Sophia's+Page

 ﻿ This I Believe by Sophia Maes   When I searched the word “Beauty ” on Google, the first images that came up were of two women. One woman was the depiction of a beauty queen, with a silver crown, white smile, and **beautiful **, long, flowing hair. The next picture is a woman with her hair pulled back, some makeup on, smelling the stargazer lily in her hands. How is it that beauty can be something so materialistic and rehearsed, yet also something so natural and instinctive? Beauty is an idea that cannot possibly be captured by a single, or even various, ideal. And I believe that when something is as limitless and undefinable as beauty, it becomes everywhere, in everything. I believe that beauty is everywhere. If beauty had limits or the ability to be defined, there would be a universally set formula or depiction of it. Just like a dog in America is still a dog in China (although different names), beauty would still be beauty, definable to one specific trend or idea. If beauty was confined to a specific trend or idea, women in the Mursi tribe in Africa might not have lip plates, a very traditional and deeply rooted practice of beauty within their culture. When people from the West see this, we most likely think of it as odd looking, because it does not fit our definition of <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 160%;">beauty. However, even in Western cultures there are too many concepts of <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 160%;">beauty to name, let alone begin to define. Even controversial topics and scenes can be seen as<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 151%;"> **beautiful** to some. One example of this is from the movie Stranger Than Fiction, in a scene with Emma Thompson and Queen Latifah. Emma Thompson’s character is talking about leaping off of buildings (trying to do research for her novel), when she describes how falling to death could be a **<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 160%;">beautiful ** thing. She says, “There’s a photograph in the book called // The Leaper //. It’s old, but it’s **beautiful**. From above the corpse of a woman who’d just leapt to her death. There’s blood around her head, like a halo, and her leg’s buckled underneath; her arm’s snapped like a twig, but her face is so serene, so at peace. And I think it’s because when she died, she could feel the wind against her face.” Although a haunting topic and disturbing image, <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 160%;">beauty can be seen through the heartbreak. However, to some this idea or image could never be <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 151%;">**beautiful**, for whatever reason they justify it by. And both sides are correct, because <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 160%;">beauty is everywhere, in everything and anything, and knows no absolutes. Unlike other nouns like warmth, strength, or even joy, the term<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 160%;"> beauty can be used in almost any situation, in any way. I believe that <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 160%;">beauty is everywhere, in everything, and is without boundaries. If<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 160%;"> beauty is everywhere and is limitless, why do we limit ourselves because of it? And why do we pluck and pull and inject ourselves to try to keep something that cannot be contained? The truth is that "<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 180%;">Beauty " is the most undefinable term we know. Yes, there are some societal views, and cultural stances where majority has determined what defines <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 160%;">beauty, but these in themselves are so broad and variant that it is difficult to represent. I believe that <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype','Book Antiqua',Palatino,serif; font-size: 170%;">beauty is everywhere, in everything, and that we must understand its omnipresence in order to even begin to embody it. media type="custom" key="10540676"

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 130%; vertical-align: super;">Production Notes <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; text-align: left;">For the production of this page, there are a few new things that I had to learn about web pages: <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">Thank you!
 * <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">One idea that I had was to make the audio play automatically upon opening my page. This way, you are "forcing" people to listen to the audio, instead of having them search and press play on the player. This took me quite a while to figure out, because I had to embed the audio player using a code instead of just uploading the mp3 file. Not having a real idea of how to embed audio, I began looking it up on google, looking at tutorials, trying out codes (clicking Widget, then Other HTML, then putting the code in), and nothing seemed to be working. At this point I knew that within my code I needed src=TIB+final.mp3, autoplay="true", and loop="false", but i had no idea what player type it was, or that I needed the to prompt the website to require the quicktime plugin. After hours of frustration, and no progress, I finally put in a regular audio file (with the player) onto my page. Somehow, after I clicked on it again, it allowed me to edit it, and when it did it showed me its code: <embed type="audio/x-wav" style="cursor:hand; cursor:pointer;" src="http://wrtg3020zizzifall11.wikispaces.com/file/view/TIB+final.mp3" width="300" height="50" autoplay="false" target="myself" controller="true" loop="false" scale="aspect" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" pluginspage="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/" /> ; I did have to change some things (autoplay="true" to play automatically, and controller="false" so that the controller would be hidden)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">This was a godsend, because without this glitch I would have never been able to find the code specific to this Wiki. After I tried to reproduce exactly how I came across it, but it never allowed me to again. If someone would want to do this but use a different file, they MUST upload the file onto this Wiki first (by going to files, upload, not embedding) and then simply wherever it says TIB+final.mp3, change to your own file (put a + wherever a space is)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">For the audio itself, I give credit to a Youtube video by Pianozap.com of a cover of Right Thru Me by Nicki Minaj ([]). It was almost perfect for what I was trying to depict: it was simple, modern, and most importantly BEAUTIFUL!
 * <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">The beginning of the background music is actually the end of the song turned backwards, with the end amplified to create a cutting and dramatic distinction between the beginning and the actual piano bit.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">I had fun with this project, and I will be glad when I can apply it to further projects