Job Discussion Forums

[leeroy]

yes!

[Aramas]

As previously mentioned, symmetry is very important, as is colour, texture and proportion. It's all rather simple and self evident in practice, but its analysis is so complex that it could easily spawn Ph.D's by the truckload.

I can't help but wonder how people are influenced by their culture, and particularly the media. The horrible 'airbrushed plastic mannikin' look favoured by Americans is anathema to me. My preference is for natural looking women of similar tribal origins to myself - ie northern and eastern european.

Strangely enough, the most technically beautiful women I have even seen were invariably of southern European origins, but hot natural blondes make me feel funny - it's an involuntary and seemingly unconscious response, and I like it

[sidjameson]

As is often the case with this nature nurture debate I feel that the answer Leeroy is a mixture of all the variables. I'd guess that beauty as humans use the word has a somewhat fixed evolutionary determined value. As others pointed out, health, child rearing capabilities etc. Sociological ie. the dictates of fashion and psycholigical, I personally have always liked nice hands for reasons that I won't bore you with play their part too.
Just like food. I hate celery because it was forced on me as a kid. I love western food cuz, er I grew up in the west. I'm predetermined to like fatty foods because it's a hangover from the days when humans struggled to get enough calories and so therefore eating fat was of an evolutionary benefit.
Conclusion. Just enjoy the show.

[dmb]

How does sex appeal affect one's idea of beauty? I prefer Beyonce to Britney.

[Cleopatra]

Good question.

I often find the most technically 'beautiful' people not to be sexually attractive. They leave me cold somehow. Take someone like Ben Afleck. "Technically" very handsome but he just hasn't got it. At least not for me!

Perhaps, in the same way in which most talented and charasmatic people almost always seem very 'damaged' (Marilyn, John Lennon, Leonardo (Da Vinci, not Di Caprio!) so too the most physically attractive people are often somewhat less than 'perfect'?

[Dr.J]

actually, that's a good counter to the "symmetry" theory.

in art class we were taught never to place something in the direct center of the picture, as it was not as pleasing to the eye as something off-center.

so crooked noses et alia are more attractive?

[shmooj]

In Japan, having a crooked tooth (called yaeba I think) is regarded as attractive in women.

Also look at this (okay its a generalisation but still holds true):
In the west, white people want to be tanned > in Japan tanned people want to be white > in Africa, dark-skinned people want to be light-skinned

What is going on here seems to be to be a deep psychological need that most of us have to be seen as "attractive" in a very literal sense of the word. Our deep drives to be accepted by others and not labelled as "ugly" draw us toward whatever social norms there are for "beauty". As these differ from culture to culture, I would say that rather than there being a universal of "beauty", there is a universal of "a need for acceptance" which propels us to define and try to attain "beauty"

[Gordon]

In Korea, it is considered "good luck" to have a mole with a long hair growing out of it. Good luck finding a wife, I say.

[been_there]

http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v372/n6502/abs/372169a0.html

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/biology/b103/f03/web1/ppalermo.html

[Cleopatra]

I wouldn't say that you have to have a crooked nose or any other obvious �rregularity'in order to be "beautiful". However, I do think that perfectly regular, symmetric faces are too boring to be beautiful.

Good looking, maybe - but not beautiful. And yes, there IS a difference. A qualitative one, not merely quantitative.

[Will.]

Real beauty is easy to spot be you male or female,

R
E
A
L
B
E
A
U
T
Y

Makes you go all gooey and then you say...

Uuuuuuh.

It is the eye of the beholder thing again.