Aesthetic relativism is the philosophical view that the judgement of
beauty is
relative to different individuals and/or cultures and that there are no universal criteria of beauty. For example, in historical terms, the female form as depicted in the
Venus of Willendorf and the women in the paintings of
Rubens would today be regarded as over-weight, while the slim models on the covers of contemporary fashion magazines would no doubt be regarded in a negative light by our predecessors. In contemporary (cross-cultural) terms,
body modification among "
primitive" peoples is sometimes regarded as
grotesque by Western society.