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Speaker 1: make sure you use the code on Purpose. So many
Speaker 1: of our perceptions of ourselves are based on other ideas
Speaker 1: that have made their way through time and lasted as
Speaker 1: almost generational curses. We're judging ourselves and the people around
Speaker 1: us based on standards that we didn't choose. The number
Speaker 1: one health and wellness podcast.
Speaker 2: Jay Setti, Ja Shetty zet.
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, and welcome back to On Purpose. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jay Shetty, and I'm so grateful that you're here and
Speaker 1: taking the time to spend the next thirty minutes with me. Now,
Speaker 1: in a moment when time and attention are the most
Speaker 1: valuable assets, you're choosing to come here to explore interesting questions,
Speaker 1: learn new habits and practices, and dive deep. Isn't something
Speaker 1: I ever take for granted. Now, if you're a long
Speaker 1: time listening to this show, you probably know that we've
Speaker 1: always followed a format of sorts where we dive into
Speaker 1: a topic and then I offer you tips, hacks, solutions,
Speaker 1: and suggestions of how best to navigate it. Recently, though,
Speaker 1: I've been wanting to go a step deeper to question
Speaker 1: the appearances of things some of us might take for granted.
Speaker 1: My intention being to figure out what's really going on,
Speaker 1: especially in the information age, when most of us are
Speaker 1: bombarded all day with the same appearances. Now, think about it.
Speaker 1: If you're someone who spends any time on social media,
Speaker 1: and I'm guessing that includes more of you, no doubt,
Speaker 1: you're overwhelmed with images and videos of beautiful people doing
Speaker 1: things that are incredible. Their faces are flawless, their hairs
Speaker 1: just right, everything's perfect, and usually they're on their way
Speaker 1: to a party or a city that you feel like
Speaker 1: you're missing out on. Now, with all those images bombarding
Speaker 1: us on a daily basis, we may feel sure we
Speaker 1: experience insecurity, Sure we may experience envy and jealousy, but
Speaker 1: there is conditioning and wiring happening right there and then.
Speaker 1: And for this reason is today's episode is posed in
Speaker 1: the form of a question. I think so many of
Speaker 1: us are dealing with challenges with self worth. We hear
Speaker 1: so many insights on self confidence, self love, self care.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't seem to be breaking through, and I
Speaker 1: think that's partly because we don't even know how we're
Speaker 1: being conditioned. So I want to start off by asking
Speaker 1: you a question. And the question may seem broad and random,
Speaker 1: but I promise you there's a reason, because we're going
Speaker 1: to investigate it. So the question I want to focus
Speaker 1: on today is who is the most beautiful woman in
Speaker 1: the world. Now, when I first ask you that question,
Speaker 1: either you'll come up with an actual name of someone
Speaker 1: you know, or maybe it's a celebrity or a model
Speaker 1: or a well known person. I'm sure we could have
Speaker 1: gone down the lane of who's the most handsome man
Speaker 1: or whatever it may be. But I want to stick
Speaker 1: with this for a second because this question led me
Speaker 1: to take an intensive dive into the ways we think
Speaker 1: about beauty from all different angles historical, cultural, philosophical, even mathematical,
Speaker 1: a quest that traces all the way back to the
Speaker 1: ancient Greeks. Has the definition of beauty changed over time?
Speaker 1: And how much is it influenced by where we grew
Speaker 1: up and the era in which we came of age.
Speaker 1: Are there certain constants or ground rules about beauty? Or
Speaker 1: do the qualities that come together to create the most
Speaker 1: beautiful woman in the world change from year to year,
Speaker 1: decade to decade, And if beauty itself changes, how much
Speaker 1: has to do with us, the innate preferences and biases
Speaker 1: that each of us is born with, and how much
Speaker 1: has to do with the big business of selling dreams,
Speaker 1: whether it's beauty, fashion, makeup, music or film. The Greeks,
Speaker 1: I want you to know were preoccupied with beauty, but
Speaker 1: more than intrigued by beauty as a concept. They were
Speaker 1: intent on figuring out, using logic, reason, and ideally measurement,
Speaker 1: what made someone or something beautiful. To them. Beauty wasn't
Speaker 1: subjective or a person, and the definition of beautiful didn't
Speaker 1: vary depending on who you asked. For the Greeks, beauty
Speaker 1: had to be rational. Among the top characteristics, according to
Speaker 1: philosophers and mathematicians of that time, were order, symmetry and definiteness, meaning,
Speaker 1: for example, that a sculptor creating a statue of a
Speaker 1: Greek goddess should ensure that both her arms are the
Speaker 1: right length, that her hands should match those arms, that
Speaker 1: her head should balance on shoulders neither too big nor
Speaker 1: too small, and that if she is pictured running or
Speaker 1: simply lounging around, that her every muscle and movement be
Speaker 1: portrayed in intricate detail. For the ancient Greek's beauty was
Speaker 1: a function of math. Beauty was all about harmony and proportion.
