Title: What‘s Beautiful



Title: What‘s Beautiful? Ideals of Personal Beauty in Ancient Japan and Contemporary America

Target Grade Level: Middle School

Created By: Alan Coleman

Time Period: 45 minutes

Materials: Large pictures of famous people (from magazines or downloaded and printed from the internet), cards with Heian sketches and paintings of courtly men and women (available from TCI at or just find examples on the internet), clipboards for all students, pictures taken from contemporary fashion magazines for men and women, History Alive!: The Medieval World and Beyond textbooks for the class

Anticipatory Set: The teacher holds up various photos of famous people and the kids play a game of “Hot or Not” by voting on whether each person is beautiful or not. Based on majority rule, these photos are taped on the board where a T-chart has been drawn, “hot” on one side and “not” on the other. After this is complete, the teacher poses the questions “What made these people ‘Hot’ and these people ‘Not’? Who decides what traits are considered beautiful? Why did we mostly agree? Have these traits always been valued in our society?” The teacher can take some quick thoughts on this but the point is not to really answer these questions at this point but instead get students thinking about these topics.

Building Background Knowledge: Students are asked to read p. 233 in their History Alive!: The Medieval World and Beyond textbooks (Chapter 21.5: Beauty and Fashion During the Heian Period) to get an idea of what was considered beautiful in Heian Japan. It will be assumed that students have some background knowledge about Heian Japan due to previous lessons.

Guided Practice: The teacher will have created an Art Gallery in the class or hallway with reproductions of art from the Heian period illustrating Heian concepts of beauty alternated with pictures selected from contemporary fashion magazines showing the same in our society. Students will be asked to take clipboards with paper and take notes on what they notice in the paintings, sketches, and photos. The teacher will move around the Art Gallery and make a few observations to show the students the kinds of things they might want to notice.

Independent Practice: Using their notes from the gallery walk, students will work with partners to create a Venn diagram entitled Beauty Ideals with Heian Japan on one side and Contemporary America on the other. Similarities are noted in the overlapping space.

Closure: Each partnership gets a minute or so to share their Venn Diagrams. Students should not repeat something that has already been shared and students that are not currently sharing should add any new information to their Diagrams.

Homework: Students will write a one-paragraph essay answering the prompt: “Are ideals of beauty absolute and independent of a particular society or are they relative and dependent on each culture’s values? What evidence did you see in our gallery walk to support your answer?”

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