美（mei)  means ’beauty‘ or ’beautiful‘.   Why? How to observe the picture of the character in a reasonable way? 

美 is composed with 羊（yang) and 大（da).  

大 looks like a man stretching out the arms and the legs that means ’big'.

(The meaning of 小 is 'small' which seems like a little child stretching out the arms!)

羊 is ‘goat' or ’sheep‘.  It has two horns on the top；the three horizon lines show the main part of the body with a tail at the bottom.  Once a time I saw a fighting between two male goats：They rushed meters to strike each other. You could hear loud sound when their heads collided. The noise was so terrible that I worried about if one of the horns had been broken! The master told me the winner would become the king of the flock.

In general，美 really looks like a lovely fat goat. You can enjoy tasty mutton if you kill it for meat!