Speaker 1: One other thing stands out too. For Plato and other
Speaker 1: Greek philosophers, beauty was also linked to a person's goodness
Speaker 1: and morality, an idea that was later picked up in
Speaker 1: fairy tales and Disney films. In other words, if you
Speaker 1: were beautiful on the outside, you were probably beautiful on
Speaker 1: the inside too, though it's hard to speculate which came first,
Speaker 1: because they lived in ancient Greece and weren't inclined to
Speaker 1: calling something beautiful. Without taking a shot at figuring out why,
Speaker 1: Greek philosophers did everything in their power to determine if
Speaker 1: beauty could be measured using mathematical formulas, which is how
Speaker 1: mathematicians like Pythagoras produced a concept that many centuries later
Speaker 1: would come to be dubbed the golden ratio. Ask him
Speaker 1: who was the most beautiful woman in the world back then,
Speaker 1: and odds were he would say Helen of Troy, a
Speaker 1: woman largely credited with precipitating the Trojan War. Why did
Speaker 1: they say that easy her face contained the same precise
Speaker 1: mathematical theorems they kept seeing in objects belonging to the
Speaker 1: natural world that were unanimously deemed to be beautiful, things
Speaker 1: like nautilus shells, the leaves on trees, pine cones, and
Speaker 1: pine cone seeds. It took a few centsies for this
Speaker 1: theorem to be given a name, the golden ratio, though
Speaker 1: looking back, it shows up in the face of Mona Lisa,
Speaker 1: in the parthen and in Athens, and in the Great
Speaker 1: Pyramid of Gizer, though no one can say for sure
Speaker 1: if they were created with the golden ratio in mind.
Speaker 1: But back to Helen of Troy, what role did the
Speaker 1: golden ratio play in the fact she was widely considered
Speaker 1: to be the most beautiful woman in the world. For
Speaker 1: Pythagoras and other Greek mathematicians, the number three had a
Speaker 1: special significance. By dividing the human face into three sections
Speaker 1: or divisions, he and his colleagues could come that much
Speaker 1: closer to defining the ingredients of extraordinary beauty. The first
Speaker 1: measurement was from a woman's hairline down to the middle
Speaker 1: of the eyes. The second measurement started from those same
Speaker 1: eyes and ended at the bottom of the nose. The
Speaker 1: third and final measurement was from the bottom of the
Speaker 1: nose to the base of a woman's chin. Conclusion, the
Speaker 1: most beautiful faces on the planet were two thirds as
Speaker 1: wide as they were long. What's more, if all three
Speaker 1: measurements were roughly equal, a woman's face was more likely
Speaker 1: than not to be universally seen as beautiful. The color
Speaker 1: of a beautiful woman's hair mattered, too, confirming Blonde hair
Speaker 1: in ancient Greece was by far the preferred color. Rarely
Speaker 1: do you see any illustrations or all paintings of dark
Speaker 1: haired or red Greek gods, either female or male. Why Because,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, beauty for the Greeks was also
Speaker 1: connected to inner goodness and a kind of moral purity.
