From Age of Fast Beauty to Age of Slow Beauty, the Post-Modern Value

Abstract

Cosmetic behaviour, in which there are make-up, skin care, body painting, bath, shampoo, tooth brushing, combing, haircut, nail care and so on, historically has never broken off. And it is a fact that there is no race in the earth, which doesn’t have cos- metic behaviour. Cosmetic behaviour has universality in time and space. Human beings are animal that can live without cosmetic behaviour. What have human beings been seeking for in cosmetic beha- viour? What have human beings been expressing by it? Through seeing some his- torical episodes of cosmetical behaviour, we know that fast life, which began with mod- ernization, brought us fast beauty. Fast beauty is a standardized beauty, youth is indispensable for it. Therefore, the immedi- ate effect of keeping and seeking youth is requested from cosmetics. Opposite to fast beauty I suppose slow beauty as the stand- ard value in the next social stage. Slow beauty is the diversification of beauty value, expressed ‘beauty of each person and each age’. The standard of beauty is not in each person but in each age of oneself. Beauty is acquired by everyday accumulation; we can realize different beauty with the accumula- tion of years. This is true ageing. Keywords: cosmetic behaviour, slow beauty, age- ing beauty of each person and each age, fast beauty, standardized beauty, indispensability of youth, history of cosmetic behaviour, historical episodes, universality of cosmetic behaviour