The Myth of Beauty

Ideal Beauty: the term most used to describe the classical period of Greek sculpture, yet also splashed across magazines and billboards of today. Idealized human forms, bodies of immaculate muscular tone, breasts full and round, gazes subtle but striking, cloth draped just falling off the hip, the “perfect” human. The Greeks of the 4th and 5th century were seemingly obsessed with creating the perfect, idealized human. The sculptures that fill museums and adorn tops of buildings are the symbols of, what most would call, ideal beauty. A picture of beauty so unattainable, yet so desirable, that it holds much of classical mythology in its grasp and at the same time has created a version of beauty society still clings to to this day. Aphrodite, goddess of beauty and love, symbolizes and perpetuates this ideal beauty. She transcends time and has represented the standard of beauty throughout the centuries, helping to create our modern day version of what is classified as beautiful. From the sculptures representing Aphrodite by Polykleitos, dating back to 440 BCE to the photographs of super models that plaster modern day streets, the design of ideal beauty has not changed much. In the classical era sculptors took liberties with their art, taking a human model and literally chiseling their bodies to “perfection”. In the same way photographers use the chisels of today, photo shop, to create the same unattainable version of beauty.
For the past two weeks I have had the pleasure of mingling with the modern day version of classical Greek sculpture: professional models. Just as 2000 years ago, these models are beautiful, more so than the average person on the street, yet no more perfect than anyone else. As we sit and chat over dinner I see them as humans, full of imperfections just like myself, but once made up by professional make-up artists, wearing designer clothes, light to perfection, photographed by world renowned artists, photo shopped, and printed in high resolution, the are the, no pun intended, the picture of ideal beauty.
This myth, the myth of beauty has worked its way around time and through space only to show up right back where it stated, here in Greece. It is almost too perfect that I should meet these people here, in the birthplace of ideal beauty. The stories of the beauty of Aphrodite, her tampering with the love lives of mortals and those of the gods transcends into the photographs taken of my new friends. Each photo is like a myth in itself: the tension of lovers, the unattainable, the temptation of ideal beauty, all show themselves in the advertisements plastered in the windows of every clothing store you pass.
The myths of Aphrodite and her beauty have grasped the imaginations of artist of the past and also the present. They have all tried to express her beauty, hold her power over love, and recreate her legend. Her myth has turned into our myth, her ideal beauty has become our idea of beauty, her unattainable nature drives the myths of Hollywood and world of fashion, and confines many of our ideas of love to the world of “Prince Charming and Cinderella”. Aphrodite has been the symbol of Ideal Beauty for centuries and still is today, transformed from a goddess ruling high on Mt. Olympus to the advertisements that fill the streets.