THE NEW BEAUTY
Stunning Look at Modern Beauty & Culture
Beauty: A word that runs through one’s fingers like fine sand, constantly shifting, morphing, and slipping out of reach. Evoking a range of emotions — delight, gratification, angst, envy, longing — the concept remains volatile and irresolute. The standards imposed by society have long been pushed and pulled, variably elevating certain features, styles, and objects while pushing others back out. In an exploration of the definition of beauty and its everchanging history, The New Beauty tracks the changes of beauty through time, beginning with its inception during the Stone Ages and leading to its evolution specifically throughout the 1900s. Highlighting the modern-day era of beauty, the publication delves into all aspects of beauty standards, from hair, eyebrows, and nails to clothing, body types, and wellness practices.
The societal standards warped around beauty have been perpetually positioned at harmful and unhealthy degrees, especially for women. However, The New Beauty expounds upon an evolving culture of beauty that embraces individualism and self-acceptance rather than a deep-seated clustering toward an unfeasible, unattainable beauty standard. Through the increasingly creative expression of makeup, with the collapsing conceptualization of what gender is and isn’t, and by focusing on what produces happiness and comfort on an individual level, the world of art, fashion, and self-expression is looking warmly promising.
Through the lens of science, technology, and media, the reader is invited to engage in an extremely visual and enormously informative reading experience. The constant chase for a definition of the word is alleviated and the hope for a more harmonious version of what the word means feels pleasantly attainable.
Written by Kari Molvar, The New Beauty is available here.
