In 1878, when Margaret Wolfe Hungerford wrote “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, she was stating that there was no consistent（never changing）view on beauty. Standards of beauty change across time and cultural groups.
Traditions and fashions, like society itself, change and adapt with time. So it is reasonable that our ideas of beauty change as well. In 19th-century Europe, women used to wear corsets to achieve a body shape that is no longer considered healthy. Men would wear woolen shawls across their shoulders. It is hard to imagine that they would be seen as attractive in the 21st century. Nowadays, in the western world, one in every ten people has a tattoos or a form of body art. In the past, some cultures used tattoos as an addition to costumes, to show family associations or to mark criminals so that they could easily be recognized.
In contemporary society, culture remains a major part in determining our ideas of beauty. In some countries, young women follow slimming diets to lose extra kilos in preparation for their wedding day. In other cultures, looking thin for a husband-to-be is not what a woman desires at all—rather, looking a little overweight is considered more attractive.
With the influence of history, society and culture, there are no precise criteria which can be used to judge what is beautiful. Life long commitment and, indeed, the survival of society itself rely on people seeing beauty in difference and depth. The human race would soon die out if we could only see beauty within a set of limited criteria.
Physical beauty must also be accompanied by an attraction to something deeper within a person. This particular kind of attraction is found in a wide range of personal qualities, e.g. kindness, warmth, a healthy conscience, etc. judging the appeal of a person's inner beauty is much more subjective. It takes more than a casual glance to appreciate and it is much more important than physical beauty.
Beauty, therefore, has more than one dimension. We are influenced by our culture, our biology and our time in history to notice physical beauty quickly and easily, but it is inner beauty that requires us to truly see. Beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder.
