Louise Gerdes: From Inner To Outer Beauty

From Inner to Outer Beauty

“Illness easily transforms our outward beauty into yellow pallors, hollow stares and wrinkles of deformity” (Schimmel 410). When people are sick, they look “ugly” or different from how they appear day to day, which includes what Schimmel, professor of Jewish education claimed. Beauty is no longer explained as “The prevailing fashion or standard of the beautiful” (“Beauty, Def. 3”). Inner qualities override fashion and how a person appears. However, having fashion does not define beauty either. Louise Gerdes, author of young adult books once said, “Fashion and style magazines further emphasize the importance of the body project, in both editorial content and advertising by setting the standards of beauty to which many girls aspire” (16). Gerdes states that magazines make girls feel certain ways on how they should look and the notion is not encouraging. To better understand the true meanings of the word beauty, one could look to etymology, nature and pop culture.

From Modern

As stated before,“Fashion and style magazines further emphasize the importance of the body project in both editorial content and advertising by setting the standards of beauty to which many girls aspire” (Gerdes 15-16). Gerdes explains how fashion and style magazines set the trends for girls by advertising certain clothing items or products. For example, when author Eric Charles designed feathered clothes and accessories for the fashion industry (1). The magazine Seventeen would be an example of a style magazine advertising beauty and setting certain standards. Now a day, beauty is not the same for everyone. “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the hearts affections and the truth of imagination-what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth-whether it existed before or not” (Knowles 4). In Knowles quote she expressed how beauty can be perceived differently for each