The Beauty Culture of the West

Heggan says we tend to think of beauty as related to taste, ri and we think about taste as something deeply personal. Heggan: Beauty norms everywhere are constantly in flux. They're always changing. Take for instance, nineteenth century japan. At that time in japan, one symbol or marker of beauty was to blacken one teeth. And this was a sign of utmost beauty, a sign of beauty, until the beginning of the twentieth century. That's when the west was becoming an economic super power. The entire country is undertaking this project of modernization.