Beauty has an aesthetic, but it is not the same as aesthetics, not when it can be embodied, controlled by powerful interests, and when it can be commodified. Beauty can be manners, also a socially contingent set of traits. Whatever power decides that beauty is, it must always be more than reducible to a single thing. Beauty is a wonderful form of capital in a world that organizes everything around gender and then requires a performance of gender that makes some of its members more equal than others.
Beauty would not be such a useful distinction were it not for the economic and political conditions. It is trite at this point to point out capitalism, which is precisely why it must be pointed out. Systems of exchange tend to generate the kind of ideas that work well as exchanges. Because it can be an idea and a good and a body, beauty serves many useful functions for our economic system. Even better, beauty can be political. It can exclude and include, one of the basic conditions of any politics. Beauty has it all. It can be political, economic, external, individualized, generalizing, exclusionary, and perhaps best of all a story that can be told. Our dominant story of beauty is that it is simultaneously a blessing, of genetics or gods, and a site of conversion. You can become beautiful if you accept the right prophets and their wisdoms with a side of products thrown in for good measure. Forget that these two ideas—unique blessing and earned reward—are antithetical to each other. That makes beauty all the more perfect for our (social and political) time, itself anchored in paradoxes like freedom and property, opportunity and equality
Based on the passage, which of the following CANNOT be inferred about beauty?
- Beauty is no longer an abstract concept.
- Beauty has become an aspirational good.
- Different powers and influences delineate beauty for us.
- Beauty is defined and appreciated by the perceiver.
- The beautiful does not define the standards of beauty.
The Correct Option is
Approach Solution - 1
To determine which statement cannot be inferred about beauty based on the passage, we need to analyze each provided option against the information contained in the passage. The main points to note from the passage are:
- Beauty can be controlled and commodified by powerful interests.
- Beauty is linked with economic and political conditions.
- Beauty functions in diverse aspects: political, economic, individual, generalizing, exclusionary, and narrative-based.
- The dominant story about beauty is paradoxical, being both a unique blessing and an earned reward.
Now let's evaluate each option:
- Option 1: Beauty is no longer an abstract concept.
This is inferred from the passage as beauty can be embodied, controlled, and commodified, suggesting it has tangible aspects rather than being abstract. - Option 2: Beauty has become an aspirational good.
This is consistent with the passage, as the passage discusses beauty as a form of capital and a commodified idea, which aligns with being an aspirational good. - Option 3: Different powers and influences delineate beauty for us.
The passage states that powerful interests control beauty, and it is contingent on social conditions, suggesting that external forces influence the standards of beauty. - Option 4: Beauty is defined and appreciated by the perceiver.
The passage implies that beauty is individualized, and its narrative aspect suggests it may be perceived subjectively by individuals. - Option 5: The beautiful does not define the standards of beauty.
While the passage discusses the commodification and control of beauty, it describes beauty in terms of societal conditions and external powers rather than "the beautiful" setting its standards. This inference cannot be made based on the passage; thus, this is the correct answer.
Therefore, the statement that cannot be inferred from the passage is "The beautiful does not define the standards of beauty."
Approach Solution -2
This question requires us to determine which statement cannot be inferred about beauty based on the given passage. Let's evaluate each option in the context of the passage.
- The passage suggests that beauty can be commodified and controlled by powerful interests, implying that beauty is not an abstract concept anymore. Hence, "Beauty is no longer an abstract concept" can be inferred from the passage.
- Beauty is described as a form of capital and is related to economics and politics, suggesting it is seen as aspirational and valuable. Therefore, the statement "Beauty has become an aspirational good" can also be inferred.
- The passage discusses how beauty is defined by power and various economic and political conditions, aligning with "Different powers and influences delineate beauty for us".
- The passage discusses beauty as something both external and individualized, meaning it can be perceived differently by different people. Thus, "Beauty is defined and appreciated by the perceiver" can be inferred.
- The concluding part of the passage indicates that the current perception of beauty involves paradoxes such as a "unique blessing" versus "earned reward," implying that the beautiful does not define its standards but is defined by external narratives and influences. Thus, "The beautiful does not define the standards of beauty" cannot be inferred because it aligns least with the passage's portrayal of beauty.
Based on the above analysis, the statement "The beautiful does not define the standards of beauty" is not directly inferred from the passage. Thus, it is the correct answer.
Based on the passage, which of the following BEST explains beauty to be simultaneously a “blessing” and a “site of conversion?”
- Both are narratives, with one supporting the other.
- When properly communicated people will believe anything.
- Because beauty is a blessing everyone wants to possess it by converting to the standards.
