November 29, 2024 • 22 mins
What makes you feel confident about yourself?
How do you build your confidence when it’s low?
Today, Jay discusses a topic that's all too familiar - the constant barrage of unrealistic beauty standards. He challenges the notion of a singular "most beautiful woman in the world" and explores how societal expectations and media influence our perception of beauty.
Jay breaks down the historical and cultural factors that shape beauty standards, from the ancient Greek ideals of symmetry and proportion to the modern-day obsession with youth and perfection. He highlights the role of social media in perpetuating unrealistic beauty ideals and encourages listeners to question these norms and embrace their individuality.
In this episode, you'll learn:
How to Embrace Individuality
How to Build Self-Love
How to Set Boundaries
How to Appreciate Uniqueness
How to Practice Mindfulness
By understanding the forces that shape our perception of beauty and cultivating self-love, we can live authentic, fulfilling lives. Remember, true beauty radiates from within.
With Love and Gratitude,
Jay Shetty
What We Discuss:
00:00 Intro
03:21 Different Ways We Think About Beauty
07:32 Definition of Beauty Through History
13:49 Beauty Standards of the West
16:11 What Do We Believe to be Beautiful About Ourselves?
17:05 3 Ways to Build Self Love
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I couldn't be more excited to share something truly special
with all you tea lovers out there. And even if
you don't love tea, if you love refreshing, rejuvenating, refueling
sodas that are good for you, listen to this RADI
and I poured our hearts into creating June Sparkling Tea
with adaptogens for you because we believe in nurturing your
(00:21):
body and with every sip you'll experience calmness of mind,
a refreshing vitality, and a burst of brightness to your day.
Juni is infused with adaptogens that are amazing natural substances
that act like superheroes for your body to help you
adapt to stress and find balance in your busy life.
Our super five blend of these powerful ingredients include green Tea,
(00:44):
ushwagandha acirolla cherry and Lion's made mushroom and these may
help boost your metabolism, give you a natural kick of caffeine,
combat stress, pack your body with antioxidants, and stimulate brain function.
Even better, you has zero sugar and only five calories
per can. We believe in nurturing and energizing your body
(01:06):
while enjoying a truly delicious and refreshing drink. So visit
Drinkjuni dot com today to elevate your wellness journey and
use code on Purpose to receive fifteen percent off your
first order. That's drink j u ni dot com and
make sure you use the code on Purpose. So many
(01:27):
of our perceptions of ourselves are based on other ideas
that have made their way through time and lasted as
almost generational curses. We're judging ourselves and the people around
us based on standards that we didn't choose. The number
one health and wellness podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Jay Setti, Ja Shetty zet.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Hey everyone, and welcome back to On Purpose. I'm your host,
Jay Shetty, and I'm so grateful that you're here and
taking the time to spend the next thirty minutes with me. Now,
in a moment when time and attention are the most
valuable assets, you're choosing to come here to explore interesting questions,
learn new habits and practices, and dive deep. Isn't something
(02:16):
I ever take for granted. Now, if you're a long
time listening to this show, you probably know that we've
always followed a format of sorts where we dive into
a topic and then I offer you tips, hacks, solutions,
and suggestions of how best to navigate it. Recently, though,
I've been wanting to go a step deeper to question
(02:39):
the appearances of things some of us might take for granted.
My intention being to figure out what's really going on,
especially in the information age, when most of us are
bombarded all day with the same appearances. Now, think about it.
If you're someone who spends any time on social media,
and I'm guessing that includes more of you, no doubt,
(03:01):
you're overwhelmed with images and videos of beautiful people doing
things that are incredible. Their faces are flawless, their hairs
just right, everything's perfect, and usually they're on their way
to a party or a city that you feel like
you're missing out on. Now, with all those images bombarding
(03:21):
us on a daily basis, we may feel sure we
experience insecurity, Sure we may experience envy and jealousy, but
there is conditioning and wiring happening right there and then.
And for this reason is today's episode is posed in
the form of a question. I think so many of
us are dealing with challenges with self worth. We hear
(03:42):
so many insights on self confidence, self love, self care.
But it doesn't seem to be breaking through, and I
think that's partly because we don't even know how we're
being conditioned. So I want to start off by asking
you a question. And the question may seem broad and random,
(04:02):
but I promise you there's a reason, because we're going
to investigate it. So the question I want to focus
on today is who is the most beautiful woman in
the world. Now, when I first ask you that question,
either you'll come up with an actual name of someone
you know, or maybe it's a celebrity or a model
or a well known person. I'm sure we could have
(04:24):
gone down the lane of who's the most handsome man
or whatever it may be. But I want to stick
with this for a second because this question led me
to take an intensive dive into the ways we think
about beauty from all different angles historical, cultural, philosophical, even mathematical,
(04:45):
a quest that traces all the way back to the
ancient Greeks. Has the definition of beauty changed over time?