Speaker 1: One's outward appearance the purest possible reflection of the virtue
Speaker 1: contained inside great art and sculpture. In some ways, the
Speaker 1: earliest form of media also played a powerful part in
Speaker 1: how the definitions of female beauty evolved. Nearly two thousand
Speaker 1: years after the end of the g Greek Empire, Renaissance,
Speaker 1: artists like Bartercelly, Leonardo Rubens, and Raphael portrayed women as
Speaker 1: a physical type cavacious, fleshy, maternal, and mysterious. This ideal, incidentally,
Speaker 1: has endured for centuries and across all cultures. Today, female
Speaker 1: beauty has no link to extreme thinness. Believe it or not,
Speaker 1: That idea has been around since the nineteen sixties, but
Speaker 1: shapeliness not to mention youth, since curviness and youth both
Speaker 1: communicate to suitors that she's the right age and healthy
Speaker 1: enough to conceive and raise children. In short, the media
Speaker 1: can prioritize certain looks and figures all it weighs, but
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, some things are hard
Speaker 1: wired in us as animals and won't ever change. Evolution
Speaker 1: it won't surprise you to learn always has the final say.
Speaker 1: But I want to revisit the idea of symmetry and proportion,
Speaker 1: and the idea that everything from the face to the
Speaker 1: arms to the hands should exist in complete harmony. It's
Speaker 1: easy to dismiss this concept as old fashioned and even dated,
Speaker 1: but it still plays a part in how we look
Speaker 1: at beauty today. In fact, the ancient Greeks are largely
Speaker 1: responsible for the Western standards of beauty that appear in
Speaker 1: our media today. Think of snow White or Cinderella or
Speaker 1: Arielle in The Little Mermaid. Their beautiful appearance is inseparable
Speaker 1: from their goodness and innocence, whereas the witches and ogres
Speaker 1: and villains surrounding them who are eager to do them
Speaker 1: harm are seen as the opposite of beautiful, as if
Speaker 1: their evil dispositions have negatively affected the way they look.
Speaker 1: Another factor that's been linked to beauty a woman's voice.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen eighties, social scientists did a study hoping
Speaker 1: to show a connection between women's voices and their levels
Speaker 1: of beauty. They did this by having a team of
Speaker 1: male volunteers speak on the phone with a group of women.
Speaker 1: I should add this was voice only couldn't see the women,
Speaker 1: nor the women see the men. After the male volunteers
Speaker 1: were asked to assess the most beautiful voices with the
Speaker 1: faces of the most beautiful women, the researchers conclude that
Speaker 1: vocal attractiveness was indeed correlated to the beauty of the
Speaker 1: women in question. I might also add that the more
Speaker 1: youthful sounding voice, the more attractive it crame across. Once again,
Speaker 1: blame evolution. Imagine you're visiting Ethiopia, where some tribes in
Speaker 1: the south still make use of the centuries old practice
Speaker 1: of lipplates. These discs are inserted into a woman's bottom
Speaker 1: lip and are seen as signs of both beauty and status.
Speaker 1: Scars or scarification, are also commonplace among such African ethnic groups.
Speaker 1: An eye for a razor is used to make cuts
Speaker 1: in the skin, and ash or clay or pastes are
Speaker 1: then rubbed into the cuts, which creates bumps and patterns
Speaker 1: on the skin that take anywhere from six months to
Speaker 1: a year to heal. These two are widely considered great
Speaker 1: emblems of beauty in New Zealand, especially among the Maori tribes.
Speaker 1: Facial tattoos serve an almost identical beautifying purpose. They also
Speaker 1: communicate to the world a woman's identity, her social status,
Speaker 1: her heritage, and her own professional achievements. It's quite literally
Speaker 1: like having your family tree and your place in it
Speaker 1: seared onto your skin. How do you feel about unibrows?
Speaker 1: The ancient Greeks loved them, probably because they were so symmetrical. Today,
Speaker 1: in the Central Asian country of Tajikistan, a unibrow is
Speaker 1: still considered a signature of great beauty, versus in the West,
Speaker 1: where a unibrow is often considered well, not entirely desired
Speaker 1: or welcome. Tajikistan, women who don't naturally have a unibrow
Speaker 1: stretching over their eyes can even buy products to enhance
Speaker 1: the brows they were born with. You can see that
Speaker 1: different cultures value different things, and our conditioning means the
Speaker 1: culture we were raised in, the culture we grew up in,
Speaker 1: defines what we see as beautiful and attractive. But think
Speaker 1: about this for a second. Consider, for example, the Japanese
Speaker 1: concept known as wabi sabi, which emphasizes the beauty that
Speaker 1: is found in imperfection. I absolutely love this idea. A
Speaker 1: perfectly manicured back lawn is considered in Japan unacceptable and unnatural.
