Scientists are still trying to figure out what beauty means to people and to figure out what makes things and people beautiful. In some ways, it’s like asking whether your vision of “red” is the same as someone else’s — there’s just no way to know for sure.
Still, there’s plenty to explore in neuroscience and psychology when it comes to what people find beautiful, to what extent people see beauty in themselves, and what role beauty plays in society.
Beauty and the brain
Regardless of culture, there appear to be certain patterns of brain activity associated with viewing something you find beautiful.
The only factor common to all that people find beautiful in art and music is activity in the brain’s medial orbital frontal cortex, part of the reward and pleasure center of the brain.
There are cultural trends in what in art and music people find beautiful — for instance, there’s a Japanese preference for asymmetry, compared to a Western ideal of symmetry. This does not apply to faces, however, as it seems that universally people prefer symmetrical faces.
It’s also not well understood why people adapt to certain objects of beauty after many exposures, but not others. For instance, you might be bored of a pop song after a few listens, but listen to an opera dozens of times, over a period of years, and still feel emotional about it. Or perhaps there’s a painting that you’ve always admired, whereas another painting loses its splendor after a few viewings.
That makes sense, since we see every single blemish in ourselves, whereas there are plenty of people we consider beautiful to whom we don’t get close enough to examine all the little flaws. Perception of beauty may weaken when we do start to recognize those defects.
Brain imaging has been done with facial beauty, too. Self-evaluation of one’s own facial attractiveness may be related to self-esteem, based on common patterns of brain activity.
Beauty in the face
When it comes to facial attractiveness, there are reasons to believe that specific features and biologically based factors guide our assessment of beauty.
Faces that are more symmetrical and average-looking tend to be rated as more attractive in scientific studies. Symmetry in particular has been studied extensively, not only in the Western World but also in hunter-gatherer cultures removed from mainstream media. The Hadza of Tanzania, a remote group of hunter-gatherers, showed a stronger preference for symmetry than people in the United Kingdom. Men who were more often deemed good hunters especially liked symmetry in female faces. And Hadza women like symmetry in men’s faces even more when they were pregnant or nursing, periods when they may be extra cautious about foods and disease harmful to a child.
In fact, even babies respond more positively to attractive, symmetrical faces. But babies appear to respond more to faces deemed attractive than those that are purely symmetrical, suggesting there’s something else going on.
There are theories that specific proportions are the most naturally beautiful, with ratios of length and width being important.
And with the help of computers, it has become apparent that morphing a lot of faces together typically produces an end product that is highly attractive. The reasoning goes that this blending gets closer to the face “prototype” that may underline attractiveness — the ultimate idea of a face is the most average one.
So it may be that babies are drawn to faces that are most like the most basic concept of a face — that is, they are average.
Why should that matter? The theory goes that symmetrical features may be markers of genetic quality. Human ancestors evolved to find mates that would pass on good genes to offspring, so they would naturally be repelled by traits that would be detrimental to survival or indicators of poor health.
One study found that people with asymmetrical faces tended to come from more difficult and deprived childhoods than those with more symmetrical features. It appears that adversity in childhood is associated with facial features that are not perfectly aligned and matching, although there’s no proof that one of these phenomena causes the other.
And the kind of man that women are attracted to can vary according to phases of the ovulation cycle. Studies showed that during periods of high fertility, women are more drawn to more rugged, dominant-looking men. Subconsciously they may be perceiving beauty in accordance with evolutionary forces, since dominance can indicate genetic fitness. Incidentally, women also buy sexier clothes when they are most fertile.
A recent study found that women are most attracted to men with the strongest immune systems, which were associated with higher testosterone levels. But that was complicated in men who had higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol, suggesting that women may find stressed-out men less attractive.
Beauty also plays a role in friendship. Research has shown that women tend to have friends of similar attractiveness. These scientists found that, both in terms of one’s own perceptions of beauty and that of independent judges, a woman’s attractiveness correlates well with her friends’ attractiveness. And, if you’re a woman who’s the less attractive one in a friendship pair, you’re also more likely to view your more attractive friend as a mating rival. But this is a small study, and more research should be done to back up these conclusions.
Beauty in yourself
Sometimes people hook their self-worth on their appearance, tying beauty to their perception of themselves. We compare how we think we look to how other people look, and we make a decision about whether we’re much better or much worse.
That comparison can have negative or positive emotional and psychological consequences.
There’s scientific evidence to suggest that ideas about the importance of one’s own beauty get formulated in childhood. Parents give a certain level of praise to their children for their appearance, vs. the amount of effort they put into tasks and the activities they’re good at. Little girls in child beauty contests, for instance, receive the feedback that their appearance is highly valued. You can imagine that sets the stage for people to think about themselves in terms of appearance or abilities.
