Pick your favorite!

In Round 19, the winning answer was submitted by steelridge58,
and here is the fresh question they've thrown our way:

What actually defines beauty? Should we be chasing after it just to make life feel better? Does beauty have a way of masking flaws, or hiding away ugliness, evil, and suffering? Is beauty something you can actually go out and buy? Can beauty grow old? Is there some kind of underlying formula behind what we find beautiful? Is beauty universal? If everyone has different tastes, does that mean there are different kinds of beauty too? Is it strictly a visual thing? How does beauty actually feel? Who are the people who are "blind to beauty"? What makes beauty vulnerable? Does it possess true power and strength, or does it exist in stages, evolving over time? Can something ugly eventually transform into something beautiful? In what ways is it effective—is it liberating, or perhaps even healing? Should we be working to save beauty, or is it beauty that ends up saving us?

The thread is open for entries until Sunday, January 9th, 2022, at 8:00 PM!

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There’s a certain beauty in what remains unknown.

There’s just something about that feeling when you can actually sense your own soul and find a way to express it simply by living...

Beauty—if you want to call it that—is essentially a kind of radiance, something intuitively felt through its pleasant essence.

God bless America!

Good things are just plain good.

It’s a nice thought, really

Truth is beautiful. Truth is universal. Universal is good. And good? Well, good is beautiful. 😁

Beauty shows up in a master stroke of a paintbrush, a swell of music, the right word, or just a genuine smile. We all recognize it when we see it. But I've been thinking—maybe the beauty we create and share, and even the stuff we take in, is really just a reflection of what's already inside us.
We are the beauty. It’s kind of wonderful, I guess, to find that spark within ourselves and then spot it in everyone else, too.

There are plenty of "technical" ways to define beauty in aesthetics—more or less enough to fill a textbook—but most of them miss the point. Only one definition actually captures what it feels like to encounter it, even if it’s the least precise one: beauty as a "promise of happiness."

It hits you almost like a shock—which probably makes sense, given how jarring
beauty can be. It breaks the loop of your daily grind and, just for a second, cracks open a completely different reality.

Herbert Marcuse

Beauty is simply whatever brings joy to the heart.

There’s just something so incredible about things that catch our eye, bring total peace to our minds, and give our hearts that warm, fuzzy feeling.

There’s just something about the stuff that hits you right in the soul—you know, those things that make you feel truly alive. You can't really pin beauty down with some clinical formula or a ruler, though. It’s purely subjective. We don't measure it with logic or common sense; we feel it deep down through our emotions and our spirit. Beauty is basically anything that gives us that sudden spark of energy, that rush of momentum, or just makes everything feel "right" in a single, perfect moment.
It could be something massive that stays with you for a lifetime, or maybe just a tiny, fleeting thing that vanishes in a heartbeat. It might trigger these deep, heavy emotions, or it could be something totally superficial—it doesn't really matter. Beauty is that crazy thing we’d be willing to die for one minute, and then turn around and toss aside the next. It doesn't have a set shape or a predictable pattern, either. Honestly, it's just whatever manages to trigger that creative spark or a surge of positive vibes in us, even if it's only for a split second, making life feel a little more vibrant.

In a strictly literal sense, I suppose things have been subdued and reconciled.

Beauty is just bits and pieces of a lost paradise.

Sent from my Galaxy S10 using Reddit

There is beauty in things that remain unblemished—in things existing exactly as they are. But the real question is: what defines those standards of beauty? That falls entirely within the realm of what I’d call a social contract. Essentially, an observer's perception of beauty is shaped by unspoken societal rules. A prime example would be the Venus of Willendorf.

Anything that isn't ugly is technically beautiful. As that famous poet once put it, truth is inherently ugly, which implies that lies are inherently beautiful. To paraphrase the poet slightly... if you actually had any taste, you wouldn't go around thinking you're attractive. 👍

I actually find myself on the complete opposite side of the fence compared to what my colleague just stated here:

It’s a lovely sentiment, sure, but if we follow that logic to its conclusion, we end up with a lie that’s nothing short of ugly—actually, it’s downright corrosive.
If we look at humans as the most complex beings we can possibly observe, I’d argue that a person (regardless of gender) becomes more beautiful when they strive for truth and actually live by it. On the flip side, when someone chooses to inhabit a lie, they become increasingly unattractive—though, honestly, that depends entirely on how deep those lies go and how long they've been living them.

Vitality.
It is that underlying force that sustains us, the thing that provides motivation and serves as a constant reminder of what it actually means to possess a genuine, positive will to live.

I’m actually quite easy on the eyes.