And how much is it influenced by where we grew
up and the era in which we came of age.
Are there certain constants or ground rules about beauty? Or
do the qualities that come together to create the most
(05:05):
beautiful woman in the world change from year to year,
decade to decade, And if beauty itself changes, how much
has to do with us, the innate preferences and biases
that each of us is born with, and how much
has to do with the big business of selling dreams,
whether it's beauty, fashion, makeup, music or film. The Greeks,
(05:29):
I want you to know were preoccupied with beauty, but
more than intrigued by beauty as a concept. They were
intent on figuring out, using logic, reason, and ideally measurement,
what made someone or something beautiful. To them. Beauty wasn't
subjective or a person, and the definition of beautiful didn't
(05:51):
vary depending on who you asked. For the Greeks, beauty
had to be rational. Among the top characteristics, according to
philosophers and mathematicians of that time, were order, symmetry and definiteness, meaning,
for example, that a sculptor creating a statue of a
Greek goddess should ensure that both her arms are the
(06:13):
right length, that her hands should match those arms, that
her head should balance on shoulders neither too big nor
too small, and that if she is pictured running or
simply lounging around, that her every muscle and movement be
portrayed in intricate detail. For the ancient Greek's beauty was
a function of math. Beauty was all about harmony and proportion.
(06:38):
One other thing stands out too. For Plato and other
Greek philosophers, beauty was also linked to a person's goodness
and morality, an idea that was later picked up in
fairy tales and Disney films. In other words, if you
were beautiful on the outside, you were probably beautiful on
the inside too, though it's hard to speculate which came first,
(07:01):
because they lived in ancient Greece and weren't inclined to
calling something beautiful. Without taking a shot at figuring out why,
Greek philosophers did everything in their power to determine if
beauty could be measured using mathematical formulas, which is how
mathematicians like Pythagoras produced a concept that many centuries later
(07:24):
would come to be dubbed the golden ratio. Ask him
who was the most beautiful woman in the world back then,
and odds were he would say Helen of Troy, a
woman largely credited with precipitating the Trojan War. Why did
they say that easy her face contained the same precise
mathematical theorems they kept seeing in objects belonging to the
(07:47):
natural world that were unanimously deemed to be beautiful, things
like nautilus shells, the leaves on trees, pine cones, and
pine cone seeds. It took a few centsies for this
theorem to be given a name, the golden ratio, though
looking back, it shows up in the face of Mona Lisa,
in the parthen and in Athens, and in the Great
(08:10):
Pyramid of Gizer, though no one can say for sure
if they were created with the golden ratio in mind.
But back to Helen of Troy, what role did the
golden ratio play in the fact she was widely considered
to be the most beautiful woman in the world. For
Pythagoras and other Greek mathematicians, the number three had a
(08:31):
special significance. By dividing the human face into three sections
or divisions, he and his colleagues could come that much
closer to defining the ingredients of extraordinary beauty. The first
measurement was from a woman's hairline down to the middle
of the eyes. The second measurement started from those same
eyes and ended at the bottom of the nose. The
(08:54):
third and final measurement was from the bottom of the
nose to the base of a woman's chin. Conclusion, the
most beautiful faces on the planet were two thirds as
wide as they were long. What's more, if all three
measurements were roughly equal, a woman's face was more likely
than not to be universally seen as beautiful. The color
(09:16):
of a beautiful woman's hair mattered, too, confirming Blonde hair
in ancient Greece was by far the preferred color. Rarely
do you see any illustrations or all paintings of dark
haired or red Greek gods, either female or male. Why Because,
as I mentioned earlier, beauty for the Greeks was also
(09:37):
connected to inner goodness and a kind of moral purity.
One's outward appearance the purest possible reflection of the virtue
contained inside great art and sculpture. In some ways, the
earliest form of media also played a powerful part in
how the definitions of female beauty evolved. Nearly two thousand
(09:58):
years after the end of the g Greek Empire, Renaissance,
artists like Bartercelly, Leonardo Rubens, and Raphael portrayed women as
a physical type cavacious, fleshy, maternal, and mysterious. This ideal, incidentally,
has endured for centuries and across all cultures. Today, female
(10:19):
beauty has no link to extreme thinness. Believe it or not,
That idea has been around since the nineteen sixties, but
shapeliness not to mention youth, since curviness and youth both
communicate to suitors that she's the right age and healthy
enough to conceive and raise children. In short, the media
can prioritize certain looks and figures all it weighs, but
(10:42):
at the end of the day, some things are hard
wired in us as animals and won't ever change. Evolution
it won't surprise you to learn always has the final say.
