Beauty is skin deep

Report on a controversial quote popular among people called “beauty is skin deep” or “beauty in the

eye of a beholder”

Azas Shahrier

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Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 2

People’s Perception .................................................................................................................... 2

Evidence ..................................................................................................................................... 4

Major View Point from Ethics ................................................................................................... 4

Relationship with normative theory ....................................................................................... 4

Influences on ethical decision-making ................................................................................... 4

Individual factors ................................................................................................................ 4

Situational factors ............................................................................................................... 4

Individual influences .............................................................................................................. 4

Moral framing ........................................................................................................................ 6

Context-related factors ....................................................................................................... 6

Systems of reward .............................................................................................................. 6

Why beauty is skin deep? .......................................................................................................... 7

Research Methodology .............................................................................................................. 7

Research Findings ...................................................................................................................... 8

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 11

Bibliography ............................................................................................................................ 12

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Introduction1

"Beauty is skin deep" and "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" can be very controversial

quotes to some people. Those quotes are all based on how they are viewed by other people.

You may not believe in them but other might believe strongly in them. First, "Beauty is

skin deep" all depends on what type of person you are. Both quotes rate directly to each

other but let's pull them apart separately. I think that ‘Beauty is skin deep' is expressed in

many ways by people. If you are not one of those beautiful people in this world then to

some people you mean nothing. When you look around a normal school you see clicks

right? Well that's what I am talking about. You see the people who express themselves by

wearing darker clothes and the people who always wear the trendy and in style clothes.

Sometimes you get jealous and say mean things because either you wished you looked like

them or you want the things they have. But we were all created differently.

People’s Perception

You have to like yourself first for anyone else to like you. Relating to ‘Beauty is skin deep'

means that people only look at what's inside that counts. Some people believe at love at

first sight, what is all that about? That means they like the person just from seeing them. So

many people in this world can relate. People judge people. You look around and think by

the clothes or hairstyle this girl wears that she can either not afford them or chooses to be

that way. So you think she is poor. Doesn't she deserve your attention too? I think that

beauty is over rated. People need to look at your mind, your intelligence. Being pretty is

not all it's cracked up to be. Since being pretty has got me a lot of compliments it also

brings in the bad sides of beauty.

Therefore most people think that beauty is skin deep which means that a person is only

beautiful by their outside appearance such as weight, height, hair length, or face

complexion. Most people do not think pay attention to the important characteristics that

make and mode a person. They feel that beauty is based on appearance alone. I on the

other hand think differently. Beauty is all about what is on a person's insides. Inside beauty

1 See, http://www.tolerance.org/activity/beauty-skin-deep.

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consists of the person's love for themselves, their love for others, and finally their

personality. These characteristics help shape a beautiful person. Being beautiful means

knowing that you are beautiful. Not allowing others to put you down by making you think

or feel that you are not beautiful. A beautiful person, in my eyes, loves the person that they

are and will be. They accept who they are no matter what others say or do. They value their

life and cherish each breath taken. A beautiful person does not try to change him or herself

because of what others think or say. Beauty requires having self-respect. Displaying self-

respect shows that you love your body; your mind, your spirit, and your soul.hey carry

themselves in a respectable manner. Beautiful people think, say, and do positive things and

try to stay away from negativity. Being able to love others as well as your self is also

another way of displaying beauty. A beautiful person notices the beauty in someone else as

well as himself or herself. Showing generosity to others, even to those that mistreat you is

a beautiful thing. Showing love to others takes courage and sometimes strength when the

person is not treating you how you should be treated. Being kind hearted and helping

others who are less fortunate than you shows your beauty as well. Your will to help

whether it’s saying something nice or doing something nice also displays your beauty. It

means beauty is beyond skin, it's in the soul. Social psychology tells us that beauty in fact

is not only skin deep. That is that beautiful people actually are nicer and friendlier.

The argument goes as follows. Hopefully, we can all agree that we subconsciously assign

positive characteristics such as intelligence and friendliness to beautiful people. Studies

confirm this assumption. We then treat these people nicer than we treat others. Studies

confirm this as well. The improvable hypothesis is that beautiful people are beautiful on

the inside as well. As a result of having been beautiful and therefore kindly treated children

they develop a positive self-image and treat others as they have learned others treat them.

This continues into adulthood creating beautiful people that are friendlier and nicer than

less beautiful people. Thus beautiful looking people become truly beautiful people by way

of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Our experience with beautiful people being nice fuels are

expectation by way of a psychological phenomenon known as association that similar

looking (and therefore also beautiful) people will also be nice. We in turn treat them nicer

and they treat us nicely in return further developing their own good character.

