Symmetry? Harmonious proportions - but that is harmonious, it is the same for people of all cultures?A smooth skin? An inner glow, ineffable and mysterious? Nothing is more subjective and therefore difficult to rigorous criteria included in, rather than beauty. Although they could find - with toil - some common points, confirming, for our peace, that people are the same everywhere and always, they have the same conception of beauty, historical reality shows that, over time, and along and across the globe, human beauty was seen in different ways from one culture to another.
"Beauty is the manifestation of secret laws of nature, laws which otherwise would have remained forever hidden to us", said to Goethe, but sees the job that he thought any landscape or the beauty of flowers, not the people. Laws of nature? Perhaps the culture, because there are many examples in world history as the man tried to "correct" nature, the way arduous and bizarre results. The natural beauty was not always fashionable, on the contrary: efforts to make a man made to look different than nature had dressed sometimes extreme forms. Drastically changing "features" basic anatomy, natural form of body parts, gained millions of years of evolution, prove that beauty is often what we want to be at a time. Fashion, convention and only here and there some "memories of the Stone Age" - criteria for physiological realities and showing that long ago, sometime in childhood of mankind, "beautiful" was what served individual and species survival - they define beauty today.
But it can be even worse: as proof, here are some strange ideas about the aesthetic appearance of human ideas, over time, have been implemented by the profound transformation of the body, forming what went sometimes to true mutilation, shocking and brutal, which seemed committed to a true art of cruelty. All in the name of beauty.
One of the most popular - and cruelest - is tying the legs , long practiced in China for almost a millennium. Attested in the tenth century, not only just disappeared mid-twentieth century and this millennium, millions of women have suffered atrocious tortures from this strange definition of beauty legs.
"Lotus feet", such as deformed feet were called, were the result of a torment for years, and physical and mental health effects of women were not negligible.
Torture began at the age of 2-5 years before the canopy is fully formed foot: girl's feet were bent to breaking bones, fingers were bent at base, with dislocated joints and feet were bound with linen bandages wet, that gathered by drying, gathering and leg in a vice.
Every day or two to three times a week, the legs were washed, and then folded again and bandaged, bandages were tightened more and more, and after each "session" girls were forced to stand or walk, because weight to and more fingers to press foot and to help shape the change. What this may mean walking feet, subject to terrible pain, it's hard to imagine. Initial binding and subsequent care were usually left to the professionals of this practice, was discouraged participation mother face, for fear that it would have been moved by the sufferings let her daughter and would not be strong enough tight bandages. The result of this process, which last year was a profound change in foot anatomy, was considered successful when, in adolescence, after the growth process, the foot measure 7-9 inches in length.
However curious it may seem, these tiny feet, so little natural-looking, were assessed in terms of aesthetic and erotic attraction considered. (However, "sexology manuals" men of the time recommended not to try to see the lotus feet shod differently, because otherwise they would have lost all charm. No wonder not - for the deformed anatomy could not produce any attraction .) shod in miniature shoes, no longer than 10 inches, Chinese women who suffered the torture of beauty could not walk so than small steps, with a waddle, disproportionately small for the size of the feet and toes that go on affected balance movements. And this "lotus gait" was, say some authors, which gave, in fact, charming girls with bound feet and erotic attraction associated phenomenon.
The practice began to be abandoned until the early twentieth century, when most educated Chinese women began to realize that the West, though fascinated, to some extent, the originality of this custom exotic, were still inclined to consider it torture and an interference with freedom of women.That's not what China wanted to show the world, so slowly, practically disappeared. Chinese feminists have contributed to giving up the habit, which, however interesting, was not less painful and degrading.
Imperial edicts which had failed in the early data of the twentieth century, which tried to abolish this practice, the ban failed communist regime after taking power in 1949: the practice of foot binding is prohibited and today.
Cranial deformation was practiced by different populations, based on their criteria of appreciation of beauty: people with some form of the head were more valued, considered more attractive, smarter or more noble than others. (Some experts believe that these deformations would also act to signify membership of a particular group). The effects are visible in many skulls found by archaeologists: drastic deformation of the skull.
Known since prehistory - the fossil evidence - and attested in ancient skull deformation was practiced deliberate and later: the Huns, and Pacific Island populations of Australian Aborigines, as well as Native Americans.
Pre-Columbian cultures like the Incas and Mayans, and Native North American populations such as Chinook and Choctaw, used to shape children's skulls or teşindu their forehead, crown them be sharp or blunt head sideways so that the skull to grow in above, oblong-is more.
They use a variety of binding and clamping devices, and the process was done in infancy, when the skull - the joint between bones unconsolidated yet - could be easily deformed.
Skulls strange - with forms reminiscent sometimes of pointed ends of the alien in comedy Coneheads - were unearthed in many American archaeological sites, and custom skull deformation was practiced in the Americas until the modern era, show drawings, paintings and photographs depicting the babies' put the model "and adult outcome of this process which is visible beauty.
Female giraffes belong to a tribe called Burmese Kayan Lahwi, living in mostly in Myanmar (a small number of its members migrated to Thailand) and became known for their long necks surrounded by spiral brass necklaces. These ornaments are placed around the neck at the age of about five years and are replaced progressively with increasingly long spiral.