But I want to revisit the idea of symmetry and proportion,
and the idea that everything from the face to the
arms to the hands should exist in complete harmony. It's
easy to dismiss this concept as old fashioned and even dated,
(11:06):
but it still plays a part in how we look
at beauty today. In fact, the ancient Greeks are largely
responsible for the Western standards of beauty that appear in
our media today. Think of snow White or Cinderella or
Arielle in The Little Mermaid. Their beautiful appearance is inseparable
from their goodness and innocence, whereas the witches and ogres
(11:28):
and villains surrounding them who are eager to do them
harm are seen as the opposite of beautiful, as if
their evil dispositions have negatively affected the way they look.
Another factor that's been linked to beauty a woman's voice.
In the nineteen eighties, social scientists did a study hoping
to show a connection between women's voices and their levels
(11:50):
of beauty. They did this by having a team of
male volunteers speak on the phone with a group of women.
I should add this was voice only couldn't see the women,
nor the women see the men. After the male volunteers
were asked to assess the most beautiful voices with the
faces of the most beautiful women, the researchers conclude that
(12:11):
vocal attractiveness was indeed correlated to the beauty of the
women in question. I might also add that the more
youthful sounding voice, the more attractive it crame across. Once again,
blame evolution. Imagine you're visiting Ethiopia, where some tribes in
the south still make use of the centuries old practice
of lipplates. These discs are inserted into a woman's bottom
(12:35):
lip and are seen as signs of both beauty and status.
Scars or scarification, are also commonplace among such African ethnic groups.
An eye for a razor is used to make cuts
in the skin, and ash or clay or pastes are
then rubbed into the cuts, which creates bumps and patterns
on the skin that take anywhere from six months to
a year to heal. These two are widely considered great
(12:58):
emblems of beauty in New Zealand, especially among the Maori tribes.
Facial tattoos serve an almost identical beautifying purpose. They also
communicate to the world a woman's identity, her social status,
her heritage, and her own professional achievements. It's quite literally
like having your family tree and your place in it
(13:19):
seared onto your skin. How do you feel about unibrows?
The ancient Greeks loved them, probably because they were so symmetrical. Today,
in the Central Asian country of Tajikistan, a unibrow is
still considered a signature of great beauty, versus in the West,
where a unibrow is often considered well, not entirely desired
or welcome. Tajikistan, women who don't naturally have a unibrow
(13:43):
stretching over their eyes can even buy products to enhance
the brows they were born with. You can see that
different cultures value different things, and our conditioning means the
culture we were raised in, the culture we grew up in,
defines what we see as beautiful and attractive. But think
about this for a second. Consider, for example, the Japanese
(14:05):
concept known as wabi sabi, which emphasizes the beauty that
is found in imperfection. I absolutely love this idea. A
perfectly manicured back lawn is considered in Japan unacceptable and unnatural.
No back lawn has ever looked like that. Perfection, this
idea argues, may be symmetrical, but at the expense of
(14:28):
what we love and the objects and people we loved most,
namely their imperfection. Okay, I am so excited about this
because we've got the first ever merch drop for on Purpose.
It's finally here and for world Mental health. Today we're
(14:49):
doing an exclusive limited edition drop with all the proceeds
going to the National Alliance on Mental Illness NAMI. So
now you can wear your on purpose merch, listen to
the podcast and know that you two are having an impact.
I want to thank you so much in advance. I
can't wait to see all of your pictures wearing the merch,
their sweatshirts, a hat, t shirts. Check it out on
(15:12):
our website jshetdyshop dot com. That's Jshettishop dot com. And remember,
one hundred percent of the proceeds go to NAMI. Let's
return now to the beauty standards of the West, which,
as we see, seemed to change every decode or so
until the nineteen twenties. As we've seen in other cultures
(15:33):
around the world, great beauty was marked by a full
face and a curvey, voluptuous body. Then the Flapper showed
up a woman skinny as a boy, with short, bobbed
hair and an androgynous appearance. She was followed by Greta
garbo lean, strong and enigmatic a woman a few words.
