What makes a face beautiful?

Jun 10, 2008 at 12:56 AM
2 comments

According to scientific research symmetry.

Yes scientists say it's symmetry, combined with a few gender-specific traits. supposedly, these traits are fairly reliable in edging up the percentage of test subjects who considered them attractive - these are a few of the leading traits:

women: full lips, large eyes, small jaw and nose (all associated with youth/adolescence)

These favored traits could be explained by:

A youthful appearance is a sign of healthiness and fertility so from an evolutionary standpoint choosing a mate with a youthful face is an advantage. Features that are indicative of youth include fullness of lips, a thinner jaw, large round eyes, large forehead, small short nose, round cheeks, and short distance between nose and mouth.

Traits of attractiveness in a man are:

men: squarer jaw, deeper-set eyes, full lips

one interesting oddity - women's perceptions of beauty change throughout their menstrual cycle.

that's what studies have shown, so those may be trends. certainly, the symmetry idea makes sense, since it's been shown that animals also are generally attracted to symmetrical features. but on an individual basis, it isn't so exact, and there are a lot of variables.

Dr. Marquadt, a renown plastic surgeon, has proposed that the most beautiful face is one that is based on the golden ratio or divine proportion. This proportion comes from the number phi, named after the Greek sculptor Phidias, and has been associated with beauty for over two thousand years. Dr. Marquadt has designed a mask made up of golden rectangles, triangles and decagons of different sizes. The closer a face's proportions are to those of the mask, the more beautiful the person is. Dr. Marquadt's theory is that beauty is what allows human beings to recognize other members of our species. "The most beautiful faces, he claims, are the ones most easily recognizable as human. 'Beauty is just humanness,' he says" (Jones).

Taken from Beauty Chek