at the panel in cultural anthropology texts and seeing four equally beautiful women purportedly showing cultural variances in beauty.

Answer 2

Maybe you will find this site interesting womenlargejaw.com

Go to the theory part of the page.

You can also visit:

http://www.serpentfd.org/humanevolutioni...

In general, beautiful people have good bone structure, that is the most important element of beauty.

You can also look at the discussion on the bottom of this page: http://www.womenlargejaw.com/node/516

Always remember no matter in wich culture, in general terms,  beauty is always linked to youthful features and health.

Answer 3

You might add a section on body ornamentation.  This would interest your classmates as it is in vogue at the present time.

http://www.museumofman.org/html/exhibits...

Answer 4

If you do a presentation on how the idea of beauty changes depending on what era it is, that would be great, because you could present pictures.  

Google some medieval paintings, Renaissance paintings, photos of "beauties" in the early theatre and film days, in the 50's and now.  

Here are some hints:  in the high middle ages (1200 -1450 AD) the ideal woman was tall, flat chested, blond.  In the Renaissance it was plumb and full figured (check out the paintings of venus, the ideal woman!).  In the late 19th  century, and early days of the 20th century, and during the silent film era,  women were ideally full figured as well, and short.   Google "Lily Langtry" who was in her time considered the most beautiful woman in the world.   Also google "Evelyn Nesbitt", the model for all the Gibson Girl pictures of the early 20th century.  These women might be considered plain now.  On the other hand, our supermodels might look like boney ugly waifs to them!

In the 50's Marilyn Monroe was an ideal, but by the 60's she was too curvy and even too plump.  (Google "Twiggy".)

Get the picture?

Answer 5

Cultures consider different things to be beautiful in it's own context like the Renaissance women who would pluck their hair in order to have higher foreheads, neck stretching practiced in places like Burma and Thailand, intentional scarring, and you could even bring it into modern context and take apart the constructs of tattooing and its vast popularity and purpose.  I think Mac's idea of looking at the past for paintings, sculptures, or simple illustrations would be a very interesting route to take.  

I would advise you to take tall of those options into account in their own cultural context, but I think something needs to be said for homogeneity of beauty across cultures.  I know you said you want to see "how different cultures view beauty", so this might just be a side note to consider:  the beauty of symmetry.  I've been very intrigued by the idea that the human perception has come to perceive asymmetries as unnatural.  For example, an individual with an apparent physical deformity would be less likely to be considered stereotypically beautiful.  

An article to consider -  "Symmetry, sexual dimorphism in facial proportions and male facial attractiveness" by I.S. Penton-Voak et al.  You can download a pdf. file of the article if you just put the title into google.  

Here are two more sites with the same approach to a general view of beauty.  

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/no...

http://www.jyi.org/volumes/volume6/issue...

The final question I would advise you to consider is the cultural and biological importance of beauty.  Like jonmcn49 said, sometimes there are just such innate perceptions of what is beautiful that it's unnatural to think beauty is purely a cultural construction.  what does that say about our biology? To give  you an idea of what I mean, I refer back to the idea of evolution's primary goal of allowing an individual to have offspring.  There have been plenty of studies on mate selection and it seems that reproductive success (how likely this individual is to assist in all things related to offspring survival and development) is one of, if not THE most important factor in selecting a mate.  So then, what can we say about the genes of an individual with a genetic deformity (who may be less symmetrical)?  How are they perceived by the opposite gender?  What implications can we make about that individual's reproductive success?  It's always so difficult to talk about these kinds of things in a manner that doesn't offend somebody, so be very careful about the way you phrase things if you chose to work with this idea.  Also, I hope I haven't offended anybody by what I've said. It's not my intention to generalize people, their lives, or their misfortunes.  I'm just giving insight to a social issue that many people believe may have a biological framework under which it functions.

Of course, the most obvious approach to involving your audience is to pass around a number of photocopies of women and men that could be considered stereotypically attractive and unattractive.  If you don't have the means to do so, try projecting images and simply having a show of hands to see how homogeneous beauty is among people.  you might want to test this out before you do it in class.  In your discussion, talk about the specific individuals in your pictures.  I feel that talking about individuals is far more interesting than talking about a general theory.