What is beauty?

I've been working over my course contents and remembered teaching the concept definition paper when I taught Comp 1...and I've been studying digital enhancement of models and body image in advertising lately for Comp 2 preparation...altogether, it's led me to this.

Today, it seems beauty is some artifice no one can achieve. It's a painted, flawless, china doll (though much thinner) airbrushed rendition of humanity. In many ways, it's becoming androgynous, and it seems to be encompassing older generations than it did just a few years back. (This last item, doubtless, due to the consumption potentials of the baby boomers--would not want to count them out with too much focus on youth.)

I'm no expert, but it seems beauty changes with the seasons. Not all that long ago, it was big hair (Farrah Fawcett Majors, for example). Trends seem to be heading toward the skeletal skinny and the immorally young for so much advertising. (I hear a rumor that Miley Cyrus was propositioned to endorse a condom company.)

I'm just musing here, but what if culture really adopted the "young look." We've all seen older people dressed "too young," but what if everyone did. We'd all be wearing action hero clothes and Care Bear lunchboxes would be IN.

I would not doubt that trends may take us there, to where every possible measure to look young, like pre-teen young, could be the order of the day. As cosmetic science advances one nip/tuck at a time, who can predict the end of it? We'd all be lusty pedophiles, though the object of our lust would be mature men/women.

I'm not done with this train of thought, but I'm fresh out of time.