Mitchell Becker
Prompt 3
4/12/18
Free Draft
How beauty can be used to create a more wholesome person
Beauty plays a vital role in our well-being, and as an extension the arts can be used as a tool to extend that beauty to us. I believe that beauty can help to make a person whole, and fill a void in ourselves that we so desperately need filled. This is explained more in The School of Life’s “What is Art For?” video. John Armstrong also provides us with a definition of beauty, based on Schiller, in his essay “La Bella Vita”.
Our society tells us that the models in the magazines and on Instagram are beautiful, typically referring to women models. They have flawless skin, an hourglass shape with a skinny waist but a large chest and butt, tan, and long flowing hair. This is what our media tells us is beautiful, and forces these beauty standards on women. Girls in the U.S. can start to feel this pressure to look like that as young as elementary school. It seems obvious that there is a flaw in our culture’s definition of beauty if it begins to opress girls as young as 10 to look like they’re 25, and most 25 year olds don’t look like that either. It seems wrong that we as a society understand that when it comes to art, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but we can’t see that this concept also applies to people. There isn’t one type of person or thing that is beautiful, it is all subjective.
Personally, the last time that I remember seeing something truly beautiful was the sunset outside of the dining hall. I remember sitting at dinner, my back turned to the glass wall overlooking the Saco. When my friend told me to turn around and look outside, and what I saw took my breath away. I saw the midnight blue of the sky fading to black while the edge of the sky right by the tree line was a beautiful pink and purple. I remember sitting there for what felt like 10 minutes, ignoring my food and friends, and just staring outside at it. Everything else faded away and I just took in the sunset. It brought me back to all of the times I went camping with my friends back home, waking up to a beautiful sunrise and watching the sun set at night. Specifically, I remember this one beautiful sunrise on top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia, we woke up at 4 in the morning to drive up to the top, there was about fifty or so other people. And we all just watched.
So if we understand that beauty is different for everyone, then we can look at the shared experience of why we view things as beautiful. In Armstrong’s essay he talks about Schiller, a German poet, who helps to explain why we all experience beauty even though we each see beauty in different places. Schiller says that there are two different powerful psychological drives at work. “On the one hand, there is the ‘sense’ drive which lives in the moment and seeks immediate gratification…[the second drive] was the ‘form’ drive: the inner demand for coherence over time, for abstract understanding and rational order” (Armstrong). It was when both of these drives were seen at the same time is when we see true beauty.
I also believe that art can be used as a tool to show beauty, to then be used to fill a hole in ourselves of something that we have been lacking. Taylor’s presentation about tattoos is a good example of a permanent way to help fill that hole with a constant reminder of beauty that is important to the person wearing it. Taylor wrote about her friend and her tattoos, she said “Her first tattoo was done on her forearm for her to constantly see when she looks down. She says ‘it’s a reminder that no matter how I may be feeling or what circumstance I’m facing, there is a better day to come and that I will rise above any challenge life throws my way.’ (Williams).” The girl that she interviewed uses the tattoos on her body as a constant reminder of the beauty within herself. In this way, art and beauty overlap, but art isn’t always necessary for there to be beauty.
Beauty is the combination of fulfilling the instant gratification and rational order. Everybody experiences beauty in different things, but experiencing beauty is a shared experience. Society’s definition of beauty is flawed and shallow, true beauty isn’t so superficial.
You have a good start to this essay. I think that you could go more in depth in a lot of areas, and you are also missing to talk about some key parts in the essay. Do you think that beauty can help us become better people– as individuals and as a society? Analyze more of the role that beauty plays in your life, you talk about what you think is beautiful but what is its role to you? Expand more about why and how beauty is a shared experience if we all see it differently. Overall though you have some good ideas down, and it has a nice flow. To make word count and to have it make more sense to the reader, elaborating on some of your points and including what the prompt is asking will make it even better.
Works Cited
Armstrong, John. “Can Beauty Help Us to Become Better People? – John Armstrong | Aeon Essays.” Aeon,
Aeon, 14 Feb. 2014, aeon.co/essays/can-beauty-help-us-to-become-better-people.
“Heidi Klum – WOMEN’S HEALTH Magazine – March 2014 Cover.” Celeb Mafia, 4 Feb. 2014,
celebmafia.com/heidi-klum-womens-health-magazine-march-2014-cover-54932/.
Templeton, Corey. “Fore River Sunset.” Corey Templeton Photography, Portland Daily Photo, 15 Apr. 2015.
The School of Life. “What is Art for?” Online video clip. Youtube. Youtube, 9 September 2014. Web. 25
April 2018.
Williams, Taylor. “The Human Canvas” Let’s Talk About Art, 27 March 2018, University of New England,
Biddeford, ME. Oral Presentation.
