By Annabel, London, December 2022
Throughout time, beauty standards have changed drastically with different body types and facial structures varying in degrees of desirability as different eras and cultures emerge. Although beauty standards are ever-evolving, those who meet the criteria of objective beauty continually receive benefits on the basis of their appearance.
Several psychological studies present how beautiful people are considered to be morally good, more successful and more intelligent than their less physically attractive counterparts: facial attractiveness helps in obtaining higher-ranking jobs and a better valuation of achieved results to the extent that there are attempts to legally address the issue of lookism and appearance-based discrimination. However, these studies can be viewed as flawed because beauty is subjective, thereby most of the research relies on highly individual ratings of beauty. Most of us agree that in our society there is an unconscious belief that beauty is tied to positive moral traits. From a logical point of view, there is no causal relationship between beauty and morality - there is even a counter-thesis relying on personal experience that encourages us to believe that outwardly attractive people are not as good as we perceive them to be initially, because we often naïvely trust them, and sometimes they abuse the power their beauty affords them. This can be traced back to the ancient world.
On one hand, in Ancient Greece, there was evidence of awareness that one could not judge if someone was good or bad based solely on their appearance. This idea recurs throughout Greek poetry. For instance, in Carmina Convivalia Attica 6:
“εἴθ’ ἐξῆν ὁποῖός τις ἦν ἕκαστος τὸ στῆθος διελόντ’, ἔπειτα τὸν νοῦν ἐσιδόντα, κλείσαντα πάλιν, ἄνδρα φίλον νομίζειν ἀδόλωι φρενί.”
“If only it were possible to see what sort each man was, by opening up his chest and, thereupon having seen his mind, closing it back up, to regard the man as a friend for his heart without deceit.”
Although the message of this extract can be hidden under its graphic depictions of extracting a heart out of someone's body, it illustrates the ancient Greeks’ awareness that outward appearances can be deceiving and therefore, there is no way to know what sort of person someone is on the inside.
However, the inextricable links between the value of beauty and goodness and an individual’s outward appearance and inner character are historically ancient. The ancient Indian Siddhars defined samudrika shastra as the use of physical features to identify personal characteristics and Chinese Mianxiang or face reading can be traced back to around 770 to 476 BCE.
On the other hand, certain other Ancient Greeks also tended to associate ugliness with evil and beauty with good. This links to physiognomy which was pioneered by the ancient Greeks. Physiognomy is defined as judging a person's facial features or expressions to indicate character. It stems from the Greek word φύσις (physis) translating to “nature” and γνώμων (gnomon) meaning “interpreter” or “judge.” An example of this is that cows have big, sleepy eyes, subsequently, humans that look like cows are perceived as lazy. The Ancient Greek mathematician, astronomer, and scientist Pythagoras is claimed to have inquired “into the character and dispositions of men by an inference drawn from their facial appearance and expression, and from the form and bearing of their whole body.” Once, Pythagoras rejected a prospective follower named Cylon as a result of his belief that Cyclon’s appearance indicated an unhealthy character. Furthermore, Aristotle believed that individuals with large heads were unkind, those with smaller faces were resolute, broad faces mirrored foolishness, and spherical faces signalled bravery.
Moreover, the ancient Greeks had a belief that having a beautiful body corresponded to a beautiful mind. The Greeks created a phrase to describe this which is ‘καλὸς κἀγαθός’ in Ancient Greek or ‘Kalos kagathos’, in English. It is an adjectival phrase which contains the adjective καλός meaning beautiful and ἀγαθός meaning virtuous. Its use has been traced back to Herodotus and the classical period. Classical Greek writers used this phrase to describe the Greek ideal of the male archetype who is perfected inside and outside. Many Greek aristocrats famously prided themselves on being ‘καλοὶ κἀγαθοί.’
This association between evil and ugliness traced back to ancient Greece is extremely prevalent in modern American film and television. The hero of the story is almost always portrayed as good-looking, while the villain is often portrayed as ugly. Although in the real world there is proven to be no correlation between how good someone looks and how virtuously that person behaves, however, storytellers still use beauty and ugliness as a kind of code to tell audiences whom they are to support.
Today’s society starts to inculcate the idea that beauty parallels goodness and ugliness parallels evil into our children at a very young age. This association is present in nearly every Disney movie; the hero is always good-looking, while the villain is always someone ugly. Research done by the Appalachian State University in North Carolina affirmed that the stereotypes in Disney movies negatively affect children. They pointed out that most Disney villains for instance Ursula or Cruella De Ville do not fit today’s beauty standards whereas the heroes and heroines such as Princess Jasmine and Ariel have unrealistic body shapes and attractive features. This equation of beauty equalling good and unattractiveness equalling bad is a prevalent stereotype as people have a bias to trust more attractive people solely based on their appearance alone.
In the modern day, we continue to enforce this concept in places even where the ancient Greeks did not. For example, in the fantasy action film ‘300’, which is extremely loosely based on the story of the Battle of Thermopylae, the Greek warriors are all portrayed as handsome young men with muscular stature on show. Meanwhile, the Ephors are portrayed as hideous, inbred priests who are seemingly infected with leprosy and the traitor Ephialtes is portrayed as a hideous, deformed hunchback who can barely stand upright. However, according to ancient historical sources, there was nothing to indicate that the Greeks who fought at Thermopylae were remarkably good-looking and, in historical reality, they certainly would have worn armour, meaning that any muscles would have been predominantly covered up. We do not have any evidence to suggest that the historical Ephialtes of Trachis was deformed. Indeed, he could just as likely have been handsome. Furthermore, the Ephors were elected officers, not hereditary priests and, once more, there is no historical backing that they were deformed. This was merely a stylistic choice that was put in place to emphasize the concept of equivalence between physical perfection and ethical goodness.
This concept is harmful, especially for the more vulnerable and impressionable younger
generations. The status of these villains as astoundingly hideous is dangerous as it perpetuates the social bias that attractive people are less likely to be dangerous. The media’s representation of villains as unsightly has conditioned us to be less cautious of those who fit the beauty standard. Some may argue that it is wrong to restrict the creative freedom of film producers to portray characters how they would like in order to incite instinctive responses by the audience by exploiting their biases towards deformity. However, this argument does not take into account the consequences of what it means to exploit society’s beauty standards. There are many means to frighten people and reduce their sympathy for the villain which evade the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes and idealistic beauty standards.
Overall, the tendency to associate beauty with goodness and ugliness with evil is present in many human cultures and has not faded away over the more recent years. This trope is ubiquitous in modern culture. Whether consciously or subconsciously, it is a concept that humankind still follow.
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