Frontline—Cross-Cultural Aspects of Beauty

The ever changing concept of beauty is elusive, surrounds us from birth and permeates our daily lives. This concept of beauty is affected by personal, interpersonal, cultural, and political issues. Arts and sciences have tried to define it to no avail as it continues to evolve. Human beings can recognize attractiveness in the other from an early age. Some favor culture as the reason behind this recognition believing that beauty and attractiveness in the other is a learned concept. Others favor an inborn capacity that allows human beings from very early to differentiate among what can be considered attractive versus unattractive in others' faces (Etcoff, 2000). Even if we learn or are born to differentiate facial characteristics in others from an early age, an aspect that would facilitate attachment to the care taker, the meaning of such capacity for differentiation is still acquired in the context of interpersonal relationships. By the time human beings develop the capacity to determine their own concept of beauty and its influence on personality development, they have already been exposed to personal, interpersonal, political, and cultural concepts of beauty that can affect their sense of self-worth in a deep and at times immovable manner. It is this last aspect of beauty that we will explore in these papers.

In the first of these articles, Ruth Lijtmaer introduces the concept of beauty by discussing it in the context of human aging, culture, and theories of beauty. Her concise review of pertinent literature frames the theoretical and clinical discussion of her patient's personal struggle to try to resolve her inner conflicts through the beautification of her physical self with the help of plastic surgery. Maternal deprivation, competition with a “beautiful sibling,” and responsibility for the care of aging parents were among the dynamic issues that highlighted the treatment. Slow but steady exploration of such conflicted interpersonal relationships in the context o