Anthropologists have sought various explanations for understanding the origin of this custom. One hypothesis suggests that wearing necklaces and subsequent deformation would have protected women become slaves, making them look less attractive in the eyes of other tribes, to which there is the practice (an argument in favor of the idea that "beauty "Much depends on cultural conventions within a group.) Another hypothesis would be protected colanele femeiele the fatal bites of tigers (perhaps symbolic rather than in reality). Kayan women say, however, that they wear "beauty", according to accepted canons of beauty in the traditional culture of the tribe.
Thought long and was told that this practice had the effect of lengthening the spine and neck region in both muscle weakness that these women would never have survived without it advocated colanele cervical spine, long neck for fragile and broke under the weight would be the head, causing their death.
In reality, this is not so, a situation that proved more and more women - especially young - also refuses to wear necklaces, revolt against this practice (even if traditional) and, especially, against the idea of become subject to the tourists and indiscreet curiosities to be exploited for this purpose by the owners of tourist business, as it happens especially in Thailand, where many of these women have become a kind of exhibits, attractions within real gardens human zoo .
That does not mean that the heavy brass collars do not cause actual deformation of the body. Not elongate neck by stretching the spine, as believed, but pressed with their weight, collarbones and chest, pushing them down, making it seem much longer neck. (See animation below as it happens.)
If it seems that these habits of human beings struggling in the name of beauty, body deformându intended them to suit some aesthetic canons arbitare, somehow preserve of exotic populations of other continents should look and yard and remember our European practice and the like.
One of the most famous was wearing corsets . Designed to emphasize thinness waist, these parts of the female wardrobe was, in their extreme discomfort some generating devices that produce, in time, and anatomical deformities were not devoid of danger.
If a corset made of canvas and related only lace waist and a moderately strong shaking emphasized without, however, too hard to bear, while "corsets with the whale" (reinforced with whalebone or steel wire) , arrived in vogue in the nineteenth century, the time when the beautiful weather that had a waist circumference ideal of only 40-45 cm, were, for many women, almost like torture instruments for many years of their lives.
The phenomenon reached its peak during the fashion was so-called "wasp waist" in the second half of the nineteenth century.
These corsets, drafted worked with body arching forms that emphasized female curves and stiffened by whale, press the abdominal organs, pushing them up. Constant media gathering corset liver and can cause changes in its shape. Over time, chest deformation, narrowing to the bottom. Moreover, the corset was to gather long-term, lasting just this change the figure.
Often, ladies, cooking tips could breathe only with the lungs (upper parts), while the lower portions of lung tissue from mucus to accumulate that affect respiratory function, producing a slight cough, but persistent. The stifling atmosphere, a strong woman in corset may faint due to insufficient oxygenation. No inherent fragility of the "weak sex" was to blame, in such cases, the woman was, literally, a victim of fashion.
Curious though - or maybe not, given how many things women do to look good - many of these women not only comply voluntarily tightening the corset, but their achievements and feel proud of.
That's because the waist is made progressively decrease following a workout that lasted for years.Mothers considered their duty to shape through the bodice daughters, because they have later fashionable silhouette. Girls were made to wear a corset from the age of 12-13 years, sometimes - if some mothers had more "extremist" - earlier, even at 7 years. The bodice was gradually raised so that the body gradually get used to feeling and to adapt. Little girls wearing corset even at night, you were allowed to extend 2-3 inches, then during the day, was raised again. Some schools even organized girls competitions among students to encourage them to wear a corset. Day after day, year after year, tight bodice gave him all the hottest young girls her age in world output, much-coveted wasp-waisted silhouette, a woman's pride and one of its great attractions, where aesthetic canons of the time.
A true battle of opinion arose in Europe - contaminating and the U.S. - around this practice, a fierce controversy that lasted for years and has remained in history as the "controversy over the bodice." In the 1860s, hundreds of articles published in dozens of publications - from wide-reading The Times by specialized Lancet , the prestigious British medical journal - the debate, the voices of doctors, traders, and the voices consumatoarelor (women) pros and against raising the corset.
Doctors argued that this practice leads to deformation and even cracking ribs, producing a dangerous pressure on the abdominal organs and chest muscles weaken, adversely affect posture and thus spine and creates health problems related to pregnancy and birth.
Many women, however, claimed to be attached to this custom, saying that even after a period - difficult - training, accustomed to the bodice, arrived to enjoy the pleasure of wearing. Perhaps the idea of being fashionable, the satisfaction to receive the tribute of admiration of others, feeling successful after a long struggle contributed to this state of contentment.
Slim waist and hourglass silhouette are now fashionable, but exaggerations in corset collection gone - yet. But who knows what next?
After all, shoes with high heels, that women have a special relationship, seem to be the modern equivalent of bodice strangled in the need of training, pain and limitation of freedom of movement products. In other words, it changes from time to time, only the body concerned, not the basic concept: " You pour être belle souffrir faute "(ie, the French, got to suffer to be beautiful ).
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