- A blessing, when sought, results in a provider of the blessing, in a capitalistic society.
- Though beauty is a unique blessing, one can become beautiful by imitating beautiful people.
The Correct Option is C
Approach Solution - 1
The question asks us to identify the explanation that best elucidates how beauty can be simultaneously a "blessing" and a "site of conversion" as per the passage.
Let's break down the understanding from the passage:
- Beauty is described as not only an aesthetic but also a form of capital that works well within the confines of a capitalist society.
- The passage suggests that beauty is perceived both as a "blessing" (implying inherent or divine qualities) and a "site of conversion" (indicating that it can be acquired or achieved through certain practices and consumerism).
- According to the author's perspective, beauty's dual nature makes it immensely useful in economic and political contexts because it can be traded as a commodity and sold as a narrative.
Now, let's evaluate the options based on this understanding:
- Both are narratives, with one supporting the other.
- When properly communicated people will believe anything.
- Because beauty is a blessing everyone wants to possess it by converting to the standards. (Correct Answer)
- A blessing, when sought, results in a provider of the blessing, in a capitalistic society.
- Though beauty is a unique blessing, one can become beautiful by imitating beautiful people.
The correct answer choice is: Because beauty is a blessing everyone wants to possess it by converting to the standards.
Reasoning:
- This option encapsulates the dual nature of beauty as discussed. Beauty, being a "blessing," is something people inherently value and admire.
- To conform to this beauty ideal (the "site of conversion"), individuals strive to adopt certain standards or methods, often dictated by social and economic forces.
- This aligns perfectly with the passage's depiction of beauty being both an inherent trait (blessing) and a marketable concept that people can "convert" to by following prescribed norms or utilizing certain products.
Other options fall short because they either focus too narrowly on one aspect of beauty or misconstrue the relationship outlined in the passage. Therefore, the interpretation that combines beauty as a desirable trait (blessing) with the cultural and economic conversion practices best matches the passage's narrative.
Approach Solution -2
Step 1: Analyze the key terms in the question.
The passage discusses beauty as both a blessing and a site of conversion. A ”blessing” indicates something inherently valuable, while a ”site of conversion” refers to adopting or adhering to standards to attain or replicate that value.
Step 2: Evaluate the options.
- Option 1: Incorrect. While narratives are mentioned in the passage, this option does not directly address the concept of conversion.
- Option 2: Incorrect. This option simplifies the idea of beauty and does not align with the dual nature of ”blessing” and ”conversion.”
- Option 3: Correct. The passage supports the idea that beauty as a blessing creates a desire in individuals to adhere to societal standards, thereby converting to what is considered beautiful.
- Option 4: Incorrect. Although capitalism is a theme in the passage, this option focuses more on economics than the dual nature of beauty.
- Option 5: Incorrect. While imitation is relevant, it does not explain the concept of conversion in the context of beauty as a blessing.
Final Answer: (3)
Top Questions on Reading Comprehension
- Shown below are letters ‘e’ taken from four popular logos, arranged in a sequence. Which of the options is the correct sequence?
- UCEED - 2026
- English Language Comprehension
- Reading Comprehension
- Shown below are four options, each showing consecutive frames representing the movement of a pendulum of an old-style wall clock for an animation movie. Which is the correct option?
- UCEED - 2026
- English Language Comprehension
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- Acrucial moderating factor in how people experience comparisons is self-esteem. Individuals with high self-esteem are more likely to interpret upward comparison as informative rather than threatening. They are more resilient in the face of others’ success and more likely to believe they can reach their own goals. In contrast, people with low self-esteem are more prone to interpret comparison as judgment, reinforcing negative self-views and triggering feelings of inadequacy.
This dynamic creates a self-reinforcing loop. People with high self-esteem are less vulnerable to upward comparison, which intensifies those doubts. Those with a secure sense of self are more likely to use comparison as a learning tool. The same external stimulus—a colleague’s achievements, a friend’s popularity—can have radically different effects depending on internal stability.
Self-esteem also influences how people choose their comparison targets. Research has found that individuals often engage in “selective comparison,” seeking out those who confirm their existing beliefs about themselves. This can become a subtle form of self-sabotage. Someone who feels unworthy may subconsciously seek out targets that reinforce that sense, perpetuating a narrative of inferiority. One of the most promising antidotes to social comparison is temporal comparison—evaluating oneself not against others, but against one’s own past. This method has been shown to increase motivation and satisfaction, especially when individuals can see concrete progress. Temporal comparison activates the same reward circuits as social comparison but avoids the threat systems associated with social ranking. It also reinforces agency: individuals focus on what they can control and improve rather than what others control. In therapeutic and coaching settings, temporal comparison is used to help clients build self-efficacy and track growth over time.
