Thread: Is beauty just the sum of your facial parts?

I just ran across this in a class recently. (Original Article:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/he....16811494.html)



For centuries, philosophers and scientists have tried to define a universal ideal of beauty. St. Augustine said beauty was synonymous with geometric form and balance. Aristotle defined beauty, in part, as "order and symmetry and definiteness." Artists and architects since the Renaissance — and more recently, plastic surgeons — have tried to quantify beauty using the theory of the golden ratio, which holds that there is an ideal relationship between two measurements that can be expressed as a mathematical constant. Da Vinci, Dalí and Mondrian all are said to have used the golden ratio in their art.

Is the woman pictured on the right more attractive than the woman on the left? Do her wider-set eyes, the longer distance between her hairline and the bridge of the nose, and the rounder shape of her face make her more beautiful?

The photograph on the right was doctored by the "beautification engine" of a new computer program that uses a mathematical formula to alter the original form into a theoretically more attractive version, while maintaining what programmers call an "unmistakable similarity" to the original.


So what do you guys think? Are perceptions of beauty and attractiveness universal? Is a person's beauty actually enhanced by such changes? Is character lost and a cookie cutter blandness set in?

mhm interesting.
I surely think that the woman to the right is more beautiful for a number of reasons.
"Cube-like" (not round) face is connected to men more than women
Lips look just soo much better rounder than wide. If they are wide they have to be thin.
Eyes are def too big. Maybe on another model with a bit more proportion to her face or something.
And I srsly like noses smaller, it's cuter :p
But this is my opinion. I like proportional women (big breasts=big butt, small breasts=small butt), NOT symmetrical, that would be just boring. Example: one of my all time most beautiful women is Eliza Dushku, and she has a lazy eye :D
But, again, all this depends on your point of view. I associate the right girl with a smaller build 170 cm MAX, and the left one seems much higher.
other thing. eyebrows are much much more suited to the girl on the right :)
Thats it for me, I would have composed all this in a better package but it's 2:30 AM and I'm dead tired.

2 words: higher cheekbones ^^

Glad to get some honest responses.

Maybe I should just post a pic of a hot chick and see what happens.

Both of them are uglies.