Monday, October 10, 2011

bad fashion trends vs. the golden spiral: which dictates beauty?


so it's 3:30 in the morning and i've been basically exhausted all day, but for some reason my brain is now wide awake and my legs are restless. while i'm in no position to act on having restless legs, i can do something about my brain running one hundred miles an hour. and so i'm writing.

about five minutes ago i was brushing my teeth, which is the one place i receive all my best ideas surprisingly, and i started thinking about strange hypothetical situations. and i ended up resting on this one:  say we as a human race somehow had the ability to change our appearance instantaneously and painlessly (we'll say only once a year to make it a little more simple. i've thought about this impossible situation before and the second i started entertaining the idea, i concluded that everyone would end up looking the exact same. don't people constantly try and get the same look as their favorite celebrities, bringing in pictures of jennifer aniston's hair cut or nicole kidman's nose? while beauty is mostly seen as a social construct, it has also been proven to have scientific facts backing it up. may i introduce most of you to the golden spiral


i remember learning about this concept in my math class in 9th grade and then again in my math 1050 class. in art history on friday we went over the ancient greek's architecture and how beautiful it was because it so closely resembled the human body as dictated by the golden spiral, which was discovered by non other than the great mathematician Pythagoras (remember him? no? does a^2 + b^2= c^2 ring any bells? pythagorian theorem? yep, that same guy.)

wow, i am getting way off topic. basically people are seen as beautiful as dictated by measurements found in the spiral. these same measurements are found all over in nature, furthering the idea that this spiral is perfect and innate and the gateway to all beauty (there is a lot more to this theory. if you want to learn more i suggest wikipediaing it). so, based on that knowledge that we find certain measurements as dictated math as perfect and beautiful, i then assumed that if people were given the chance most would all end up making all of their features similar, all the girls would model themselves after jessica alba and all the guys would look like joseph gordon leavitt (or maybe that's just my own personal wishful thinking).

but then i started thinking about other things that have become popular in recent history that were no where near a good idea. such as: jeggings (thank you conan. yes girls, this is how ridiculous you look when you wear tights as pants.),

 girl's parting their hair down the middle (now there are certain faces that can pull this off and i tried to find a celebrity committing this travesty but most celebrity stylists have enough good taste and common sense not to let those who shouldn't, implement this look. i could think of a few from my every day life but then i realized that might be a bit harsh, so i didn't), saggy pants on guys (i don't feel this needs a picture), then tight pants on guys(as seen by conan in the picture above),





and pedo glasses with matching stach (to find the picture of this that i was looking for all i had to do was type in hipster glasses and mustache. that is a bad sign, hipsters).  after thinking that through i remembered in the hunger games the people of the capitol dyed their skin strange sickly colors just to make themselves different to stand out.

all these things helped me realize that ugly things are mistaken for beautiful all the time (best example i can think of off the top of my head: rhianna's hair/outfit in the SNL sketch shy ronnie honestly? gross.)


so, bottom line: i can't decide if people would all end up looking the same or if the "popular" look would become completely outlandish or even animalistic, all in the name of individuality and high fashion.

need i say more?

if, by some miracle, you made it through all of that i want to know what your thoughts are on this subject matter. do you think people would all end up looking the exact same or completely, outlandishly different?


*edit: i get a nightly quote of the day from my favorite book site goodreads.com. last night they sent me a quote that fits in perfectly with all of this:

I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself. 


1 comment:

Becca said...

Love trying to follow your 4 a.m. train of thought. You rock! But just so you know, Conan looks ridiculous in anything.