Dear Friend,
Both medicine (and math!) seem to applaud the beauty of human body.
From medical point of view, beautiful body is (usually) a healthy body.
Mathematics states that Fibonacci numbers and golden ratio abound within human body – they define proportions between bones/muscles/ body regions etc and we seem to find the result aesthetically pleasing. In addition to creating beauty, the said mathematical constants appear to design the functioning of nervous, cardiovascular and other systems, thus being “efficient for growth, structure and function”.
As for some great writers, their opinion comes across as just the opposite:
The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
-Leo Tolstoy
So it could get quite confusing, until, thankfully, we are told by some other great minds (renowned psychiatrist and philosopher) that it’s the beauty of the soul, and not the body, that matters most:
People are like stained – glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.
-Elizabeth Kubler-Ross (20th century Swiss American psychiatrist)
Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.
-Saint Augustine (ancient Algerian theologian and philosopher)
However, we are still far from clarity, because opinions on what makes soul beautiful differ greatly- for instance, is it best for it to be quiet and gentle, or full of vigour??
… imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.
-Bible, 1 Peter 3:3-4
Zest is the secret of all beauty. There is no beauty that is attractive without zest.
-Christian Dior (20th century French designer)
At the end, Khalil is the one who answers it best, in my opinion:
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
– Khalil Gibran (20th-21st century Lebanese-American writer and artist)