Beauty is one of the most powerful and dangerous ideas in existence. It's a two-syllable word that haunts humanity.

Women long for it, a thousand ships were launched to recapture it, and the world succumbs to it.

Charles Reade said, "Beauty is power; a smile is its sword."

Beauty wields its power over men and women alike, but far more often, women become the victims of a modern and corrupt idea of beauty.

The body of a woman sells you cigars and stilettos. The perfection of her bleached white smile and air brushed skin leads women to resort to anorexia, self-hatred and self-mutilation to reach the standard of beauty society has set.

Plastic surgery went from a necessity for accident victims to an addiction that feeds an idea of beauty that is nothing more than a vacant fantasy.

It's tragic to witness the countless perversions of beauty. Beauty has been sexualized and cheapened. By removing the goodness and purity of beauty, true beauty has been lost altogether. A woman in today's society is caught in a vicious paradox. She is devalued and ignored if she isn't beautiful, and if she is beautiful, she becomes a sex object or a stumbling block.

It's almost impossible for a woman to go a day without being constantly bombarded by images and comparisons, both from herself and other women.

The definition of beauty has changed immensely since Socrates first attempted to define it. Socrates believed beauty was a form of purity. Today beauty is more often defined by exteriors. Beauty, for some, is 115 pounds on a 5'11" frame with perfect cheekbones and long blonde hair. For others, it's Marilyn Monroe's hourglass figure.

In an article by Joe Greenwald titled "Ancient Greece and You," Greenwald discusses the change in the view of aesthetics from ancient Greece to the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Greek philosopher Plato hypothesized that beauty is not relative; objects cannot be compared with one another. It was Socrates who first explored the definition of beauty. He felt aesthetics was a form of purity. Things that are pure within themselves evoke pleasure, thus beauty.

"The nineteenth and twentieth centuries were the first to try and define beauty scientifically. Laws were attempted to be constructed that could be applied to the definition of beauty. It was discovered that this method was too restricting ... Beauty was later defined as a 'term of approbation,' or a value, or higher stature, as apposed to 'pretty,'" Greenwald wrote. Beauty is not a definable or measurable trait. Women are inundated by the modern idea that being physically beautiful increases your value or worth as a person. But that is cutting the true definition of beauty off at the knees. Beauty is not bound by its physical aspects.

In some cases, it's true. For some women, their obsession with beauty is entirely on a physical plane. One could also argue, however, the longing to be beautiful goes far deeper than a superficial desire to look like a supermodel.

In her recently published book Captivating, Stasi Eldridge talks about how as women, we are haunted by Eve. Eve was perfect, beautiful, brilliant and brave. Every time a woman looks in the mirror, she is met with an image she knows doesn't measure up to what she was intended to be.

"So listen to this: beauty is an essence that dwells in every woman. It was given to her by God ... Beauty is core to a woman -- who she is and what she longs to be -- and one of the most glorious ways we bear the image of God in a broken and often ugly world," Eldridge wrote.

Among all the chaos and carnage of our lives, beauty is something that always lets us transcend the sensible and mundane aspects of life and glimpse the sublime.