WMST 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Plastic Surgery, Industrial Revolution, The Beauty Myth
9 May 2016
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Document Summary
Where did discourse about beauty come from: we"ve had the concept of beauty for as long as written history. Plato focused on beauty, though in abstract it applies to persons, artifacts and bits of nature. Talk of beauty in its modern sense began with the industrial revolution, its intensi ed over the next century and a half. Before the middle of the 19th century, most lived in small agrarian communities: marriages were normally planned and was not based on physical attraction. Had to make their own friends and develop personality: most relationships were really just associated with exchange. Technological changes (imagistic technologies, magazines, advertisements, movie theatres. The early to mid-20th century saw massive legal and political advances for women. The set of cultural assumptions made clear to women from victorian europe to the early 1960s. They exist almost completely in the private sphere.
