The Beauty Concern

Abstract

The topic of this article is today’s norms of beauty perception and the anxiety that is created by these norms. Even the science of aesthetics is exposed to criticism of probing the conditions of beauty perception but unable to explain the nature and root of it; beauty has a great source of pleasure that is more than just a concept, transformed to a criterion framing the living standards. While life is organized with the centralization of beauty as a criterion, beauty became the power which can identify the style and the content of the relation between consciousness and life. In this study, the transformation of the meaning of beauty in today’s world, the cause-effect relationship created by the current economic system and the effects of it on the perception of self and behavior. In this regard, it can be asserted that the new “perception of beauty” is restricted by the norms produced by the economic system encouraging individuals to consume consistently where, different from previous eras, both genders are affected. Having an approved beauty is put as the key to happiness, life satisfaction, social and sexual preferability, difference and status whereas exclusion from the norms of beauty creates an uncanny situation. This uncanniness can be created by being excluded from society, failure, loneliness, the anxiety of existence and value of self, realistic or imaginary fears