I never quite understand the way society decides who is beautiful and who is not. But an open face and a capacity for kindness always feel like reliable signifiers to me.
Interpretation
Society's standards of beauty are often unclear, yet kindness and an open demeanor are true indicators of beauty.
Tilda Swinton's quote reflects on the subjective and often arbitrary nature of societal beauty standards. She suggests that instead of adhering to conventional definitions of beauty, one should look to the qualities of kindness and openness as more reliable markers of a person's true beauty and worth.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about beauty standards in a classroom setting.
I believe that all great art holds the power to dissolve things: time, distance, difference, injustice, alienation, despair. I believe that all great art holds the power to mend things: join, comfort, inspire hope in fellowship, reconcile us to our selves. Art is good for my soul precisely because it reminds me that we have souls in the first place.
I don't have a career, I have a life. I don't have an exterior judgment on what would be good or bad for me.
For a lot of actors, there's a sort of code of honor around playing something other than yourself, which I just don't have. I love feeling like I'm - I won't even say acting out, but performing in some deep seam of my consciousness or my family's consciousness or my past. That's really amusing to me.
If we don't accept loneliness, then capitalism wins hands down. Because capitalism is all about trying to convince people that you can distract yourself, that you can make it better. And it ain't true.
To me, we are the most beautiful creatures in the whole world. Black people. And I mean that in every sense.
Women have face-lifts in a society in which women without them appear to vanish from sight.
You could not be filled with hate and be beautiful. Like any other girl, I wanted to be beautiful. But I was filled with hate.
Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical.
Unique and different is the next generation of beautiful.
There is such a thing as too much beauty in a woman and it is often a burden as crippling as homeliness and far more dangerous. It takes much luck and integrity to survive the gift of perfect beauty, and its impermanence is its most cunning betrayal.
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