The Anthropocene Reviewed “Works of Art by Agnes Martin and Hiroyuki Doi”, is John Green talking about works of art by Martin and Doi. The first thing that Green talks about is the story of Martin and a young girl named Isobel. He says Isobel had a rose, Martin asked Isobel “Is this rose really beautiful?” and Isobel replied “yes”. Martin then put the rose behind her back and asked again “Is the rose still beautiful?” and again, Isobel replied “yes”. Martin then proceeds to explain something to Isobel, saying, “You see, Isobel. Beauty is in your mind, not in the rose.”
This quote really just stopped me. While listening to the rest of the podcast, the rose was all that I could think of. This wasn’t because I didn’t understand the line or the line didn’t make sense to me. It was because the line made more sense to me than almost anything else in the podcast.
We live in a day and age where there are unrealistic beauty standards. Women every day feel that they need to look, eat, and function a certain way. Surely they will be beautiful if they do so. However, that isn’t beauty, is it? Beauty is everywhere and nowhere. It is a concept that we have made in our minds, a concept that allows thousands of women to do wrong by their bodies in order to look “beautiful”.
Beauty is in the mind and the soul. It doesn’t simply lie in appearances. It is like looking at a flower or nature and general. It is rare that someone would look at different flowers, trees, or leaves and say that they are “ugly” because they look different. So why should that be any different for humans? Just because someone looks different doesn’t mean they are “ugly” it means they look different. Everyone has a certain beauty inside them, it is a matter of letting other people see it. Let people see beautiful personalities and souls instead of mere physical “beauty”.
