BEACH VIBES: And what they reveal about human beauty
THE beach taught me something valuable recently. Like many guys, I can often find beautiful members of the female persuasion rather intimidating. The thought of approaching these goddesses of beauty and striking up conversation is quite frightening. I'm sure many 'nice guys' out there will empathise here.
It's fair to say that our perceptions of beautiful people are largely obscured by how the media portrays them to be. At nightclubs or social gatherings, people of beauty are further armed with seductive scents, makeup, carefully crafted hairstyles and outfits that attack the imagination.
On the beach much is revealed. One might realise that beneath our seductive garments we all have blemishes and spots; birthmarks or scars. Even the most beautiful are perhaps not as attractive as one might imagine them to be if clad in clothing. The ocean washes away makeup and the salty water frizzles our hair. The beach reveals a large portion of our true selves.
It then becomes easy to single out the secure from the insecure; the one's fixated on appearance from the one's who are comfortable in their own, imperfect skins. Beauty is exuded by those with confidence and a sense of fun. It's not so much about how our bodies look by anyone's standard, but how to choose to behave within them; and there's nothing preventing us from taking good care of them.
So enjoy your body, and viva the beach! And now a quick word from Gwyneth Paltrow:
"Beauty, to me, is about being comfortable in your own skin. That, or a kick-ass red lipstick" - Gwyneth Paltrow
“BEAUTY is in the eye of the beholder”, they say. To someone more cynical about love: beauty is in the eye of the beer holder. To the advertiser and product designer, beauty is in the limbic system of the beholder.
Beauty is intrinsically tied in with advertising and new technology. I was intrigued to recently discover that the marketing of motor vehicles is not so much about shapes but reflective surfaces. The recent motor show illustrated this well, with each car shimmering more than the next in the strategically placed lighting. This has the effect of making stationary objects come to life.
Consider Steve Jobs’ claim to fame. The flood of articles that have emerged since his death remind us that Jobs was not the genius behind Apple software but rather the chief designer and marketer. His work revolved around beauty and involved appealing to the emotional beings that we are.
Designers and advertisers are responsible for shaping our ever-evolving ideas of beauty year after year. This year some of the criteria that signify beauty in technology are flat, touchable surfaces, thin and light-weight with rounded corners. The beautiful colours are black, white and silver – much like the colour scheme of what we might imagine a modern-looking kitchen to embody.
A lot of funding for the marketing of new technologies goes towards understanding how people’s brains respond to images. Debates have revolved around whether we “think beauty” or “feel beauty”. What we do know is that it takes a good few seconds for stimuli to enter into the cognitive portion of the brain, where we get a chance to really think about what we have just seen or felt.
Television adverts take this fast-paced form of advertising to the extreme – quickly throwing imagery at our eyes coupled with strange statistics and tidbits of information. They attempt to embed these into our subconscious and supply us with answers before we get a change to think about what just happened. When we happen upon the product later on we suddenly feel a strange sense of familiarity with it.
Then there is the other extreme. There is roughly a six second period whereby stimuli and information reach the cognitive part of our brains – six seconds which is crucial to advertisers and product designers. The lights dimming before a movie starts in the cinema, for example, takes roughly six seconds. The intended effect is to create feelings of anticipation and excitement. BMW copied this technique with their slow dimming lights.
Richard Seymour: How beauty feels
Richard Seymour is a product designer who revealed some of these secrets during a recent TED talk. In his talk, Seymour explores our response to beauty and illustrates the surprising power that objects which exhibit beauty can have over us. Seymour explains that the goal of advertisers and designers is to form emotional bonds between us and products. What we see, he argues, “is an electro-chemical party trick that happens before we even get a chance to think about it.”
“We are slaves to the first flash”, says Seymour, and “we see and understand things not as they are, but as we are”, to quote the philosopher Anais Nin.
Seymour also shed light on how the beauty and our perception of something can change according to the information we are provided either before or afterwards. Consider ballet, for example. One who doesn’t understand the pain and discipline that ballet dancers endure would find it far less beautiful than someone who truly understood and appreciated the art.
It makes one wonder if the small and curvy Blackberry is suddenly less beautiful now than it was before.
ADVERTISING: A fine selection of intelligent adverts
THERE’S something very pleasing about an intelligent advert, whether it be a poster or a TV commercial. Most people consider adverts as invasive and mute them whenever they come on, while others are suckered into buying just about anything that’s thrown at them.
I often find myself completely oblivious to what adverts are trying to sell – rather focusing on what subtleties they have employed to appeal to people’s human desires. These are usually quite obvious – the major ones being sex, fame, beauty and prosperity.
My favourite ads are the ones that take the piss out of the blatant methods of advertising and offer us something clever, tasteful and humorous. Those are the ones we remember and make you rush out to buy their product at a store near you. Strange … I have a sudden urge to drink Heineken ...
Intelligent Advertising
Ad for Geeks - very clever!
Pedigree - for strong dogs
WWF: 15km2 of rain forrest disappears every minute
Durex - XXL
Energiser
Post-it - never forget a name again!
Plumber with a sense of humour
BIC - makes your face smoother than things that are really smooth
Heineken - may contain adult content
Tractors - getting old gits laid since 1912
Heinz - keeping food sexy
Volvo - For life
The power of viagra
Wasn't that great!? Big-ups to the minds behind these designs - whomever they may be. Such products deserve attention when advertised so creatively.
On the beach much is revealed. One might realise that beneath our seductive garments we all have blemishes and spots; birthmarks or scars. Even the most beautiful are perhaps not as attractive as one might imagine them to be if clad in clothing. The ocean washes away makeup and the salty water frizzles our hair. The beach reveals a large portion of our true selves.