Two decades later, in the nineteen fifties, beauty standards changed again,
(15:55):
with the media serving up two female options, the Go
next Door, embodied by Doris Day and Debbie Reynolds, and
another kind of girl represented by Marilyn Monroe. In the
nineteen sixties, beauty standards changed again with the arrival of Twiggy,
an English supermodel weighing ninety one pounds who became a
cultural icon in London, introducing or should I say reintroducing
(16:19):
the world to the concept of androgyny. In the nineteen seventies,
the pendulum swung back again with the TV show Charlie's
Angels and Farah Fawcett posters plastering the bedroom walls of
every teenage boy in America. Suddenly it seemed good health
and athleticism was in vogue, though this look was soon
swapped out by the pale, skinny women who began to
(16:41):
appear in fashion magazines in the nineteen nineties. Now I
have no judgment over which is more attractive or not.
It's what's interesting is how it's being presented to us. Now,
as I've walked you through this journey of history of culture,
we can just see that when we try to on
so Who's the most beautiful woman in the world, It
(17:02):
almost feels like it changes every decade, and today it
may change every week, and what becomes interesting is that
our bubble becomes our truth. So if you go online
and ask who's the most beautiful woman in the world,
and AI will come up with its own semi scientific assessments,
(17:23):
And among the names that come up, you'll see Jody
Cromer's Zendea, Bella Hadid, Beyonce, Simone Bars, Janelle Monet, Aaronana Grande,
Taylor Swift, Margot Robbie. But what's really interesting about all
of this, we would say, well, they're all beautiful in
different ways. So the question that we really have to ask,
as opposed to who's the most beautiful woman in the world,
(17:45):
what do we count as our beauty and what do
we believe to be beautiful about ourselves? Are we choosing
the same things that society, culture, and history changes and
updates like fashion every so often to be our definition.
When I first saw Radi, I genuinely was very attracted
(18:08):
to her. I thought she was beautiful from the moment
I saw her, and I still believe she's absolutely beautiful
and gorgeous today. But so much of what I've learned
today is learning to love her for all the nuances,
the subtleties that I never knew before, the quirks, the
curious parts of her, the parts of her that you
(18:30):
know that surprised me. And so I want to talk
to you about what it really means to build self
love and self worth. The first is understanding the parts
of yourself you don't like and recognizing whether you don't
like them because you don't like them, or you don't
like them because someone else told you not to like them,
(18:53):
because someone in history, culture art somehow got through to
you from all of these decades ago, and you're carrying
around an old idea about the way you feel about yourself.
So many of our perceptions of ourselves are based on
other ideas, like the ones I've shared today, that have
made their way through time and lasted as almost generational curses.
(19:18):
We're judging ourselves and the people around us based on
standards that we didn't choose, values that we didn't create,
and symbols that we didn't select. The second thing I'll
say to you is find out what makes you feel confident.
It may be developing a new skill. I think what
(19:38):
people don't realize is that until you develop skills, the
skill of communication, the skill of knowing how to present yourself,
preparing to have the skill of knowing how to introduce
yourself in a room. Without those skills, no matter what
you do, it's very hard to feel confident. Because you
could dress however you want, you could show up how
(20:00):
however you want, you could be invited to something incredible,
and you'll still feel like an impostor you'll still feel
out of your depths or out of your comfort zone
without a set of skills. Identify the skills that you
haven't invested in, Skills that you've missed out on, Skills
that you haven't prioritized that can make a big difference
in how you feel about yourself. The other thing I
(20:21):
want you to do is take a look at how
this is an ever evolving, ever changing conversation and notice
how through times you've seen updates and how you've seen
updates and upgrades on what is seen as beautiful, and
how it keeps changing and keeps you on your toes.
It supports industries, It builds industries, It allows for industries
(20:43):
to actually exist. Just because we believe we're not beautiful enough,
we're not fit enough, we're not strong enough. And start
writing down your own definition. Start writing down your own description,
start writing down your own perception, and start disconnecting from
the others. If you need to unfollow, unsubscribe on social media,
(21:06):
if you need to change your algorithm, if you need
to just switch off from social media in order to
create your own views of beauty, to create your own
ideals of attraction, that may be the best thing you
ever do, because otherwise you'll be chasing something that was
defined decades ago. So many of us are pursuing a
version of ourself that we don't even know will like,
(21:29):
but we believe because others may like it, that hopefully
we will too. And the truth is, when we try
to become who we think other people will like, even
if someone likes us, we may not like ourselfs. And
liking yourself is worth so much more than however many
likes you receive on a post on social media. I
(21:50):
want to thank you for listening today. I hope that
it's been an education. I hope it's been enlightening. I
hope that it's giving you insight into recognizing that when
you try and answer these questions, when you try and
chase a version of beauty, you could chase any definition
for any decade and you'd still be behind. Thank you
so much for listening. Remember I'm forever in your corner
(22:12):
and I'm always rooting for you. I'll see you soon.