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Evidence2

We find evidence of this belief in popular songs "you must have been a beautiful baby; you

must have been a wonderful child. You must have been a beautiful baby cause baby look at

you now”. On contrary, there is flaw in this line of thinking is the assumption that if

beautiful people are treated well, they will become mature, thoughtful, compassionate

individuals who treat others well. No doubt that is sometimes the case, but people who

experience little adversity often develop into amazingly uncharitable, self-cantered

individuals.

Major View Point from Ethics3

Relationship with normative theory

The role of normative theory in the stages of ethical decision-making is primarily in relation

to moral judgement. Moral judgements can be made according to considerations of rights,

duty, consequences, etc. However, the issue of whether and how normative theory is used by

an individual decision-maker depends on a range of different factors that influence the

decision-making process.

Influences on ethical decision-making

Individual factors: The unique characteristics of the individual actually making the relevant

decision. These include factors which are given by birth and those acquired by experience

and socialization.

Situational factors: The particular features of the context that influence whether the

individual will make an ethical or unethical decision. These include factors associated with

the work context and those associated with the issue itself.

Individual influences

1) Age and gender

Research suggests:

2 See, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty%27s_Only_Skin_Deep 3 See, http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_66.htm

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- Aged people are more ethical than young

- Female are more ethical than men

2) National and cultural characteristics

People from different cultural backgrounds likely to have different beliefs about right and

wrong, different values, etc. and this will inevitably lead to variations in ethical

decision-making across nations, religions and cultures

Hofstede (1980; 1994) influential in shaping our understanding of these differences – our

‘mental programming’

a) Individualism/collectivism

b) Power distance

c) Uncertainty avoidance

d) Masculinity/femininity

3) Education and employment

- Educated people are more ethical than illiterate. Ex: research reveals that business students

not only rank lower in moral development than students in other subjects such as law, but are

also more likely to engage in academic cheating, such as plagiarism.

- Relationship between employment experience and education and ethical decision making is

still unclear

4) Psychological factors

Cognitive moral development (CMD) refers to the different levels of reasoning that an

individual can apply to ethical issues and problems. The important thing about CMD theory

is that it is not so much what is decided that is at issue, but how the decision is reached in

terms of the individual’s reasoning process.

Pre-conventional: individuals define right and wrong according to self interest and expected

rewards and punishment from authority

Conventional: Individuals live up to what is expected of them immediate peers and those

close to them.

Post-conventional: Individuals go beyond identifying with others’ expectations, and assess

right and wrong according to the upholding of basic rights, values, and contracts of society.

Jones proposes that the intensity of an issue will vary according to six factors:

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a) Magnitude of consequences: This is the expected sum of the harms or benefits for

those impacted by the problem or action, such as health problems or death as a result

of a faulty product.

b) Social consensus: People are in agreement over the ethics of the problem or action.

c) Probability of effect: Likelihood that the harms or benefits are actually going to

happen.

d) Temporal immediacy: Concerned with the speed with which the consequences are

likely to occur. Ex: long term effects of smoking or other unhealthy products.

e) Proximity: the feeling of nearness (social, cultural, psychological or physical) the

decision-maker has for those impacted by his or her decision.

f) Concentration of effect: cheating a person out of a hundred Euros is much more

morally intense than cheating the same sum out of a large multinational with millions

of shareholders.

Moral framing

The same problem or dilemma can be perceived very differently according to the way that the

issue is framed. Language important aspect of moral framing: integrity, honesty, fairness,

propriety-or lying, cheating and stealing.

The problem is that many people in business are reluctant to ascribe moral terms to their

work, even if acting for moral reasons, or if their actions have obvious moral consequences-

Moral muteness occurs because of:

a) Harmony) Efficiency and c) Image of power and effectiveness

Context-related factors: the organizational context in which an employee will be working-

especially the expectations and demands placed on business people within the work

environment that are likely to influence their perceptions of what is the morally right course

of action to take.

Systems of reward

People are likely to do what they are rewarded for. Ex: many organizations offer commission

or bonuses for salespeople in order to motivate them to achieve greater numbers of sales.

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Why beauty is skin deep?4

We all know one or more beautiful people with an inflated sense of entitlement and self-

worth. They believe they are a prince or princess and deserve to be universally treated better

than anyone else. Often they also believe they have the right to treat others like dirt. Since

we have better memory for negative events than positive ones, this is often the lasting

impression we have of beautiful people and it (perhaps unfairly) spawns the saying "beauty

is skin deep."

Well on the other side: -The phrase "beauty is skin deep" is presumptive, misleading and a

patently false statement. It presumes, first of all, that everyone accepts the standard

definition of beauty, i.e., a person whose physical appearance would be appealing to a

majority of people. That majority would first have to agree on a definition of beauty. It also

negates the concept that beauty comes from within! True beauty goes much deeper than

skin. It's difficult to interpret because I don't know that either gender would view them in the

same light as someone of the opposite sex would. But, the essence is that, if you perceive

that a person's features are arranged in a way that is pleasing to you, take it for what it is - a

pleasant looking face! Nothing more, nothing less.

