Hair and Beauty in the Wizarding World

[scaryfairymary]

No: HPFGUIDX 37196

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "uncmark" <uncmark at y...> wrote:
> I was reading posts on Snape's oily hair and rembered something I 
> posted last month. If you hade magical powers, wouldn't you be as 
> beautiful as possible? Or in a world of Magic would the views of 
> beauty differ?
> 

  As has been discussed in the past, there has to be some kind of 
limits to the ability of magic to change things.  I believe that one 
of these limits is that a witch or wizard cannot alter their 
appearance.  If this was not the case, everyone in the WW would be 
constantly changing their appearance in order to conform to the 
latest accepted view of beauty. 
  
  It is another of my (just formed) theories, that maybe the 
wizarding community *can* to a certain extent superficially change 
some aspects of their outwardly appearance. (I know this completely 
contradicts my previous paragraph, but thats just the strange way my 
mind works!)  There could have been, at some stage in the past, a 
situation as I outlined in the above paragraph with everyone changing 
their looks as often as the seasons change, but that everyone just 
got fed up with it all.  Apart from the obvious inconvenience of not 
being able to recognise one another from one day to the next!! 
  
  However it strikes me that people in the WW just don't put the 
obscene amount of emphasis on physical appearance as we do IRL (with 
the obvious exception ao Lockhart!) They seem to be a lot more 
comfortable with themselves than we are.  They also have a much more 
old fashioned society.  Even though they are living side by side with 
us technologically fairly advanced Muggles, they havent felt the need 
to adopt our meaningless gadgets, eg. the only example of a computer 
in the story is Dudley's mind numbing alien/monster shoot'em ups, and 
is viewed with much disdain.  (although i suppose most of this can be 
attributed to the fact that they dont need electricity)  As a result 
of this, I feel that a lot of old fashioned values/ideas have 
remained in their collective psyche.  Even the Witches Weekly "smile 
of the week competition" is somewhat reminiscent of the past, a kind 
of sincere nievety, that is lost in modern day society.  I think this 
is mirrored in the way in which they view "good looks" in a more open 
minded way, and thus their lack in desire to physically alter 
themselves.  

  Well there's all my contradicting theories expressed in a very 
confusing manner!!!

-Mary-