What is the measurement of Beauty?

 

 Image courtesy of Rappler.Com

Last, September 28, Megan Young made the Filipino nation proud by being the first Filipina ever to be crowned Miss World.

As we all know, there is no empirical measurement for beauty. We don’t have computers that can scan the bodies and faces of all the contestants and decide which one has the most “beauty units”. (I am glad that the world has moved away from the tall, white, blue-eyed blonde as the standard of beauty.) Becoming a beauty queen is not just about the body and the face but also qualities like wit and intelligence.

 Diane Kruger as Helen of Troy in the movie “Troy” (2004) (the one with Brad Pitt).

W. A. H. Rushton of Cambridge University (jokingly) proposed to make the “helen” as the measurement of beauty (http://www.omg-facts.com/History/Mathematicians-Have-Jokingly-Proposed-A/53517?lp=1). It was named after Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world according to The Iliad by Homer (read all about it in Instructional Minutes). When Helen was kidnapped by Paris, her husband King Menelaus launched a thousand ships (1,186 to be exact) to rescue her. Hence, she is “the face that launched a thousand ships.”

If Helen can launch a thousand ships, the ability to launch one ship is called a “millihelen”. If was that simple, a woman can find out how beautiful she is by just going to the harbor and see how many ships she can launch.

 A face that could launch a thousand ships or a body that can sink them all?

We must not forget the beauty is not just the physical appearance of a woman, but her inner qualities as well. Physical beauty will fade one day, but inner beauty will last forever. Proverbs 31 speaks of “the ideal wife”. She not only takes care of the home but attends to business as well (home-based business, it can be noted). The praise for this woman is the measurement of beauty for women in general:

“A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies. Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” (Proverbs 31:10, 30)