Meaning of Appearance

Originating from the Latin word aspectus, the concept of aspect refers to the appearance of subjects and objects that can be captured through vision. For example: “That man has a very misaligned appearance, ” “Grandpa’s jovial appearance is amazing, ” “The river looks bad, we better not swim here. ”

The appearance or physical appearance is a highly valued issue in today’s society, due to the existence of stereotypical canons of beauty that usually leave out a large part of the population, a situation that triggers pressures, internal conflicts and psychological disorders. This obligation to look good and wear a look consistent with social advice can lead to disorders such as bulimia or anorexia.

On the other hand, the aspect allows us to highlight the facet or nuance of a certain thing: “Today we are going to talk about the most important aspects of this artist’s pictorial work”, “The president’s speech can be analyzed from several different aspects”.

In the field of astronomy, the notion of appearance is used to describe the phases and the eventual condition of two stars with respect to the celestial houses where they are located. In this sense, it refers to the movement of the planets in the celestial sphere.

In linguistics, the grammatical aspect is the property that makes it possible to demonstrate the internal development of a given verbal action. It is a grammatical category that shows whether the verb has been completed, or not, at the moment of the enunciation.

It is important to differentiate between the grammatical aspect and the time. This marks the moment that something happens in relation to everything else. The aspect, on the other hand, is the internal time of the action, the development phase or the modification of it.

In the field of image and video, the aspect ratio is obtained through the ratio of width to height. The two most common values ​​in the field of home consumption are 4: 3 and 16: 9. The first corresponds to the format of the most popular televisions and monitors before the era of high definition; they are rectangular, but they are very close to being square. The second nomenclature is directly linked to content on DVD and Blu-ray, and is often called panoramic; in this case, the shape is clearly rectangular, being considerably wider than it is tall (almost double).

Body dysmorphic disorder

Also known as dysmorphophobia, it is a very serious disorder that, despite affecting many people, is practically unknown. Basically, it consists of a distorted perception of their own appearance, which leads the person to believe that he is physically unpleasant. However, the nuances of this disease are innumerable, as well as the severity and consequences.

In general, the problem begins with a particular physical trait or a part of the body that is so frightening in the patient’s own eyes, that they lead him to think that he cannot show himself in public with this defect, since that would only generate teasing, rejection by those to whom he was sexually attracted, and constant observation.

Those who suffer from this disease, speak of themselves as monsters, and generally fear exposure in public places, avoid halogen lights, try to cover the parts of their body that they consider defective and lead a conflictive sex life, when they do not live in absolute chastity. In the most severe cases, dysmorphophobes undergo numerous plastic surgeries with the aim of correcting their defects, but they never succeed; their vision of themselves and of that aspect of themselves that they do not like is so negative that the solution does not consist in a material modification, but in a change in the mental mechanisms.

Appearance