Nip/Tuck, beauty and perfection

This semester, my friend Megan introduced me to a show called Nip/Tuck. It.. is.. awesome. The show revolves around two plastic surgeons in Miami. Much of the show deals with the human form (obviously). It's interesting to examine the ideas of beauty and perfection (which I believe go hand-in-hand when discussing the human figure), and the lengths that some people will go to in order to achieve them. I chose to post this picture because its inclusion of the ancient statues demonstrates that this idea of the perfect human form isn't a new phenomenon, and dates back to ancient times.



The whole notion of perfection reminds me of artistic anatomy. When learning how to draw the figure, there is no end-all to drawing perfect people. We learn the "ideal" proportions and measurements, but the fact always remains that everyone is different. At the same time, without the ideals that we learn, the backbone of the teaching process would be lost. It would make it far more difficult to learn artistic anatomy by simply trying to draw what your mind thinks that it sees, with minimal understanding of the form in front of you. I've known quite a few people who show contempt for the concept of beauty and perfection and think we would be better off without it. While some people (such as a number of characters from Nip/Tuck) do themselves more harm than good by obsessing over reaching their idea of beauty and perfection, it is a necessary evil.

Referring back to the Nip/Tuck picture, I love how they placed one of the statues (the Venus de Milo) next to an image of a runway supermodel. The similarities between them are undeniable, and it makes me wonder, are today's supermodels simply an evolution of statues from the past? Do those who look down upon the idea of beauty also consider masterpieces like the Statue of David, The Thinker Statue, or the Venus, to be superficial?