The Eye of the Beholder

Some researchers suggest that beauty may not be, as the cliché says, "skin deep," but that it may go a lot deeper, even down into the most primitive reaches of the brain. But while some aspects of beauty appear to be universal, crossing races and time periods, more often, the standards of beauty vary over time, depending on the dominant culture and local economic conditions.

First, the Obvious: Skin and Size

In earlier Caucasian agrarian societies, poor people worked the fields, and their skins became darkened. The wealthy, for the most part, stayed indoors, thus maintained their pallor. From this, "fair" which originally meant light in color, also came to mean attractive. Later, with industrialization, and most work being performed indoors, the all-over tan became a symbol of the leisure class not the laboring class. In fact, pale skin has been replaced in fashionable circles by tanned skin, and even constant skin cancer warnings have been unable to overcome this allure.

Thinness also seems to follow economics. When food is scarce, weight is a status symbol. Today, when high-calorie, low-protein food is so plentiful that obesity is epidemic, being thin has become desired, for aesthetic and health reasons.

The Nose Shows …?

Samuel Wells' 1871 volume "New physiognomy, or Signs of Character, as Manifested Through Temperament and External Forms and Especially in The Human Face Divine" – "With more than one thousand illustrations" is a bible of bigotry that shows, not so much standards of beauty, but a strong preference for Germanic features.

In the discussion of facial character traits, it becomes clear that the thin nose is in. Any wide nose – explained as one that's too wide to support a pair of pince-nez glasses – is indicative of racial deterioration and degradation. And in Wells' calculation, this unfortunate flaw is common to Irish, African, and Asian peoples. (However, a report in the British Journal of Plastic Surgery, discussing analysis of the proportions of the Oriental nose, found that over 51% of Chinese noses fit the most desired nose:face width ratio – where nose width = 0.25 of face width – compared with only 37% of Caucasians!) Wells is no more generous to the Semitic people, who, he said, have simply too much nose, and for this reason must be classified as shifty and untrustworthy.

Beauty by Culture?

The idea that beauty is defined by the dominant culture has been around for a long time. Carla Lloyd, chair of the advertising department at S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, pointed out that the media have a major influence on how beauty is conceived across cultures. In Micronesia (which includes islands such as Kiribati, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau), aesthetic preferences followed the tradition of favoring full-bodied women. But things changed when pirated television from Los Angeles became available! After several years, perceptions of beauty changed, and the first cases of eating disorders were reported.

Even then, standards of beauty may have less to do with cultural imposition than with the well-documented similarity effect, in that physical traits of the majority population seem more attractive simply because they're the ones most often seen. A 1964 study indicated that in the United States, both African-American and Caucasian men considered Caucasian features to be more attractive than African features. But the same evaluation, conducted in Nigeria, showed a preference for African facial features.

Nonetheless, a number of cross-cultural studies have been conducted, in which people of different races were shown pictures of people of various races. Regardless of the race of the person in the photograph, or the person being interviewed, some patterns emerged, and all respondents liked the same physical traits: high cheekbones and large eyes. These preferences were seen among women reviewing pictures of men, and men examining pictures of women.

"The Bachelorette" in the Animal Kingdom

While some standards of beauty are subject to change based on time and place, other standards seem to be hardwired into the organism. The first priority of any living thing seems to be species survival. In most species, the female, the sex that has the greatest investment in reproduction, gets to pick and choose among males, and will use mating strategies designed to improve the chances of survival for her offspring.

Basis for mate selection may be size (as in the stag beetle), coloration (as seen among many birds), or competition to show who is the biggest and strongest (as seen among lions, mountain sheep, etc.). Female insects may exude a pheromone that can spread for miles, offering her the greatest possible number of partners to select from. Among some species of moths, the male pheromone contains a pyrrolizidine alkaloid that is poisonous to many species, but not to moths. Females select the male who offers the highest concentration of the alkaloid, since these males are not only bigger, but the alkaloid will make their fertilized eggs less appetizing to predatory species.

What You See Is What You Get?

Symmetry – most commonly an even balance between the right and left sides of the face and body – is one of the most common beauty standards. The explanation offered is that a symmetric appearance is a sign of health – or at least of the absence of tumors or atrophy. The preference for symmetry is also thought to be an evolutionary trait, because it is seen even in species whose internal organs are not symmetric.

An aesthetic preference for clear skin may be nothing more than observation of a lack of skin disease. A winning smile may simply be evidence of the ability to chew and maintain a healthy nutritional status. Absence of wrinkles is an indicator of youth, which is a basic indicator of fertility.

In spite of the general social interest in women's breasts, there have been no conclusive studies that men are actually attracted to large-breasted women. In most mammals, breasts are only enlarged during lactation, so that it seems unlikely that this aesthetic preference is inherent in the genetic code. Some authors have suggested that a preference for women with large breasts reflects a desire for evidence that the woman will be able to feed, or at least cushion, an infant. But it seems more likely that this is a matter of fashion rather than innate preferences.

Hip to the Scene

But the most carefully studied measure of female beauty seems to be the waist-hip ratio. A ratio of 0.70 was found to be the average ideal, and it's a ratio that gives a woman the body shape of a pear, rather than an apple. As an example of the ratio, to be the ideal .70, Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind, who famously had an 18.5-inch waist, would have to have had only 26.4" hips.

This .70 ratio spans time and culture, and exists regardless of the woman's overall body size and weight – whether the woman was/is the ideal of painter Peter Paul Reubens or a Paris designer. But speaking of Paris designers, research shows it's modern women – particularly Caucasian women – who have imposed the look of near-emaciation on themselves. In a small study at Loyola University in Chicago, African-American women were found to have a better overall body image and be more accepting of large body sizes than their Caucasian counterparts. The African Americans also had a lower incidence of eating disorders.

But this ratio of female beauty may translate into good science from the viewpoint of reproductive capacity and health. Women with a higher waist-hip ratio (those who are more apple-shaped) have greater difficulty in getting pregnant, and may have other long-term health concerns. Studies show that apple-shaped people are linked to higher rates of heart conditions, diabetes, and gall bladder problems.

Women on Top

Some commentators have suggested that women seeking a mate, realizing they will need support during pregnancy and the early years of child rearing, look for the traits that make a good provider, which may vary depending on economic circumstances. The image of the well-muscled body-builder is a masculine ideal, and made sense when the occupational choices for men were hunting and farming, but has less meaning when the most lucrative occupations (except in major league sports) are usually sedentary (like law, investment banking, etc.).

The well-muscled look with washboard abs (and an all-over tan) may be fashionable among men, but in broad scale studies of women's preferences, the only universally desired male attribute appears to be height. Women routinely select taller men as being more attractive, and apparently award extra credit for good posture, but no other physical trait seems to be universal.

There is an aphorism, attributed to H.L. Mencken: "The proof of the superiority of women to men is that women don't waste energy running after a good-looking man." The Sage of Baltimore was probably trying to be funny, but he was more accurate than he could have known.

For more on beauty, see our articles We're so Vain and Geometry of Human Anatomy.

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