Speaker 1: No back lawn has ever looked like that. Perfection, this
Speaker 1: idea argues, may be symmetrical, but at the expense of
Speaker 1: what we love and the objects and people we loved most,
Speaker 1: namely their imperfection. Okay, I am so excited about this
Speaker 1: because we've got the first ever merch drop for on Purpose.
Speaker 1: It's finally here and for world Mental health. Today we're
Speaker 1: doing an exclusive limited edition drop with all the proceeds
Speaker 1: going to the National Alliance on Mental Illness NAMI. So
Speaker 1: now you can wear your on purpose merch, listen to
Speaker 1: the podcast and know that you two are having an impact.
Speaker 1: I want to thank you so much in advance. I
Speaker 1: can't wait to see all of your pictures wearing the merch,
Speaker 1: their sweatshirts, a hat, t shirts. Check it out on
Speaker 1: our website jshetdyshop dot com. That's Jshettishop dot com. And remember,
Speaker 1: one hundred percent of the proceeds go to NAMI. Let's
Speaker 1: return now to the beauty standards of the West, which,
Speaker 1: as we see, seemed to change every decode or so
Speaker 1: until the nineteen twenties. As we've seen in other cultures
Speaker 1: around the world, great beauty was marked by a full
Speaker 1: face and a curvey, voluptuous body. Then the Flapper showed
Speaker 1: up a woman skinny as a boy, with short, bobbed
Speaker 1: hair and an androgynous appearance. She was followed by Greta
Speaker 1: garbo lean, strong and enigmatic a woman a few words.
Speaker 1: Two decades later, in the nineteen fifties, beauty standards changed again,
Speaker 1: with the media serving up two female options, the Go
Speaker 1: next Door, embodied by Doris Day and Debbie Reynolds, and
Speaker 1: another kind of girl represented by Marilyn Monroe. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, beauty standards changed again with the arrival of Twiggy,
Speaker 1: an English supermodel weighing ninety one pounds who became a
Speaker 1: cultural icon in London, introducing or should I say reintroducing
Speaker 1: the world to the concept of androgyny. In the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: the pendulum swung back again with the TV show Charlie's
Speaker 1: Angels and Farah Fawcett posters plastering the bedroom walls of
Speaker 1: every teenage boy in America. Suddenly it seemed good health
Speaker 1: and athleticism was in vogue, though this look was soon
Speaker 1: swapped out by the pale, skinny women who began to
Speaker 1: appear in fashion magazines in the nineteen nineties. Now I
Speaker 1: have no judgment over which is more attractive or not.
Speaker 1: It's what's interesting is how it's being presented to us. Now,
Speaker 1: as I've walked you through this journey of history of culture,
Speaker 1: we can just see that when we try to on
Speaker 1: so Who's the most beautiful woman in the world, It
Speaker 1: almost feels like it changes every decade, and today it
Speaker 1: may change every week, and what becomes interesting is that
Speaker 1: our bubble becomes our truth. So if you go online
Speaker 1: and ask who's the most beautiful woman in the world,
Speaker 1: and AI will come up with its own semi scientific assessments,
Speaker 1: And among the names that come up, you'll see Jody
Speaker 1: Cromer's Zendea, Bella Hadid, Beyonce, Simone Bars, Janelle Monet, Aaronana Grande,
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift, Margot Robbie. But what's really interesting about all
Speaker 1: of this, we would say, well, they're all beautiful in
Speaker 1: different ways. So the question that we really have to ask,
Speaker 1: as opposed to who's the most beautiful woman in the world,
Speaker 1: what do we count as our beauty and what do
Speaker 1: we believe to be beautiful about ourselves? Are we choosing
Speaker 1: the same things that society, culture, and history changes and
Speaker 1: updates like fashion every so often to be our definition.
