Beauty: In the eye of the beholder, or a quantity capable of being measured?

This weekend, I caught the John Cleese hosted miniseries on the human face, on TLC. One of the segments I watched was (inevitably) entitled Beauty. For those who didn’t watch it, they explained that there just may be a way to measure beauty. Pythagoras (of the theorem) came up with the ratio 1:1.168, and this ratio occurs pretty much every where in nature, and basically is the answer to beauty in the entire universe. So then scientists came up with a sort of mask. The more “beautiful” you are, the better the mask fits when put over your face. It’s a bit hard to explain, but go to www.tlc.com if you want to learn more about it. They also mentioned that when given a set of faces, pretty much all people put them in the same order (from most beautiful to least). So some faces are universally beautiful/ugly, at least according to their poll.

Anyway, my question is, what do you guys think of this? is there a way to objectively measure beauty or is it always in the eye of the beholder?

They made a pretty compelling case, IMHO, but most of the faces that “fit” the design were things that people would find beautiful anyway. That is, maybe the beauty mask was designed with preconceived notions of beauty. And it doesn’t account for people being unusual, or having a strange, but really attractive face. It does suck all the fun out of it if there’s a way of calculating it. And I would like to believe that it can be anything you want it to be. Your opinions?

Is it my turn? Do I get to cite the millihelen first?

Sufficient to launch one ship. Definitely measurable.

I’ve seen The Human Face series on TLC you’re speaking of, very interesting. I wish TLC ran more things like this and fewer traffic cop videos and ER trauma programs.

But to the subject at hand, I personally classify beauty and attractiveness as two different, but related, qualities. I suppose a somewhat universal standard, the 1:1.168 ratio, can be used to measure beauty in the abstract; but attractiveness is more individual, more a matter of personal taste.

Just look at all the “hot celebrities you want” threads that pop-up on these boards. While they cover more than just the faces of the people mentioned in them, they do show that we are attracted to very different things. For example, I agree with most people that Cindy Crawford is very beautiful by conventional standards; it’s probably an instinctual reaction on my part. But personally, I don’t find her attractive, there’s something cold and bland in her looks to me, no matter how they measure. To me, her face lacks character, which is harder to explain, and hopefully, can’t be quantified. Nigella Lawson’s face is more attractive to me, even though I’m fairly sure her face wouldn’t fit the “beauty mask” as perfectly as Cindy’s. There is a look about her face that I found inviting and appealing the first time I saw her on TV, before I even knew anything about her, that Crawford doesn’t have for me.

I know which face I prefer, numbers or not.

Well, one ship is good enough for me. :slight_smile:

That’s a good point, widdershins. There are a lot of young good looking celebs out there- the star of Star Wars Two, and the old perennial favorites, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise…etc. But not all of them do a lot for me…so I suppose attraction is one thing that the show neglected to mention. I have a feeling 1:1.168 is not on most people’s minds when they pull back the sheets…

Hmmm, haven’t seen the TLC show, and some of my responses have been threadkillers lately, but here goes:

I have a working hypothesis that beauty in humans is composed of three dimensions in roughly equal proportion:

  1. Basic Structure - bones, if you will - no doubt this speaks directly to the proportions that are discussed on the TLC show.

  2. Youth - youth matters - admit it: how often do you find yourself gazing/lusting after someone, only to realize that they aren’t all that attractive - what they have is youth.

  3. Character - how they carry themselves, inner poise, self confidence, what have you.

The point is - while the “rules” associated with basic structure may be well understood, we all respond to youth and character differently. Widdershins compares Cindy Crawford and Nigella Lawson,which to me sounds like you’re say that while Crawford has a great basic structure, you care less for her character, and vice versa for Lawson.

When I am in full-on people watching mode, I road test my hypothesis to see, when I find myself drawn to a person, how they map out against those three dimensions…

I don’t quite understand what the ratio is, with all the triangles and golden shapes. I recall symmetry being the deciding factor. If you look at the photos that were judged, the “most attractive”, the face is symmetrical, while the “least attractive” face was asymmetrical.

Yeah, but there were a lot of other factors with the least attractive face. Even if it were made symmetrical, I don’t think it would have been all that good looking. :o Er, sorry if that offends anyone…those really unattractive faces were a bit much.

I would say that there is something to the objective measures of beauty; there are a lot of people who I would agree are beautiful based on the structure of their face, etc. But again, attractiveness is something different.

I was watching the movie “Uncorked” last night and it’s a good example of this. I was surprised that Minnie Driver had someone much more technically, if you will, beautiful than she in the movie. Her co-star was beautiful in an objective sense and it actually made me notice Driver’s flaws more (her eyes are too close together, etc.) But Driver’s character was much more attractive because she was interesting, witty, etc.

It’s like with music; there are people I can agree are technically beautiful/talented, but who I just don’t “see it” with.

Well, at the risk of continuing the offense, the unattractive faces seemed… abnormal, to a greater extent than did Stephanie Seymour’s face at the other end of the spectrum.

I mean, if you were to see Stephanie Seymour’s face in your local deli or riding the bus, you might think, “Damn! She’s gorgeous!” and you might do a double-take (even if she weren’t a celebrity), but chances are she’d blend in with the crowd a little more than would either of those “unattractive” women. In fact, if she didn’t have the advantage of professional make-up artists and whatnot, she’d probably blend in even more with the average Janes. The women at the other end of the spectrum, however, would not likely blend in, no matter what, because they seem a little… deformed.

Do you know what I mean?

It just seems like they went out of their way to find abnormal-looking people to call “ugly”.

Does this mean that “beauty” essentially equates to looking “normal”?

Yes, I think that makes sense, auntie em. I felt a little voyeuristic watching it. They said they found the really unattractive faces mainly from medical journals, and that nowadays, most people wouldn’t be allowed to get that bad before they were treated. Which made me relieved, but also made me feel bad, that here I was judging someone else.

Remember that episode of the “Twilight Zone”- “Eye of the Beholder”? (The one with the woman getting plastic surgery…) It pretty much represents the idea that beauty is conformity, based upon the ideals that one particular society upholds. I guess beauty could be taking the best of what the culture likes.

Also I found it interesting that when they used faces, they only used female ones. Well, not only, but in the spectrum example. It might not mean anything. The whole episode did tend to focus on females more than males for the most part. Maybe that’s because men aren’t really considered “beautiful”- more handsome?

One interesting thing they ignored almost completelu: the effect of makeup, specifically on Liz Hurley! Without it, she’s still attractive, but definitely not drop-dead gorgeous. She was in an Inspector Morse movie on A&E, but I only knew it was her when I read the credits!

The ratio they mentioned is 1:1.618, also known as the golden section. There is a lot of literature claiming to find this ratio in art.

There may be purely physical reasons to find a ratio near this in nature. The classic examples are the number of spirals of the scales on a pineapple and the florets on a daisy blossom, where the ratio is near 1.618.

But to claim that this exact ratio is always the most beautiful is highly dubious. For one thing, it’s very hard to measure the size of facial features with this accuracy. For another, some features don’t have well-defined borders and allow wiggle room for the statistics.

I agree there are some general hard-wired components to our perception of beauty which can be affected to some extent by societal standards.

With regard to the mask, that was the point, sort of: take generally accepted beautiful faces and find the golden ratios within them. They did, but the pattern was pretty complex, maybe like the epicycles needed to explain the motion of planets across the sky before Copernicus and Kepler.

So would we all. But our beliefs rarely cause extreme changes in reality, regardless of the intensity of those beliefs.