Concepts of Male Beauty Over the Centuries

Concepts of physical beauty are not uniform but vary from culture to culture, civilization to civilization, and century to century. The standards by which beauty is judged are constantly changing as they are the results of the perceptions, beliefs, dogmas, and politics of the people whose societies created them. Since man’s earliest self-representation, visual cultures have sought to capture the ideal form. This form was also called divine form, in some cultures. Despite, however, significant geographic, cultural, religious, and other influences, there are aspects of beauty that developed centuries ago and have remained constant, representing the overall format of proportions, symmetry, and harmony. Therefore, what has the ideal male form been over time? Where has it been depicted throughout the centuries? By whom, for whom, and for what purpose? In the limited space of this chapter, it is obviously impossible to discuss and analyze every major culture and every aspect of male representation produced around the world throughout human history. We will instead focus on and present notions of male beauty and highlight examples of social values embodied by visual cultures in ancient Greece, Rome, and the Italian Renaissance, leading to the current era, since many of these concepts continue to have, after so many centuries, a significant impact and greatly influence our current views of ideal beauty within the western world and our civilization in general.