Moreover, people who focus on self-improvement rather than social dominance are less likely to fall into cycles of envy or self-pity. They can still use others as inspiration, but they do so without attaching their self-worth to the outcome. This is not to say they never compare—but that they focus on learning, rather than judgment. The most skilful approach to comparison may lie in eliminating it, but in reframing it as feedback. When we interpret comparison as information rather than a verdict, we can ask, “What can I learn from this?” This shift turns comparison into a growth tool. Teachers mentor their students, not as rivals. Psychologists emphasize that the key variable here is mindset.
A fixed mindset sees comparison as a threat. If someone else is better, it means we are worse. A growth mindset sees comparison as a map. If someone else has reached a certain level, it means the path exists. This reframing is not just a cognitive trick. It changes the emotional tone of comparison, making it more likely to inspire than to wound. Reframing also requires emotional regulation—the ability to notice an initial pang of envy or shame without reacting impulsively. With practice, individuals can learn to pause, reflect, and reinterpret their emotional responses. Over time, this builds resilience and self-trust, allowing comparison to become a learning tool rather than a cage.- XAT - 2026
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
When people who are talking don’t share the same culture, knowledge, values, and assumptions, mutual understanding can be especially difficult. Such understanding is possible through the negotiation of meaning. To negotiate meaning with someone, you have to become aware of and respect both the differences in your backgrounds and when these differences are important. You need enough diversity of cultural and personal experience to be aware that divergent world views exist and what they might be like. You also need the flexibility in world view, and a generous tolerance for mistakes, as well as a talent for finding the right metaphor to communicate the relevant parts of unshared experiences or to highlight the shared experiences while demphasizing the others. Metaphorical imagination is a crucial skill in creating rapport and in communicating the nature of unshared experience. This skill consists, in large measure, of the ability to bend your world view and adjust the way you categorize your experiences. Problems of mutual understanding are not exotic; they arise in all extended conversations where understanding is important.
When it really counts, meaning is almost never communicated according to the CONDUIT metaphor, that is, where one person transmits a fixed, clear proposition to another by means of expressions in a common language, where both parties have all the relevant common knowledge, assumptions, values, etc. When the chips are down, meaning is negotiated: you slowly figure out what you have in common, what it is safe to talk about, how you can communicate unshared experience or create a shared vision. With enough flexibility in bending your world view and with luck and charity, you may achieve some mutual understanding.
Communication theories based on the CONDUIT metaphor turn from the pathetic to the evil when they are applied indiscriminately on a large scale, say, in government surveillance or computerized files. There, what is most crucial for real understanding is almost never included, and it is assumed that the words in the file have meaning in themselves—disembodied, objective, understandable meaning. When a society lives by the CONDUITmetaphor on a large scale, misunderstanding, persecution, and much worse are the likely products.- XAT - 2026
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
Later, I realized that reviewing the history of nuclear physics served another purpose as well: It gave the lie to the naive belief that the physicists could have come together when nuclear fission was discovered (in Nazi Germany!) and agreed to keep the discovery a secret, thereby sparing humanity such a burden. No. Given the development of nuclear physics up to 1938, development that physicists throughout the world pursued in all innocence of any intention of finding the engine of a new weapon of mass destruction—only one of them, the remarkable Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, took that possibility seriously—the discovery of nuclear fission was inevitable. To stop it, you would have had to stop physics. If German scientists hadn’t made the discovery when they did, French, American, Russian, Italian, or Danish scientists would have done so, almost certainly within days or weeks. They were all working at the same cutting edge, trying to understand the strange results of a simple experiment bombarding uranium with neutrons. Here was no Faustian bargain, as movie directors and other naifs still find it intellectually challenging to imagine. Here was no evil machinery that the noble scientists might hide from the problems and the generals. To the contrary, there was a high insight into how the world works, an energetic reaction, older than the earth, that science had finally devised the instruments and arrangements to coart forth. “Make it seem inevitable,” Louis Pasteur used to advise his students when they prepared to write up their discoveries. But it was. To wish that it might have been ignored or suppressed is barbarous. “Knowledge,” Niels Bohr once noted, “is itself the basis for civilization.” You cannot have the one without the other; the one depends upon the other. Nor can you have only benevolent knowledge; the scientific method doesn’t filter for benevolence. Knowledge has consequences, not always intended, not always comfortable, but always welcome. The earth revolves around the sun, not the sun around the earth. “It is a profound and necessary truth,” Robert Oppenheimer would say, “that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them.”