And when it comes to assessing beauty, many people are their own worst critics. Sometimes there’s a particular body part that becomes a focus of self-loathing.
It’s still socially unacceptable to say things to others that we would say to ourselves. We don’t filter our judgments of ourselves in the same way that we filter judgments of others.
When taken to the extreme, obsession over a particular aspect of one’s appearance has a psychiatric diagnosis: body dysmorphic disorder. It’s the reason some people get dozens of plastic surgeries, but are never satisfied with the outcomes.
On the flip side, you can view your body as a source of power — for instance, after running a first 5 kilometer race or even marathon, some people feel proud of what their bodies can do.
Beauty as power
Studies have shown that people who are perceived as being more attractive also appear more competent and successful. There’s presumably a strong cultural and learned dimension to all of these effects.
Other research has shown that physical attractiveness can also influence salary.
The legal system may even take beauty into account – a variety of studies have found effects suggesting that attractiveness helps when it comes to verdicts and sentencing. It may be that attractive people are less likely to commit crimes as serious as unattractive people, or that there is a societal view that pretty people are “good” and wouldn’t do bad things.
Or we can divide perception of beauty into three things: contributing factors from genetics, grooming and how people reacted to your appearance in early life. Early experiences of being the apple of your mother or father’s eye goes a very long way about how you feel about your own looks. But if your parent became more critical of you when you became less “cute,” you might feel less attractive.
There must be something more than just other peoples’ good favor for looks going on, since there are professional models with low self-image.
For models, there are unrealistic expectations of beauty all around — not only in magazines and television. The ones who do well are those who don’t assume they have to be perfect to be beautiful.
There’s a process that everyone goes through at some point, no matter how much or little you value your looks. The good looks of youth change, and no longer match your vision of yourself. But when you’re in a marriage or long-term partnership, you’re not actively having to worry about being beautiful to attract a new mate.
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So is makeup necessary seasoning, a conniving ploy by manipulative sexpots, or neither? Ask a group of women why they wear makeup and you’ll receive myriad responses. Some will say it makes them feel more confident, that they don’t feel completely “done” without it; others will say they love experimenting with looks and colours as a way of expressing themselves, that there’s a fun, theatrical element to face paint that allows them to channel different personalities and aesthetics.
Makeup is so ubiquitous in our society that for a woman to go without it has become, in some cases, a statement – the “no makeup selfie” being a case in point. Makeup is especilly important for female celebrities that you can find on covers of many fashion magazines. Some will say there’s a fun, theatrical element to face paint that allows them to channel different personalities and aesthetics.
Women receive messages from an early age that encourage us to believe that one of our primary functions is to be decorative and therefore appealing to men. Go into any newsagent and you’ll see little girls’ magazines that come with free gifts of lipgloss and nail varnish. Parents buy their daughters strange, disembodied dolls’ heads to practise on. The Disney princesses so many little girls model themselves on wear eyeliner, mascara and eyeshadow, and have perfectly plucked eyebrows. Considering the extent to which makeup is viewed as a process of adornment used for attracting a mate, to foist it upon girls so young is arguably more than a little creepy.
Evolutionary psychologists have it that, as with so many things, makeup comes down to sex. Women tend to have darker eyes and lips than men, and makeup enhances those sex differences. Furthermore, the desirable qualities a man looks for in a woman – largely related to reproductive fitness – are said to be amplified by makeup. Beauty ideals vary from culture to culture, but there are some universal markers of attractiveness. Facial symmetry and an even skin tone imply good health, while youthfulness denotes fertility. Plump lips and flushed cheeks, meanwhile, are signs of sexual arousal, so your scarlet lipstick and pink blusher might just be giving that random man in the bar the subconscious signal that 
Cosmetics companies often rely on women’s insecurities – inculcated through years of exposure to images of physical perfection in mainstream media – in order to sell products, operating on the basis of “maybe she’s born with it, but probably not, so buy this concealer”. Its function as a means for covering up unwanted flaws or “unsightly” blemishes is hammered into us again and again. Many women spend hundreds of pounds each year on cosmetics, and as many minutes worrying about the way we look.
Then there are the beauties that are truly shy, or to protect themselves from constant harassment, they withdraw. Unfortunately, they can come across as aloof, stuck up, snooty and even arrogant. If we take the time to get to know her instead of condemn her, we might find out she’s really kind, conscientious, caring… and perhaps just a little bit shy. It’s almost as if we’re subconsciously — or for some maybe even consciously — looking for a reason to treat her as less than a person.
