Conclusion

Ideas of perfection and imperfection have existed in our society for centuries, they can be traced all the way back centuries and millennia by analyzing different religions and their portrayal of sentient beings. What began as simply depicting a human in its primal form as the Greeks and Romans had done eventually transformed into a spiritualistic representation of good versus evil and light versus dark. With the birth of Islam and Christianity came changes as to how Angels and Demons were perceived in art. Angels became the symbol of peace, love, and hope while the Demons became disfigured humanoid beings who would try to tempt mankind to sin. This ideology, however, had lasting impacts on society and its views on certain people. More specifically, these ideas led to the beliefs that people who were physically perfect and had fair skin tone were superior, while those with deformities were being imperfect or inferior to those who weren’t. People with physical disabilities and/or deformities were signs of divine intervention from God, almost as if they had been punished for sinning. Sometimes this would have small implications, such as being treated slightly differently in communities, and other times there would be profound consequences as each religion would attempt to further an agenda a political/religious propaganda and to enslave and dehumanize people from diverse backgrounds. It may seem easy to look back on it today and think negatively of the societies for doing these things, yet on closer look, it is clear to see that these ideas persist today as a remnant of our dark past.