What is “beauty?” Granted, it’s a subjective observation, but then there are two very strong opinions on the question – “natural” and “designed.”

What is “natural beauty?” It’s an interesting question because it intersects with that of an even larger question of what is natural and what is “unnatural.” The question itself is affecting the biotech industry as it continues having to deal with annoying anti-biotech activists who believe the industry to be “unnatural” – whatever that’s supposed to mean.

“Natural beauty” becomes this idealist notion that how your biology and environment affect your phenotype is the “pure” and “natural” way, and thus shouldn’t be altered in any way. It varies, as well, in how much altering of the body is required until you reach that “unnatural” realm. Is it after you get your first piercing? How about your first tattoo? Or perhaps when you start putting in implants? Maybe you’re just against plastic surgery because you’d rather that person look as you desire, to which you veil under the rallying cry of “natural = good.” But then, if we’re really going to stay true to such an absurd notion, you might as well start when someone dyes their hair for the first time, seeing as how that particular hair color they’d chosen wasn’t what “God” or “mother nature” or biology had intended.

Don’t get me wrong, I certainly understand many of the arguments against how both men and women are pressed on these corporate standards of “beauty” via ads, commercials, and fashion, but then how long will it take until our preaching of “natural beauty” becomes an advertisement in of itself? For a society that is keen on preaching the idea that beauty is subjective and shouldn’t be dictated by others other than yourself, we certainly do a lot of everything we claim to stand against.

You tell both men and women they should maintain their natural figure and overall phenotype, but then subsequently claim the contrary to be wrong because it was dictated to them by others you don’t agree with. If a guy gets a nose job or a woman gets bigger boobs or a tummy tuck, that’s somehow “wrong” because they’re altering their “natural beauty” (remember: beauty is a subjective observation). When those who get plastic surgery try countering the opposition, stating that they did what they did because it makes them happy, the remark is ignored completely and deemed just as “fake” as their newly designed body.