I found Associate Professor Erin Griffey and Victoria Munn’s research investigating the origins of beauty cultures and visual cultures of beauty to be fascinating. By referring to the Renaissance, the ‘Great Works’ they relied on were digitalized manuscripts and original printed texts of ‘beauty recipes’. These recipes were cross-referenced with adornments such as paintings in order to create a concrete conceptualization of how beauty ideals were founded and persued. Griffey and Munn discovered consistencies across the European cultures: that health was seen to directly correlate with beauty, and that health could be measured against outward standards of lustrous skin and the endorsement of certain herbal recipes. The relationship between the smell of certain recipes, as well as their textures, pointed to what I percieved to be a certain superstition that perpetrated beauty at that time. Their research is important in explaining how beauty standards have evolved through time, the qualities that society has clung onto, and the continuing quest for perfection in finding ‘beauty recipes’ that prove successful and can stand the test of time. Their research was also an important reminder that ideals and values that form undercurrents in society don’t just exist in a time vacuum, their explanations have historical roots, and overlooking this reality in the research process constrains the value and insight that your research can offer.