Research Methodology

For research, I have conducted a survey through distributing questionnaire to both teenage

boys and girls. From the questionnaire I have found answers of my questions. I have also

collected data from secondary sources like books, journals, newspapers and articles published

in the internet. These sources have provided elaborate ideas about the statement and also

given me a clear idea of the statement.

4 For more information, Mobius, Markus & Rosenblat, Tanya, 2010. "Why Beauty Matters," Staff General

Research Papers 32112, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.

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Research Findings

The survey has given me mixed results. Perception of beauty is viewed differently by

teenagers. It varies from person to person. The survey has been conducted among the age

between 20 to 23 years old teenagers.

Fig-1

The figure stated above indicates that the teenage boys are influenced more than female

children. This is due to the fact that in our country men are viewed as the dominant class in

the society. Moreover, men are expected to take care of the women in the household.

Whereas, women are expected to settle down with their family duties and maintain other

section of the household responsibilities.

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Similarity or Dissimilarity of Opinions

Fig-2

This figure stated above indicates that around 20% of boys’ decision matches with the girls’

decision. However, around 80% of boys’ decision does not match with girls’ decision. So, it

can be said that in most cases boys decide something else as beautiful which girls do not.

Therefore, there is a gap of similar mentality between boys and girls according to their

choice. In addition, society influences the decision making of boys and girls both directly and

indirectly. In addition, this may change the social demography. However, this influence is

playing a somewhat bad role to the overall well-being of the society.

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Traditional v/s Non-Traditional Lifestyle

Fig-3

This figure indicates that 80% of boys want a traditional lifestyle like having kids, a wife

handling household responsibilities etc. In contrast the other chart shows 60% girls are more

likely to hold non- traditional profession. So, from the above statistics it is clear that there is a

significant difference between most of the boys thought and most of the girls thought. Parents

play an important role in this thought of boys and girls. As because they are more

experienced people and they have seen a lot of the real life. They tend to influence their

children to follow their designated path.

This research shows the as usual answers of my findings. I have found that girls give more

preference to beauty than boys. Many of them feel that societal influence on choice is

responsible for this. The reason behind this is mainly society’s own perception. Many of the

people feel that if one does not have fair skin than the girl is not beautiful. They also feel that

beauty will bring success in life. On the other hand, men think that a beautiful person’s

influence in life is necessary. They feel good when they are influenced because they feel that

they are their cared for by that beautiful person. But in reality a person beautiful or not should

guide their loved ones rather than influence them as it will be better for them on the long run.

I have also found that girls do not want to be dominated by boys. They believe in free will

and independent thoughts. As a result the choice and decisions of beauty becomes dissimilar

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between boys and girls. Most of the boys want their life to follow the traditional pattern

because in our society that is the acceptable norm. On the other hand, most of the girls choose

non-traditional pattern of lifestyle as they do not want to be influenced by anyone and the

society as a whole. So, there is a gap exists between the boys desire and girls desire. As a

result, a growing parity of different opinions create a gap of dreams and desires of what they

want to do and how it turns out to be.

Conclusion

At last finally in nutshell I want to say in conclusion which I got to find from my research

that it means beauty is beyond skin, it's in the soul. It means very simply that if we take a

'beautiful' and a 'not beautiful' person and remove the skin, are they not equal in their looks?

There is nothing about the beauty statement. It is only skin deep. We may not believe it. If

we remove the skin layer of a 'beautiful' person, and I am sure we will see that the beauty

too is removed. We will not have to go deeper. Beauty is superficial, and so is the one

whom measures a person's worth by it.

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Bibliography

Biddle, Jeff E & Hamermesh, Daniel S, 1998. "Beauty, Productivity, and

Discrimination: Lawyers' Looks and Lucre," Journal of Labor Economics, University

of Chicago Press, vol. 16(1), pages 172-201, January.

Mobius, Markus & Rosenblat, Tanya, 2010. "Why Beauty Matters," Staff General

Research Papers 32112, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.

Gabriella Conti & Stephen Pudney, 2011. "Survey Design and the Analysis of

Satisfaction," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(3), pages

1087-1093, August._institution [Accessed 15 October 2012]

Wikipedia. 2012. Wikipedia. Available at: http://www.wikipedia.org/. [Accessed 13

October 2012].

Beauty is Skin Deep | Teaching Tolerance. 2012. Beauty is Skin Deep | Teaching

Tolerance. Available at: http://www.tolerance.org/activity/beauty-skin-deep.

Unterberger, Richie. "Cherie Currie Beauty's Only Skin Deep review". Allmusic. Rovi

Corporation. Retrieved 2011-09-23.