If you love this episode, you'll enjoy my conversation with
Megan Trainer on breaking generational trauma and how to be
confident from the inside out.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
My therapist told me stand in the mirror naked for
five minutes. It was already tough for me to love
my body, but after the C section scarf with all
the stretch marks, now I'm looking at myself like I've
been hacked. But day three, when I did it, I
was like, you know what, her thighs are cute
I couldn't be more excited to share something truly special
with all you tea lovers out there. And even if
you don't love tea, if you love refreshing, rejuvenating, refueling
sodas that are good for you, listen to this RADI
and I poured our hearts into creating June Sparkling Tea
with adaptogens for you because we believe in nurturing your
(00:21):
body and with every sip you'll experience calmness of mind,
a refreshing vitality, and a burst of brightness to your day.
Juni is infused with adaptogens that are amazing natural substances
that act like superheroes for your body to help you
adapt to stress and find balance in your busy life.
Our super five blend of these powerful ingredients include green Tea,
(00:44):
ushwagandha acirolla cherry and Lion's made mushroom and these may
help boost your metabolism, give you a natural kick of caffeine,
combat stress, pack your body with antioxidants, and stimulate brain function.
Even better, you has zero sugar and only five calories
per can. We believe in nurturing and energizing your body
(01:06):
while enjoying a truly delicious and refreshing drink. So visit
Drinkjuni dot com today to elevate your wellness journey and
use code on Purpose to receive fifteen percent off your
first order. That's drink j u ni dot com and
make sure you use the code on Purpose. So many
(01:27):
of our perceptions of ourselves are based on other ideas
that have made their way through time and lasted as
almost generational curses. We're judging ourselves and the people around
us based on standards that we didn't choose. The number
one health and wellness podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Jay Setti, Ja Shetty zet.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Hey everyone, and welcome back to On Purpose. I'm your host,
Jay Shetty, and I'm so grateful that you're here and
taking the time to spend the next thirty minutes with me. Now,
in a moment when time and attention are the most
valuable assets, you're choosing to come here to explore interesting questions,
learn new habits and practices, and dive deep. Isn't something
(02:16):
I ever take for granted. Now, if you're a long
time listening to this show, you probably know that we've
always followed a format of sorts where we dive into
a topic and then I offer you tips, hacks, solutions,
and suggestions of how best to navigate it. Recently, though,
I've been wanting to go a step deeper to question
(02:39):
the appearances of things some of us might take for granted.
My intention being to figure out what's really going on,
especially in the information age, when most of us are
bombarded all day with the same appearances. Now, think about it.
If you're someone who spends any time on social media,
and I'm guessing that includes more of you, no doubt,
(03:01):
you're overwhelmed with images and videos of beautiful people doing
things that are incredible. Their faces are flawless, their hairs
just right, everything's perfect, and usually they're on their way
to a party or a city that you feel like
you're missing out on. Now, with all those images bombarding
(03:21):
us on a daily basis, we may feel sure we
experience insecurity, Sure we may experience envy and jealousy, but
there is conditioning and wiring happening right there and then.
And for this reason is today's episode is posed in
the form of a question. I think so many of
us are dealing with challenges with self worth. We hear
(03:42):
so many insights on self confidence, self love, self care.
But it doesn't seem to be breaking through, and I
think that's partly because we don't even know how we're
being conditioned. So I want to start off by asking
you a question. And the question may seem broad and random,
(04:02):
but I promise you there's a reason, because we're going
to investigate it. So the question I want to focus
on today is who is the most beautiful woman in
the world. Now, when I first ask you that question,
either you'll come up with an actual name of someone
you know, or maybe it's a celebrity or a model
or a well known person. I'm sure we could have
(04:24):
gone down the lane of who's the most handsome man
or whatever it may be. But I want to stick
with this for a second because this question led me
to take an intensive dive into the ways we think
about beauty from all different angles historical, cultural, philosophical, even mathematical,
(04:45):
a quest that traces all the way back to the
ancient Greeks. Has the definition of beauty changed over time?
And how much is it influenced by where we grew
up and the era in which we came of age.
