Beauty, Race and Religion

When I picture Jesus’ face, this first image that always enters my mind is a picture that hangs on the living room wall in my Mormon best friend’s house. I’ve been trying to figure out why this image is so dominate in my mind, as it was certainly not the first picture of Jesus that I saw nor the picture I saw most frequently whilst growing up.  After giving it some thought, I think it may be because this is an image of Jesus at his most manly and most handsome. 

Not that Jesus is usually ugly in pictures. As we discussed in class, Jesus is often represented as a good looking guy and these are the images which seem to stick in our head. This is, after all, a society that’s obsessed with beauty and a good looking face can have a lot of power.  Over Christmas, my friend insisted we went to see a film purely based on the fact that she thought the leading man was ‘hot,’ even though neither of us had been particularly impressed by the trailer.

If an actor can convince us to part with our money purely with a good looking face, it’s no surprise that we tend to prefer someone as important as our savior and the son of God to be handsome. The same way we now photo shop pictures of celebrities to make them look their best, over time society has picked out the best looking pictures of Jesus as the ones they want to use.

This process of thought raises questions about what society perceives beauty to be. Whilst there’s a multitude of historical and social reasons why Jesus is usually represented as white, the fact that America has historically found white skin more beautiful than black skin must play a role. Even in Hollywood today, it is still white actors and actresses who tend to get the lead role, particularly if that role calls for beauty. The same can be found with the image of Jesus- whilst there are more racial representations of him than ever; it is still the white, handsome image of Jesus that tends to dominate.