aesthetic categorizations (people)

Okay, so I think that most people will admit that it is fun to spend time looking at other people. Here is a little system of classification that might make this more fun. Also, by the use of the word 'beauty' I in no way intend to confine this system to females of the species. It just seemed like the best, or perhaps easiest, word to use.

Here we go.

Conventional Beauty

These are the people who are considered attractive because of or according to current social norms. The current social norm can be relatively far reaching in terms of human lifespan. For example the supermodel waif, extremely thin thing for girls started in the early to mid '60s with Twiggy, and is still prevalent today, see Kate Moss. (I know these are the two most popular examples, but they seem like good ones). Someone in their early to mid teens, trying to conform to this norm when it began with Twiggy would be 49 now. Today's standards of conventional beauty can be easily found looking in magazines and on the tee vee. Many of these standards, are closely related to superficial items, like clothing and hairstyle and (arguably less superficial) body shape. Consequently many people who fall into the conventional beauty category may, on second glance, not be all that exciting to look at. This is not to say that anyone you see on television or between the covers of a magazine is solely a conventional beauty, or that there is anything inherently less attractive about conventional beauty. As humans we are creatures of the society we live in.

Traditional Beauty

These are the people who would be considered beautiful in any time period. People who can transcend conventional beauty. They very well may be considered attractive or beautiful in their own time period and following their own conventions, but not only could you move them to an entirely different time period and slap the proper conventions on them and they would be considered beautiful, but you could just plant them smack in the middle of another time period and not disguise them at all and they would still be considered among the creme de la creme by any Discriminating Aesthete. Traditional beauty is not always obvious, it can be easy to overlook someone if they don't fit into the proscribed idea - the conventional - of beauty. The only example of a famous person who I think fits this category that I can think of right now is Maria Callas.

Underground/ Alternative Beauty

These are the people who follow a strict code of presentation, often intentionally counter to the conventional themes. These are today's goths, punks, skaters, emos etc. etc. There seems to be a surprisingly high concentration of traditional beauties masked as members of this grouping, again a demonstration that you can put any costume on them and it in no way lessens their beauty. (Not intending to imply that someone who fell into category of classic beauty, but happened to feel like being a punk is only playing dress up, putting on costumes and airs.) But there certainly can be a beauty of its own in pink hair or black liquid eyeliner or zoot suits or cutting your hair short when it should be long or letting it grow long when it should be short. Whether it is somehow intrinsic beauty, or otherwise affected by reactions to the implications of dyeing your hair pink and any reactions/ repercussions caused by this given the social Clime and the person's ability/ willingness to deal with those is not for me to decide.

Everyone else. (Yes, this is a copout category).

Basically there are still a lot of people not fitting into the above three categories, and I couldn't think of any apt categorizations. I do think that you can fit just about anyone that you think is nice to look at into one of the above categories. But this still leaves the people who really aren't very visually exciting.