Are there certain constants or ground rules about beauty? Or
do the qualities that come together to create the most
(05:05):
beautiful woman in the world change from year to year,
decade to decade, And if beauty itself changes, how much
has to do with us, the innate preferences and biases
that each of us is born with, and how much
has to do with the big business of selling dreams,
whether it's beauty, fashion, makeup, music or film. The Greeks,
(05:29):
I want you to know were preoccupied with beauty, but
more than intrigued by beauty as a concept. They were
intent on figuring out, using logic, reason, and ideally measurement,
what made someone or something beautiful. To them. Beauty wasn't
subjective or a person, and the definition of beautiful didn't
(05:51):
vary depending on who you asked. For the Greeks, beauty
had to be rational. Among the top characteristics, according to
philosophers and mathematicians of that time, were order, symmetry and definiteness, meaning,
for example, that a sculptor creating a statue of a
Greek goddess should ensure that both her arms are the
(06:13):
right length, that her hands should match those arms, that
her head should balance on shoulders neither too big nor
too small, and that if she is pictured running or
simply lounging around, that her every muscle and movement be
portrayed in intricate detail. For the ancient Greek's beauty was
a function of math. Beauty was all about harmony and proportion.
(06:38):
One other thing stands out too. For Plato and other
Greek philosophers, beauty was also linked to a person's goodness
and morality, an idea that was later picked up in
fairy tales and Disney films. In other words, if you
were beautiful on the outside, you were probably beautiful on
the inside too, though it's hard to speculate which came first,
(07:01):
because they lived in ancient Greece and weren't inclined to
calling something beautiful. Without taking a shot at figuring out why,
Greek philosophers did everything in their power to determine if
beauty could be measured using mathematical formulas, which is how
mathematicians like Pythagoras produced a concept that many centuries later
(07:24):
would come to be dubbed the golden ratio. Ask him
who was the most beautiful woman in the world back then,
and odds were he would say Helen of Troy, a
woman largely credited with precipitating the Trojan War. Why did
they say that easy her face contained the same precise
mathematical theorems they kept seeing in objects belonging to the
(07:47):
natural world that were unanimously deemed to be beautiful, things
like nautilus shells, the leaves on trees, pine cones, and
pine cone seeds. It took a few centsies for this
theorem to be given a name, the golden ratio, though
looking back, it shows up in the face of Mona Lisa,
in the parthen and in Athens, and in the Great
(08:10):
Pyramid of Gizer, though no one can say for sure
if they were created with the golden ratio in mind.
But back to Helen of Troy, what role did the
golden ratio play in the fact she was widely considered
to be the most beautiful woman in the world. For
Pythagoras and other Greek mathematicians, the number three had a
(08:31):
special significance. By dividing the human face into three sections
or divisions, he and his colleagues could come that much
closer to defining the ingredients of extraordinary beauty. The first
measurement was from a woman's hairline down to the middle
of the eyes. The second measurement started from those same
eyes and ended at the bottom of the nose. The
(08:54):
third and final measurement was from the bottom of the
nose to the base of a woman's chin. Conclusion, the
most beautiful faces on the planet were two thirds as
wide as they were long. What's more, if all three
measurements were roughly equal, a woman's face was more likely
than not to be universally seen as beautiful. The color
(09:16):
of a beautiful woman's hair mattered, too, confirming Blonde hair
in ancient Greece was by far the preferred color. Rarely
do you see any illustrations or all paintings of dark
haired or red Greek gods, either female or male. Why Because,
as I mentioned earlier, beauty for the Greeks was also
(09:37):
connected to inner goodness and a kind of moral purity.
One's outward appearance the purest possible reflection of the virtue
contained inside great art and sculpture. In some ways, the
earliest form of media also played a powerful part in
how the definitions of female beauty evolved. Nearly two thousand
(09:58):
years after the end of the g Greek Empire, Renaissance,
artists like Bartercelly, Leonardo Rubens, and Raphael portrayed women as
a physical type cavacious, fleshy, maternal, and mysterious. This ideal, incidentally,
has endured for centuries and across all cultures. Today, female
(10:19):
beauty has no link to extreme thinness. Believe it or not,
That idea has been around since the nineteen sixties, but
shapeliness not to mention youth, since curviness and youth both
communicate to suitors that she's the right age and healthy
enough to conceive and raise children. In short, the media
can prioritize certain looks and figures all it weighs, but
(10:42):
at the end of the day, some things are hard
wired in us as animals and won't ever change. Evolution
it won't surprise you to learn always has the final say.
