The Equation of Beauty

The Equation of Beauty

Who attracts you the most?

• The Purposes of the Project
  
  

1. Beauty
   
   

Beauty is an invisible type of economy, communication and instinct. If we get the right to be pretty or not, most people make a decision to be attractive. It is a power that dominates our first impression to others and impact many ways in our social life potentially.  How do different cultures and societies define a beauty?

2. Getting rid of habits that we receive foreign culture:
   
   

It is easy for us to be affected by concepts from other countries. We plan to interact with them by Chinese idioms. The way to teaching them Chinese idioms is the first step for us to change the position that foreign culture is dominated in our own culture.

3. Achieving consensus through communication:
   
   

We can find out that Youtubers usually convey their opinions through videos or any kinds of the way such as sponsored posts. Accordingly, we are attempted to imitate the way they show themselves and make comments towards our project.

• Participants: Female*1 & Male*1

• Materials:

1. 5 pictures of female celebrities(2 sets): 吳卓源、金太妍、劉亦菲、茱蒂蒙·瓊查容蘇因、蔡依林
   
2. 5 pictures of male celebrities(2 sets): 丁海寅、彭于晏、坂口健太郎、楊洋、許凱
   
3. 5 posters of Chinese idioms: 沉魚落雁、潘安之貌、玉樹臨風、花容月貌、明眸皓齒
   
   

• Procedures:
  
  

Part 1.

1. Self-introduction (Names, Nationality in a casual way)
   
   
2. Briefly introduce the purposes of our project and the rules of activity.
   
   
3. Activity
   
   
1. Ask them to rank the female celebrities
   
   
2. Briefly explain why they rank in this way
   
   
3. One of us rank female celebrities
   
   
4. Briefly explain why we rank in this way
   
   
5. Ask them to rank the male celebrities
   
   
6. Briefly explain why they rank in this way
   
   
7. One of us rank male celebrities
   
   
8. Briefly explain why we rank in this way
   
   

Part 2.

1. Teach them five Chinese idioms related to praise people’s good appearances.
   
   
2. Explain the allusions originated from these Chinese idioms.
   
   

Part 3.

1. We make some comments and conclusions just like Youtubers do so.

• Evaluation                                                                                                                            1. To clarify the disparities between Taiwanese and foreigners’ perspectives about the definition of beauty. 2.To enhance foreigners’ understanding of how ancient Chinese praised people with beautiful appearances.
•  Analysis

   1. Female Part

First, we find that both of our group members and our participants care if the idols are natural or not. To be more specific, if they have thick make-up. Second, the idols' talent or reputation will affect our ranking. However, our participants haven't heard of the idols before. Thus, they rank them with their first impression instead of their talent and reputation. Third, our participants care about the idols' gesture and posture. For instance, Flora doesn't like the idol who act with a flower gesture. On the other hand, Paul doesn't like the idol who open her mouth when taking the picture.  

2. Male Part

        In our group members, we find that a celebrity's talent will impact our rank as well. But for our foreigners, they don't recognize those celebrities we select. Another point is that some girls will concern about whether a guy is double-eyelid or single eyelid. It will impact a person's preference. For our participants, they prefer more power or masculine and pronounced facial features man. It will make more impression to them. A person's charism takes part as well. Also, they will care about a person's eye color much more rather than double or single-eyelid.

3. Chinese Idioms

        The purpose of this part is to discuss the communication between Chinese culture and foreign culture towards beauty for the reason that we already ranked the beauty of the celebrities. We found many stories about beauty in the past. The similarities among these stories is that they represent different way to compliment someone. The way to communicate the idioms is teaching them about these idioms. During the communication, we found something interesting which they think some metaphors are weird to be the symbol of beauty. Through the communication, we can explore more different perspectives about beauty.       

4.French Idioms

        For the purpose of asking so many French idioms of describing nice-looking people, we can know more about French culture for how they describe people in their language. And how they use metaphors for some allusion make us feel not only newly and innovative but also their ways of description are truly novel for us. We think the best interaction between to different cultural people is to feel the fantastic and unknown field in person by sharing and talking with each other.

        

•       belle comme un Coeur, meaning "beautiful as a heart"

•       beau gosse, meaning "handsome guy"

•       faire tourner la tête, meaning "make your head spin"

•       Craquant & mignon, meaning "sexy and cute"

5. Youtuber

       The purpose of being a Youtuber at the end of our video is because we want to make a precise and more concentrated information arranging and retelling the conclusion together. And make the conclusion more leisurely than the strict and uninteresting stereotype of traditional reconstruct the frame and the information. To be closer to our audiences and more efficient to make a conclusion together is our idea for acting like a Youtuber.

• Conclusion                                                                                                                                       We think that cultural interaction is the most important part in our project. Through discussing the different feeling of Asian idols' appearance, we acquire that the recognition and perception are truly different between the point of view in the Asian's position and the point of view in the European's position. The key point we focus on the people's appearance is different from the French interviewers'.  It's quite surprise us that Asian celebrities are not that attractive to them. There isn't limits or regulations on beauty. Therefore, if we want to conclude an absolute beauty toward male or female, we'll find that there isn't the answer. What's more, toward different idioms among different cultures, we find out that different cultures focus on different image toward beauty. In Chinese idioms, we prefer to illustrate others' reaction toward a beauty. But in the western, they usually describe a person's essential beauty rather than other's opinion or reaction.