Women’s Beauty in Polish and Bulgarian Paremiology

Abstract

Beauty is a multispectral and polyvalent emotional-aesthetic category. Beauty is
reflected in the thinking and behavioral manifestations of gendered subjects, who
constantly subject it to evaluation. The aesthetic side of beauty alone is not enough
for successful intersex communication. It also carries risks, so it must be balanced and elevated with an ethical „platform”. Thus it becomes a synonym of goodness with nobility of soul, of an enlightened mind, of the dignity of character. Women’s beauty has a universal nature that reveals a wide range of values, among which one usually stands out in a given context. Among the most sought after in modern times, besides physical attractiveness, is a woman’s ability to be a good wife, mother and keeper of the home hearth.
Beauty is also a perceptual model for understanding the delicate nature of women, as well as a specific kind of „instruction” for undertaking certain communicative tactics in inter-gender communication. Since female beauty is an integral part of the enigmatic mystery that men have grappled with since time immemorial, their communicative efforts are directed in two directions: 1) negative, even harsh comments, crystallizing into merciless evaluations of female shortcomings and seemingly erasing the advantages of the female gender (or at best balancing them with irritating weaknesses and deficiencies observed in women); 2) sincere admiration of their charm, but always tempered with fear of the impenetrable enigma.
The goal of the study is, through the use of proverbs, to discern the mechanisms by which stereotypes and anti-stereotypical tendencies in conceptualizing beauty,
embodied by women, function in the psyche of the subject as a representative of one of the two cultures (Polish and Bulgarian). One of the positively marked stereotypical „directives” is female beauty, associated with her creative essence, namely with the fertility of the Earth. She is beautiful in herself. These identified tendencies demonstrate the high axiological rank of beauty in the subject’s categorization strategies and its ability to sublimate into higher moral and spiritual value. This sublimation contributes to strengthening the bonds between man and woman.
The methods used in the study include: semantic-analytical, psychological, cognitive-pragmatic, and comparative methods.