Great, we would all look just ike a young Kim Jong Il. Figures.
I think you are misunderstanding what is going on on that page. If you click the “How it was made” link it explains that it’s a picture of a Han Chinese male. It’s just that the image was composed of thousands of human figures supposedly representing different segments of the world population. If you zoom in on the figures it turns out to be really unremarkable. Anyway, just a picture of a chinese guy, not an average of all people.
[QUOTE=Argent Towers;13504921
A face with truly “averaged” proportions is somewhat rare and very desirable especially among males. Christopher Walken had it [(when he was young)]
(http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lc41w1oZLV1qbvk7po1_500.jpg);
[/QUOTE]
I prefer him older, he’s got more character and edge. I guess that’s why I don’t find much to appreciate in the linked photos. Too boring to be beautiful.
They used an odd averaging feature. They did some weird optimized thing. I have used a fair amount of morphing averaging type software, And it is damn near impossible to average faces that show teeth and end up with a smile that isn’t from Wes Craven, But the Iranian picture has a perfectly hot little smile.
I never thought I would want to go on vacation in Uzbekistan, but damn.
The funny thing is that you can tell which former Eastern bloc countries still dig the 80’s bangs.
My boyfriend was pissed they didn’t have an “average American” also.
Nor Australia or Canada. Young countries with lots of immigrants didn’t make the cut, as they wouldn’t produce a face of a recognizable ethnicity.
The averaged male faces tend to attract younger women; as females get older, it seems that they develop more of an appreciation for faces with “character.”
Tell him he’s already got an above-average one.
So we Canadians have to average ourselves out in reality first? I’m ready to do my part. 
Don’t get me wrong, I have a high opinion of myself. But while I couldn’t actually pick any of these “average women” out of the lineup because they aren’t distinctive, they are all way, way hotter than me.
I bet I got better tits, though.
My fave = Welsh.
Interesting idea for a follow-up site.
My one-word response to this earlier might have seemed curt, but it was a serious answer to your question, and we’ve already gone over much of it in this thread already. I was specifically thinking about this article earlier, but didn’t have a link handy at work.
I agree that the average, without blemish, without distinction, will appeal to the most people, precisely because variations that might conflict with any given preference have been minimized. OK, everybody agrees that the 41 “average women” depicted are beautiful. But it seems to me there is a potential, more specific kind of appeal for any particular observer. I mean, lots of women are more appealing to me than those glowing generic ideals.
That article is quite interesting, and leads to a whole series on faces and beauty and face recognition and other things. Worth reading.
At last, scientific proof that women are hot.
ETA: except Irish women.
j/k, I married two of them.
I have yet to meet someone who can clearly differentiate Chinese Americans, Korean Americans and Japanese Americans.
My wife is Taiwanese, but has lived in Japan for 12 years. No one can tell what nationality she is.
I always find this an interesting claim too.
You never hear someone say they can look at a white person and tell if they’re French, German, Finnish, British, Irish, etc. I’ve heard of people making the claim they can distinguish a west African from a east African from a southern African–and I think I could probably take a good stab at that too. As I could with the various regions of Europe. But down to the nationality? Um, no.
I think people who say they can distinguish the different “Asians” based on facial features alone are just Asianophiles who wanna look cool. Or, if they are Asian, they think that they have some type of special radar that the rest of us lack.
My Thai wife is ethnically Chinese. In Thailand, other Thais have mistaken her for Japanese and Filipina. In the US, she was once mistaken for Hawaiian.
There are a lot of ethnicities in Thailand. People from the Northeast, North and South all have rather distinctive looks.