To each his own!

"Colors have been made for tastes (literal)" To each his own! says a popular phrase that is used, usually, when an election is criticized. It is like a defense to the particularity, to the individual aesthetic right. But there is another that complements it: ...and to choose from, the flowers; which can be interpreted, more or less, as: hey, it's fine, everyone has their taste, but there is a range of what is permissible pleasant. And it is that, in matters of the beautiful and the ugly: not all that glitters is gold, and sometimes they sell us a cat for a hare. That is why, regarding the sayings, I would dare to limit that there are tastes and tastes, flowers and flowers. I say it —or I write it— because although beauty is usually very subjective, its appreciation has largely been dictated to us.

We believe that we like what we like by divine grace, because I am like that and, although one is the owner of his preferences, we must not forget that the environment and the influences received are those who form or deform that sense of beauty. No one can love—or dislike—the absolutely unknown; the range of choice is between the flowers that have recorded your experience and how they have been presented to you.

Home is the first aesthetic pattern we have; everything influences: if you are born in a dark or lighthouse, with a view of the sea, the mountain, a clean or pestilent block, in a neighborhood rich in traditions or in which people do not even know why the streets have their names. This is how infinite factors mark us, ranging from the colors of the maruga that your parents gave you when you were a child or the paintings that adorned the home where you grew up, to the literature that your best friend reads or the song in fashion at the moment in that you conquer (or are conquered by) your first girlfriend. Of course, all these influences are refined in life and, as one grows, one can improve -or not- aesthetic appreciation, largely depending on the culture that is acquired, on the critical capacity that this accumulation of knowledge to reflect on what one liked and why.

Art, for centuries, has dictated patterns of beauty. It is still often said: as beautiful as a Venus, alluding to the sculpture that has become a symbol since ancient times. Thus, the different cultures have created their canons and, over time, those of the civilizations that have spread throughout the world have been imposed and generalized. In other words, I may owe part of my taste to the Greeks or the Romans before our era, or simply because my country was colonized by the Spanish from a Europe that was dawning in the Renaissance and retaking the models of the beauty of the ancients. of the Homeric world.

What you like is more what they want you to like —or what the environment has imposed on you— than what is shaped by your sensitivity. It seems like a simple pun, but think that apart from the factors mentioned, gravitating on the individual, there is a very powerful one that invades us today: the machinery of the mass media. Today's Roman Empire, the United States, has the upper hand: through cinema, video, magazines, the Internet, and global news networks, they expand their points of view, their interests, and with them penetrate all continents; there are countries where, for example, the cinema that is seen is, in more than 80%, North American.

Who doesn't love a good American movie? They are the ones who choose the models to follow, the tastes, the preferences, and what is going to set the trend. They are the ones who tell you through their movies and series, who they are, generally because of their physique, someone to admire, and a role model. Little by little, they deprive you of developing your own free will to decide who is the person you like and why.

A piece of advice: physique is not everything.

As the years go by you will realize that beauty, the really good beauty, is inside, rooted in the soul of people. That never withers. The outsider is only passing through, she has time against her.

See you tomorrow.