Speaker 1: When I first saw Radi, I genuinely was very attracted
Speaker 1: to her. I thought she was beautiful from the moment
Speaker 1: I saw her, and I still believe she's absolutely beautiful
Speaker 1: and gorgeous today. But so much of what I've learned
Speaker 1: today is learning to love her for all the nuances,
Speaker 1: the subtleties that I never knew before, the quirks, the
Speaker 1: curious parts of her, the parts of her that you
Speaker 1: know that surprised me. And so I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you about what it really means to build self
Speaker 1: love and self worth. The first is understanding the parts
Speaker 1: of yourself you don't like and recognizing whether you don't
Speaker 1: like them because you don't like them, or you don't
Speaker 1: like them because someone else told you not to like them,
Speaker 1: because someone in history, culture art somehow got through to
Speaker 1: you from all of these decades ago, and you're carrying
Speaker 1: around an old idea about the way you feel about yourself.
Speaker 1: So many of our perceptions of ourselves are based on
Speaker 1: other ideas, like the ones I've shared today, that have
Speaker 1: made their way through time and lasted as almost generational curses.
Speaker 1: We're judging ourselves and the people around us based on
Speaker 1: standards that we didn't choose, values that we didn't create,
Speaker 1: and symbols that we didn't select. The second thing I'll
Speaker 1: say to you is find out what makes you feel confident.
Speaker 1: It may be developing a new skill. I think what
Speaker 1: people don't realize is that until you develop skills, the
Speaker 1: skill of communication, the skill of knowing how to present yourself,
Speaker 1: preparing to have the skill of knowing how to introduce
Speaker 1: yourself in a room. Without those skills, no matter what
Speaker 1: you do, it's very hard to feel confident. Because you
Speaker 1: could dress however you want, you could show up how
Speaker 1: however you want, you could be invited to something incredible,
Speaker 1: and you'll still feel like an impostor you'll still feel
Speaker 1: out of your depths or out of your comfort zone
Speaker 1: without a set of skills. Identify the skills that you
Speaker 1: haven't invested in, Skills that you've missed out on, Skills
Speaker 1: that you haven't prioritized that can make a big difference
Speaker 1: in how you feel about yourself. The other thing I
Speaker 1: want you to do is take a look at how
Speaker 1: this is an ever evolving, ever changing conversation and notice
Speaker 1: how through times you've seen updates and how you've seen
Speaker 1: updates and upgrades on what is seen as beautiful, and
Speaker 1: how it keeps changing and keeps you on your toes.
Speaker 1: It supports industries, It builds industries, It allows for industries
Speaker 1: to actually exist. Just because we believe we're not beautiful enough,
Speaker 1: we're not fit enough, we're not strong enough. And start
Speaker 1: writing down your own definition. Start writing down your own description,
Speaker 1: start writing down your own perception, and start disconnecting from
Speaker 1: the others. If you need to unfollow, unsubscribe on social media,
Speaker 1: if you need to change your algorithm, if you need
Speaker 1: to just switch off from social media in order to
Speaker 1: create your own views of beauty, to create your own
Speaker 1: ideals of attraction, that may be the best thing you
Speaker 1: ever do, because otherwise you'll be chasing something that was
Speaker 1: defined decades ago. So many of us are pursuing a
Speaker 1: version of ourself that we don't even know will like,
Speaker 1: but we believe because others may like it, that hopefully
Speaker 1: we will too. And the truth is, when we try
Speaker 1: to become who we think other people will like, even
Speaker 1: if someone likes us, we may not like ourselfs. And
Speaker 1: liking yourself is worth so much more than however many
Speaker 1: likes you receive on a post on social media. I
Speaker 1: want to thank you for listening today. I hope that
Speaker 1: it's been an education. I hope it's been enlightening. I
Speaker 1: hope that it's giving you insight into recognizing that when
Speaker 1: you try and answer these questions, when you try and
Speaker 1: chase a version of beauty, you could chase any definition
Speaker 1: for any decade and you'd still be behind. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening. Remember I'm forever in your corner
Speaker 1: and I'm always rooting for you. I'll see you soon.
Speaker 1: If you love this episode, you'll enjoy my conversation with
Speaker 1: Megan Trainer on breaking generational trauma and how to be
Speaker 1: confident from the inside out.
Speaker 2: My therapist told me stand in the mirror naked for
Speaker 2: five minutes. It was already tough for me to love
Speaker 2: my body, but after the C section scarf with all
Speaker 2: the stretch marks, now I'm looking at myself like I've
Speaker 2: been hacked. But day three, when I did it, I
Speaker 2: was like, you know what, her thighs are cute