Cultural beauty

Its really really interesting to note that beauty is conceptual and that it is insituted by man (note the small m). When i looked at old chinese paintings and old turkish drawings and animations, i was reminded of the research i had choosen to do when i was in school (towards the end of poly year two i think) about aesthetics particularly in the area of culture and physical beauty. I figured that whichever the concept was, they are always exculsive to a certain group of people and thus not everyone could be beautiful. ("duh") Thus the message "everyone could beautiful" that beauty ads are selling are like the biggest lie to be seen in public. Not everyone could be beautiful, if everyone is beautiful there would be no ugliness to define the beautiful.

For example, people used to think that it was beautiful to look fat. Maybe the concept originated from the culture that speaks of being fat symbolizes being wealthy. Wouldn't it be nice to eat all you want because you aim to be beautiful? Now think about those that are born with high metabolism at that era, imagine the pressure they felt to be beautiful because they are rich. Hmmm... whats the direct opposite of forced anorexia?

I figured that aesthetic values are very different from moral values. I think the case for aesthetic relativism is a lot stronger than the case of moral relativism. Its important to note that judgments about beauty and ugliness are notoriously culture-bound. As having no culture also indicates a culture of some kind, no one can really claim to be absolutely unbounded and uninfulanced by a certain culture. So the ultimate question here is how can/do we determine what is beautiful and what is ulgy? (not what is good and what is bad.) So since different cultures pronounces different judgements on this subject i figured that all the questions and thought processes funnels down to one simple question : which culture do you belong to? Like sin, life and death or even being a christian, theres no in-between.

People have been saying that the essence of beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, but when thought deeper, i figured that all still really depend on how infulanced by whichever culture the "beholder" belongs to. I really like this statment but forgot who issit from or where i got it - "Beauty provides the refuge from futility where we contemplate the meaning of it all."

Much have been said about the topic of aesthetics but i figured that the following point is the most important. That we should all really focus on the beauty of God as the scripture says Himself to be. If we are called to be His people, we should chase after Him for it is only when we are conformed to the culture that He insituted, then we can truely know what is beautiful in His eyes. Everything that we do and all that we are, should be "for His eyes only". It is in Him that we find out what we are truely meant to be.