But I want to revisit the idea of symmetry and proportion,
and the idea that everything from the face to the
arms to the hands should exist in complete harmony. It's
easy to dismiss this concept as old fashioned and even dated,
(11:06):
but it still plays a part in how we look
at beauty today. In fact, the ancient Greeks are largely
responsible for the Western standards of beauty that appear in
our media today. Think of snow White or Cinderella or
Arielle in The Little Mermaid. Their beautiful appearance is inseparable
from their goodness and innocence, whereas the witches and ogres
(11:28):
and villains surrounding them who are eager to do them
harm are seen as the opposite of beautiful, as if
their evil dispositions have negatively affected the way they look.
Another factor that's been linked to beauty a woman's voice.
In the nineteen eighties, social scientists did a study hoping
to show a connection between women's voices and their levels
(11:50):
of beauty. They did this by having a team of
male volunteers speak on the phone with a group of women.
I should add this was voice only couldn't see the women,
nor the women see the men. After the male volunteers
were asked to assess the most beautiful voices with the
faces of the most beautiful women, the researchers conclude that
(12:11):
vocal attractiveness was indeed correlated to the beauty of the
women in question. I might also add that the more
youthful sounding voice, the more attractive it crame across. Once again,
blame evolution. Imagine you're visiting Ethiopia, where some tribes in
the south still make use of the centuries old practice
of lipplates. These discs are inserted into a woman's bottom
(12:35):
lip and are seen as signs of both beauty and status.
Scars or scarification, are also commonplace among such African ethnic groups.
An eye for a razor is used to make cuts
in the skin, and ash or clay or pastes are
then rubbed into the cuts, which creates bumps and patterns
on the skin that take anywhere from six months to
a year to heal. These two are widely considered great
(12:58):
emblems of beauty in New Zealand, especially among the Maori tribes.
Facial tattoos serve an almost identical beautifying purpose. They also
communicate to the world a woman's identity, her social status,
her heritage, and her own professional achievements. It's quite literally
like having your family tree and your place in it
(13:19):
seared onto your skin. How do you feel about unibrows?
The ancient Greeks loved them, probably because they were so symmetrical. Today,
in the Central Asian country of Tajikistan, a unibrow is
still considered a signature of great beauty, versus in the West,
where a unibrow is often considered well, not entirely desired
or welcome. Tajikistan, women who don't naturally have a unibrow
(13:43):
stretching over their eyes can even buy products to enhance
the brows they were born with. You can see that
different cultures value different things, and our conditioning means the
culture we were raised in, the culture we grew up in,
defines what we see as beautiful and attractive. But think
about this for a second. Consider, for example, the Japanese
(14:05):
concept known as wabi sabi, which emphasizes the beauty that
is found in imperfection. I absolutely love this idea. A
perfectly manicured back lawn is considered in Japan unacceptable and unnatural.
No back lawn has ever looked like that. Perfection, this
idea argues, may be symmetrical, but at the expense of
(14:28):
what we love and the objects and people we loved most,
namely their imperfection. Okay, I am so excited about this
because we've got the first ever merch drop for on Purpose.
It's finally here and for world Mental health. Today we're
(14:49):
doing an exclusive limited edition drop with all the proceeds
going to the National Alliance on Mental Illness NAMI. So
now you can wear your on purpose merch, listen to
the podcast and know that you two are having an impact.
I want to thank you so much in advance. I
can't wait to see all of your pictures wearing the merch,
their sweatshirts, a hat, t shirts. Check it out on
(15:12):
our website jshetdyshop dot com. That's Jshettishop dot com. And remember,
one hundred percent of the proceeds go to NAMI. Let's
return now to the beauty standards of the West, which,
as we see, seemed to change every decode or so
until the nineteen twenties. As we've seen in other cultures
(15:33):
around the world, great beauty was marked by a full
face and a curvey, voluptuous body. Then the Flapper showed
up a woman skinny as a boy, with short, bobbed
hair and an androgynous appearance. She was followed by Greta
garbo lean, strong and enigmatic a woman a few words.
Two decades later, in the nineteen fifties, beauty standards changed again,
(15:55):
with the media serving up two female options, the Go
next Door, embodied by Doris Day and Debbie Reynolds, and
another kind of girl represented by Marilyn Monroe. In the
nineteen sixties, beauty standards changed again with the arrival of Twiggy,
an English supermodel weighing ninety one pounds who became a
cultural icon in London, introducing or should I say reintroducing
(16:19):
the world to the concept of androgyny. In the nineteen seventies,
the pendulum swung back again with the TV show Charlie's
Angels and Farah Fawcett posters plastering the bedroom walls of
every teenage boy in America. Suddenly it seemed good health
and athleticism was in vogue, though this look was soon
swapped out by the pale, skinny women who began to
(16:41):
appear in fashion magazines in the nineteen nineties. Now I
have no judgment over which is more attractive or not.