...Bohr proposed once that the goal of science is not universal truth. Rather, he argued, the modest but relentless goal of science is “the gradual removal of prejudices.” The discovery that the earth revolves around the sun has gradually removed the prejudice that the earth is the center of the universe. The discovery of microbes is gradually removing the prejudice that disease is a punishment from God. The discovery of evolution is gradually removing the prejudice that Homo sapiens is a separate and special creation.- XAT - 2026
- Verbal and Logical Ability
- Reading Comprehension
Questions Asked in XAT exam
- An artificial swimming pool is circular and water is flowing clockwise at a speed of 3 km/hr. Two swimmers Ayub and Rana start from diametrically opposite points, Ayub in the anticlockwise direction and Rana in the clockwise direction. They first meet at a point such that Ayub has covered 60 m by that time. Their second meeting point is such that Rana has covered another 180 m after the first meeting point. If the speed of Rana in still water is 3 km/hr, find the time taken by Ayub to cover one full circle in the clockwise direction.
- XAT - 2026
- Time and Work
- Arrange the following generations from the oldest to the youngest:
1. Generation X
2. Silent Generation
3. Generation Alpha
4. Baby Boomers
5. Millennials
- XAT - 2026
- Current Affairs
- Read the following scenario and answer the THREE questions that follow.
Brijbhushan, a microfinancier, lends money at the rate of Rs.10 per square meter to small farmers at a village. He charges an annual interest rate of 10%. All the farming plots in that village are rectangular, with areas varying between a minimum of 1000 square meters and a maximum of 10,000 square meters.
This year, Brijbhushan has lent money only to five farmers: Aditya, Binod, Chhuttan, Dabloo and Govind. The perimeter of Chhuttan’s plot is 250 meters, with the length and width being at a ratio of 4:1. Aditya’s plot has an area three times the area of Govind’s plot. The area of Aditya’s plot is also the average of the areas of Govind’s plot and Dabloo’s plot. The plots belonging to Aditya, Binod and Dabloo are of the same width, but of different lengths. Moreover, the length of Binod’s plot is the sum of the lengths of Aditya’s plot and Dabloo’s plot.- XAT - 2026
- Mensuration
Light Chemicals is an industrial paint supplier with presence in three locations: Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. The sunburst chart below shows the distribution of the number of employees of different departments of Light Chemicals. There are four departments: Finance, IT, HR and Sales. The employees are deployed in four ranks: junior, mid, senior and executive. The chart shows four levels: location, department, rank and gender (M: male, F: female). At every level, the number of employees at a location/department/rank/gender are proportional to the corresponding area of the region represented in the chart.
Due to some issues with the software, the data on junior female employees have gone missing. Notice that there are junior female employees in Mumbai HR, Sales and IT departments, Hyderabad HR department, and Bengaluru IT and Finance departments. The corresponding missing numbers are marked u, v, w, x, y and z in the diagram, respectively.
It is also known that:
a) Light Chemicals has a total of 210 junior employees.
b) Light Chemicals has a total of 146 employees in the IT department.
c) Light Chemicals has a total of 777 employees in the Hyderabad office.
d) In the Mumbai office, the number of female employees is 55.
- XAT - 2026
- Pie Charts
An investment company, Win Lose, recruit's employees to trade in the share market. For newcomers, they have a one-year probation period. During this period, the employees are given Rs. 1 lakh per month to invest the way they see fit. They are evaluated at the end of every month, using the following criteria:
1. If the total loss in any span of three consecutive months exceeds Rs. 20,000, their services are terminated at the end of that 3-month period,
2. If the total loss in any span of six consecutive months exceeds Rs. 10,000, their services are terminated at the end of that 6-month period.
Further, at the end of the 12-month probation period, if there are losses on their overall investment, their services are terminated.
Ratan, Shri, Tamal and Upanshu started working for Win Lose in January. Ratan was terminated after 4 months, Shri was terminated after 7 months, Tamal was terminated after 10 months, while Upanshu was not terminated even after 12 months. The table below, partially, lists their monthly profits (in Rs. ‘000’) over the 12-month period, where x, y and z are masked information.
Note:
• A negative profit value indicates a loss.
• The value in any cell is an integer.
Illustration: As Upanshu is continuing after March, that means his total profit during January-March (2z +2z +0) ≥
Rs.20,000. Similarly, as he is continuing after June, his total profit during January − June ≥
Rs.10,000, as well as his total profit during April-June ≥ Rs.10,000.
- XAT - 2026
- Logical and Analytical Reasoning Skills