Dr. Lisa
Debruine in her face research lab in University of Aberdeen has broken down the
face into its different component, namely eyes, nose, mouth and skin. She took
photograph of an average Caucasian man and woman by sampling from 60 males and
females. The average woman has smaller jaw, thinner eyebrows and the man has
more square jaw, thicker eyebrow and more square hair line. She devised a way
to make a woman’s face more feminine or masculine by making eyes smaller or larger,
jaw thinner or squarer, eyebrows thinner (and raising it a bit) or flatter.
She then
placed the unchanged photo, the masculinised photo and feminised photo to men.
81 percent preferred the more feminised women photos. Similarly majority of
women preferred the masculinised male.
Now the question is why a face gets
more masculine or feminine? During childhood both males and
females look similar. As adolescence arrives, sex hormones begin to be
generated in both sexes. These are testosterone in men and oestrogen and
progesterone in women. These hormones cause male features and female features
to develop in case of men and women respectively. The more male hormone the
more pronounced male features and more female hormones the more pronounced
female features. The higher amount of sex hormones means a very healthy
reproductive ability. This also generally indicates good health. Therefore
mating with these individuals has more chances of producing healthy children.
So we find an individual attractive
because his features indicate that mating with him or her will
be profitable for having good children and useful in passing on our own genes
to the future generation and thereby perpetuating them.
So we get
a big clue on what is a sexually attractive face.
But as I
delved into more exploration I found more reasons which make a face attractive.
Symmetry
R
Thornhill and SW Gangstead (1994) in their research found that symmetry in face
(that is how much each side of the face mirror the other side) adds very
definitively in attractiveness. Further research vindicated their findings
using sophisticated computer methods of morphing photos. It was found that even
in twins the one with more symmetry in facial components added to the “beauty’.
This preference for more symmetrical faces is seen not only in humans but in
other species as well.
Other
studies have indicated that symmetric facial and physical characteristics
strongly indicate greater health and fitness of the person. It therefore seems
the correlation between the biological quests for a fitter mate is the key in
this case also.
Averageness
Well what
we are talking about is not the general meaning of average, that is, it is not
very good or bad. Studies have shown that that more closely a face resembles
majority of other faces within a certain group of population, more attractive
the face is rated within that population. This means an English man with
features found in most English men will be rated better among the English
people than faces with features which are not commonly found in the English
population. This does not mean he will be rated higher in attractiveness rating,
say among the Indians or the Chinese. Studies suggest this also may be due to
the law of adaptability and evolutionary theory. Non average face suggests the
person is likely to have genes that are detrimental to growth within a certain
region and therefore less preferred for mating. Thus in countries like Japan
and China less pointed facial features are preferred than in western countries.
The method used by researchers is to produce a more “average” face is by
amalgamating a large number of faces to produce a single face and then compare
to individual faces.
Similarity with Parents
Some studies
have shown people unknowingly prefer faces which bears resemblance with their
opposite sex parent. A man will prefer a woman’s face which bears more
resemblance to her mother and woman will prefer a man’s face with resemblance
with her father. The preference is more strong if the relationship with the
opposite sex parent is positive. However this preference does not necessarily
mean that people will have partners with parent like faces.
Skin
Skin
condition and health of the skin is important in beauty rating. We speak of
‘glowing skin’ and scientific studies have shown that a good skin tone which
suggests good health and therefore mating preferences for people with such skin
property.
Mystery of Golden Ratio
Golden ratio, represented by the Greek letter phi (φ), happens when ratio
of two numbers is same as the sum of two numbers to the larger number, i.e., (a+b)/a
=a/b, where ‘a’ is the larger number and is roughly is equal to 1.618.
There is some historical background related to golden ratio and beauty.
Painters and architects used this ratio for many famous paintings and
buildings. Examples are Notre dame Cathedral and Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous
painting Last Supper.
This ratio has been found to be particularly significant for aesthetics
of human body and face. If the ratio of your height to your navel and from
navel to the head is 1.618 your body looks very well balanced. Facial masks
using this ratio for different facial proportions has been devised in computer
and used to improvise faces with striking results. However this theory has not
yet been supported very strongly by scientific researches and subject to
further scrutiny. You can use following link for a detailed study https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1OOc8HC3TY
.
Body
Fitness and dimensions
Body weights and dimensions also adds or
distracts from beauty it is not as much significant as the face.
Overweight
and underweight bodies are generally disliked. To define right body weight a
ratio called Body Mass Index or BMI is used.
BMI
= body mass in kg/body height2 in meter.
If
your BMI is between 18.5 and 25 your weight is normal (for an adult according
to WHO).
Some
countries use different BMI charts which give slightly different weights for
males and females and for different age groups.
A
study by Viren Swami, Dorothy Einon and Adrian Furrnham (2006) has showed that
Americans prefer men with legs as long as the rest of the body and women with
40% longer legs than their body. However this is not totally supported by other
studies and may be different for Asians and other race groups. Some other studies indicate that men prefer women with waist to hip ratio
around 0.7.
I have tried to give a snapshot of pure physical parameters of what
constitutes beauty. Of course as everyone knows there are other non physical
characteristics like a smile and other behavioural traits that attract us which
I will discuss in a later article.