Consider the apparently received wisdom that we prefer symmetrical, evenly balanced features.... [M]any of the previous experiments had asked just a small number of subjects to rate different faces – making it easier for fluke results to jump out. When Stefan Van Dongen at the University of Antwerp conflated the results in a large meta-analysis, he found the effect almost disappears when you consider enough people. In fact, facial symmetry may not even say much about your health. Although previous research had found some evidence for the idea, a 2014 study took 3D scans of nearly 5,000 teenagers and quizzed them about their medical history. It found that those with the most symmetrical features had been no fitter than the others....
June 23, 2015
"Would you have been beautiful in another era?"
"David Robson discovers that attractiveness is more malleable and subjective than we might imagine."
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The "vital statistics" of Miss America contestant winners show a change in the ideal of feminine beauty. (Winners today are thinner than they were in prior decades.) The same is true with movie starlets. Not long ago we were watching a Marilyn Monroe movie. My wife suggested she'd be considered a little chunky by today's standards.
So, yes, I think the notion of beauty is malleable. Another example is sun tans. In prior generations, women avoided tanning. A tan indicated your family was so poor their women needed to work in the fields. A lack of tan indicated greater wealth. Today, with most work done inside, a tan is associated with wealth. It indicates enough wealth to afford time at the beach, by the pool, playing tennis or golf, etc. So, in yesteryear a lack of a tan was a sign of beauty with today's standard being the opposite.
"Not long ago we were watching a Marilyn Monroe movie. My wife suggested she'd be considered a little chunky by today's standards."
We're you watching "Some Like It Hot"? She was pregnant.
You hardly ever see the monster group symmetry.
I tried to do an image search for an ugly face with symmetrical features, but it just brought up pretty faces that had been judged symmetrical. Brad Pitt was the top hit.
Sheldon Cooper was trying to convince a hesitant Penny that she should make a long term romantic commitment to Leonard Hofstadter.
"Why, in today's North Korea, he'd be positively average in height!"
Funny because it hurts.
I skimmed the article and it sounds like a pean to the metrosexual.
In the early days of genetic studies, we had what were called "Funny Looking Kid" workups for odd looking kids. It was even called "The FLK Syndrome." A lot of them were genetically abnormal but one day the workup was cancelled after the funny looking parents came in to visit.
My wife would be beautiful in any age at any age.
almost disappears
IOW, it doesn't disappear.
The study which their link links to: "However, there was a very small negative association between facial FA [small random deviations from perfect symmetry in bilateral traits] and IQ that remained significant after correcting for a positive allometric relationship between FA and face size."
It found that those with the most symmetrical features had been no fitter than the others....
That is incorrect. The study is here.
Just like I always say, there's nothing better than sex with a hunchback.
Ann Althouse said...
I tried to do an image search for an ugly face with symmetrical features,
Here's a bunch of asymmetrical faces. How many do you find attractive?
Eric the Fruit Bat said...
Just like I always say, there's nothing better than sex with a hunchback.
..said the hunchback. No fair, though, your hump should be pretty symmetrical since it consists of wing muscles.
In what age would Hedy Lamarr, Vivien Leigh, Grace Kelly or Elizabeth Taylor not be considered beautiful.
Vivien Leigh is also an adopted Atlantan, although she was born south of town in Jonesboro, Georgia (see, Gone With the Wind before its banned.)
we prefer symmetrical, evenly balanced features...
This made me think of dogs, for some reason. It's funny how we prize purity in breeding. We want golden retrievers who have long histories of mating with golden retrievers. And that's a beautiful dog! And yet they have all sorts of medical problems. Mixed breeds are often healthier dogs.
If you obsess about breeding you're going to have a Hapsburg jaw. Have sex with the maid, dummy! Or Princess Diana, that works too.
The Louvre has the original Holbein portrait of Anne of Cleves (Henry VIII’s 4th wife) The portrait was said by contemporaries to be ‘very lively’ (meaning very lifelike) . Henry was pleased enough with the painting to allow the marriage negotiations to proceed.
But when Anne arrived in person the King found her ugly and that she could never arouse him enough to perform the marriage act. So she was divorced off and Henry moved on to number five. (Kat Howard who was a very pretty and fun-loving girl)
I think the painting is of a modest and demure beauty. But poor Anne has been called ugly for centuries.
I think the young people today call this ‘catfishing’
We're you watching "Some Like It Hot"?
Your getting pretty bad at editing two.
We all have our predilections and biases when it comes to looks.
I've always found the runway model-skinny look (think Audrey Hepburn) most unattractive. A good number of men and seemingly all women think otherwise.
I coulda been a contendah.
when Anne arrived in person the King found her ugly
The king himself was pretty ugly. And most of his wives were just as plain as he was. Here's his first wife.
So you can see why he was ready to wreck the world for Anne Boleyn.
She is awesome, by the way. Refused to commit adultery with the King. Flat out said no way, I am not a mistress. Pride? Vanity? Awareness of her sexual power? Anyway, she said no.
You want Anne Boleyn? Then you got to marry Anne Boleyn and make her a queen.
And so, to follow her wishes, he had to defy the Catholic Church. And so my church, the Episcopal church, was created because of the forbidden fruit of Anne Boleyn.
This made me think of dogs, for some reason. It's funny how we prize purity in breeding.
I prefer the mutt.
I would like to self-identify as a handsome, attractive man like George Clooney -- but my wife says, objectively, sorry, it's more like Ernest Borgnine.
Going by the by the art which is from the region of my family line, someone in there got lucky.
I thought the point of studies on attractiveness was to shore up some evolutionary psychology pipe-dream in which we're all supposed to be hard-wired to want to breed with people who look healthy & hardy so that more of our children will live long enough to do the same.
“She is awesome, by the way”.
I’m not a revisionist but I think Anne Boylen was trapped between the paws of this ugly old bear, she tried to escape the attentions of this all powerful man. She begged to get away from him, and told him she wanted to leave court, she told him she would never be his mistress. Henry heard all this as her being coy and playing hard to get. (think Clinton going after tail in the white house- who would tell him no?) . I don’t think this was a master plan of hers to entice the king and get him to divorce his wife.
Henry wanted her (and the sons he was sure she would give him). When there was no sons, Henry no longer wanted her- and crushed her reputation, her family.
There is lots of evidence, genetically speaking, that many Europeans throughout the ages have found red/blond hair and blue eyes to be attractive.
Just sayin'.
""Would you have been beautiful in another era?""
No.
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