Beauty by Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag, an American lady writer
who was born in 1933 and died in 2004, examines the evolving ideas or
definitions of beauty throughout history in her essay Beauty. She talks about
physical and inner beauty. While outer beauty is concerned with physical
attractiveness, inner beauty is linked to talent and morals. In ancient Greece,
excellence and virtue went hand in hand. For them, excellence encompassed
talent, morality, beauty, and character. They anticipated that the other form
of beauty would be equal to inner beauty. Overall excellence is defined as
beauty. His students had seen how beautiful their teacher was on the inside.
Different concepts of beauty were introduced during the Christian era.
Therefore, Christians distinguished between internal righteousness and external
beauty. It was believed that beauty had no intrinsic worth.
The definition
of beauty has evolved over time, now referring to a woman's appearance. Even
society educates women to evaluate each component of their bodies separately
and to label themselves as flawed if even the slightest flaw is found. A
well-known artist once claimed that beauty is a type of power. Susan is against
women using their desire for beauty as a source of power because of this. Even
if a woman succeeds due to her intelligence, others will still question her.
Women should focus on inner beauty as well as outer beauty to protect
their identity in society and restore the ideal value of beauty. To do this,
they need to be competent, autonomous, and thoughtful.