It's what's interesting is how it's being presented to us. Now,
as I've walked you through this journey of history of culture,
we can just see that when we try to on
so Who's the most beautiful woman in the world, It
(17:02):
almost feels like it changes every decade, and today it
may change every week, and what becomes interesting is that
our bubble becomes our truth. So if you go online
and ask who's the most beautiful woman in the world,
and AI will come up with its own semi scientific assessments,
(17:23):
And among the names that come up, you'll see Jody
Cromer's Zendea, Bella Hadid, Beyonce, Simone Bars, Janelle Monet, Aaronana Grande,
Taylor Swift, Margot Robbie. But what's really interesting about all
of this, we would say, well, they're all beautiful in
different ways. So the question that we really have to ask,
as opposed to who's the most beautiful woman in the world,
(17:45):
what do we count as our beauty and what do
we believe to be beautiful about ourselves? Are we choosing
the same things that society, culture, and history changes and
updates like fashion every so often to be our definition.
When I first saw Radi, I genuinely was very attracted
(18:08):
to her. I thought she was beautiful from the moment
I saw her, and I still believe she's absolutely beautiful
and gorgeous today. But so much of what I've learned
today is learning to love her for all the nuances,
the subtleties that I never knew before, the quirks, the
curious parts of her, the parts of her that you
(18:30):
know that surprised me. And so I want to talk
to you about what it really means to build self
love and self worth. The first is understanding the parts
of yourself you don't like and recognizing whether you don't
like them because you don't like them, or you don't
like them because someone else told you not to like them,
(18:53):
because someone in history, culture art somehow got through to
you from all of these decades ago, and you're carrying
around an old idea about the way you feel about yourself.
So many of our perceptions of ourselves are based on
other ideas, like the ones I've shared today, that have
made their way through time and lasted as almost generational curses.
(19:18):
We're judging ourselves and the people around us based on
standards that we didn't choose, values that we didn't create,
and symbols that we didn't select. The second thing I'll
say to you is find out what makes you feel confident.
It may be developing a new skill. I think what
(19:38):
people don't realize is that until you develop skills, the
skill of communication, the skill of knowing how to present yourself,
preparing to have the skill of knowing how to introduce
yourself in a room. Without those skills, no matter what
you do, it's very hard to feel confident. Because you
could dress however you want, you could show up how
(20:00):
however you want, you could be invited to something incredible,
and you'll still feel like an impostor you'll still feel
out of your depths or out of your comfort zone
without a set of skills. Identify the skills that you
haven't invested in, Skills that you've missed out on, Skills
that you haven't prioritized that can make a big difference
in how you feel about yourself. The other thing I
(20:21):
want you to do is take a look at how
this is an ever evolving, ever changing conversation and notice
how through times you've seen updates and how you've seen
updates and upgrades on what is seen as beautiful, and
how it keeps changing and keeps you on your toes.
It supports industries, It builds industries, It allows for industries
(20:43):
to actually exist. Just because we believe we're not beautiful enough,
we're not fit enough, we're not strong enough. And start
writing down your own definition. Start writing down your own description,
start writing down your own perception, and start disconnecting from
the others. If you need to unfollow, unsubscribe on social media,
(21:06):
if you need to change your algorithm, if you need
to just switch off from social media in order to
create your own views of beauty, to create your own
ideals of attraction, that may be the best thing you
ever do, because otherwise you'll be chasing something that was
defined decades ago. So many of us are pursuing a
version of ourself that we don't even know will like,
(21:29):
but we believe because others may like it, that hopefully
we will too. And the truth is, when we try
to become who we think other people will like, even
if someone likes us, we may not like ourselfs. And
liking yourself is worth so much more than however many
likes you receive on a post on social media. I
(21:50):
want to thank you for listening today. I hope that
it's been an education. I hope it's been enlightening. I
hope that it's giving you insight into recognizing that when
you try and answer these questions, when you try and
chase a version of beauty, you could chase any definition
for any decade and you'd still be behind. Thank you
so much for listening. Remember I'm forever in your corner
(22:12):
and I'm always rooting for you. I'll see you soon.
If you love this episode, you'll enjoy my conversation with
Megan Trainer on breaking generational trauma and how to be
confident from the inside out.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
My therapist told me stand in the mirror naked for
five minutes. It was already tough for me to love
my body, but after the C section scarf with all
the stretch marks, now I'm looking at myself like I've
been hacked. But day three, when I did it, I
was like, you know what, her thighs are cute
Host
Jay Shetty
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