The word ‘Beauty’ is an interesting one.

When defined, beauty is ‘a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight’, but is also defined in a second definition as ‘a beautiful woman.’

It really is hard to define what beauty is from person to the next and that is what makes it great. Beauty is within the eye of the beholder and it is what you want it to be. You shouldn’t be told what beauty is, and you shouldn’t need to define it to yourself or anyone.

Something that is quite interesting is how different traditional beauty is perceived across different countries, cultures, nations, and eras. I love that everyone views beauty so differently, but I do find it interesting as to why different cultures portray beauty so differently. Have you ever wondered why a certain country or culture has adopted the specific things they are known for or dress the way they do? Have you ever found yourself admirable at the style and appearance of another country or culture?

I certainly have and that’s why I was so interested to see this recent study on the human eye.

Beauty Within the Eye

Contact Lenses Plus, the Internet’s most influential contact lens retailer, ran a global experiment by reaching out to 95 successful designers around the world with one instruction: create the perfect eye using your personal perception of beauty.

The results of the Eyes Around the World study were engaging, interesting, and quite unique. It showed off how different cultures and countries envision beauty and allowed us to see the beauty within us all.

A few of the results included:

• In Japan, big eyes are considered ideal.
• In Denmark, bushier eyebrows are all the rage.
• In Nigeria, eyebrow trends include following a neat shape.
• In Greece, blue eyes that resemble the color of the sea are beautiful.
• In Croatia, wider eyes are viewed as more attractive.
• In Mongolia, the eye color was lightened because many Mongolians wear light brown contact lenses as an accessory.

The Human eye is truly a wonderful, beautiful thing that is hard to define. These concepts from artists in 95 different countries show how far and wide beauty can stretch

Our Hatred of Aging

One thing we can (mostly) all agree on is that, in our minds, age dulls our beauty.

For whatever reason, skin wrinkles and the natural look of getting older is dreaded by males and females alike. That’s why, we try so hard to slow down the aging process and to keep our youthful appearance.

Many people even seek things like botox and/or plastic surgery to keep that youthfulness in our face, and many of us work out hard in order to keep that physique we carried in our younger years.

Can’t we all come together and hold tight to our appearance as we get older? The aging process is beautiful and we should embrace the process instead of fighting it.

Fighting with Our Weight

Our body form and personal physique is another part of our beauty that we are constantly wrestling with. There are so many things to consider and there are so many corners where people sit with their specific mindset.

It’s important to be healthy and physical fitness can definitely impact that. But so many people believe that being skinny is what it means to be beautiful. Tons of people workout religiously to obtain the body they envision and, for many, it can become an unhealthy obsession. Some people will push that to new levels by pushing to appear as fit and muscled-up as they can.

There is nothing wrong with any of this, but it can further push the mindset that beauty is only found in a certain body type. It can become a mental strain for many people who struggle to reach the goal they so badly want to reach.

Go easy on yourself and focus on the positives within you. They are there for all of us, but so many struggle to see them.

Beauty Cannot Be Defined

The more you look at beauty and the different images that pop up for each of us, the harder it is to truly define what beauty is.

Beauty is what lives within your mind and the perception you have on yourself and the things around you.

If 95 designers envision beauty in the human eye as something so different from each other, then I ask each of you to look for the beauty in the people around you. Beauty lives all around us and, if we all chose to see it more often, we would live a more positive life among each other.