Edited by author 05-21-2003 05:06 PM
In spite of being told (in that delightfully German way) that I would "quite certainly think that this is a very beautiful face," I was completely unimpressed.

Although it seems shallow to make such judgments, the site and topic call for it so I'll add that the "Miss Germany" contestants (found on another part of their site) also looked pretty rough to me. They looked like they'd been up all night drinking (which might well be the case), they had bad skin and wore glum expressions. A rather nasty lot for "beauty queens," in my opinion.

In the end, I'm less fascinated by their findings than by my own finding that my tastes are very different than German tastes. Then again, I find English women irresistable, so go figure.

After reading the site I think it's telling us what we all suspect: we can be shallow people who are drawn to youthful appearances. Perhaps the media is to blame for forcing young, attractive people at us. Perhaps it's a difficiency in those of us who are drawn to youthful appearances.

Whatever the reason, read this Rice report that discusses the benefits and burdens of being attractive in the workplace: http://www.rice.edu/projects/reno/rn/20020912/beauty.html

Or, bigkahuna, perhaps we instinctively gravitate toward more ideal (i.e., younger) child-bearers.

I believe marketing hooks are more reflective of the culture than anything else. A successful campaign featuring youthful models does not implant the idea that youth = beauty, but taps into our instinctual attraction to same.

The "evil marketer" part comes when they associate the youth with such and such product. Calvin Klein may or may not convince you that his product will get you in bed with the young chick, but your attraction to her was not Calvin's doing--he just knew it would get you to consider his product.

As for feeling deficient about being attracted to youthfulness, you shouldn't be so hard on yourself. Its all Darwin's fault.

Interesting that it seems to run directly against a study which found most people are attracted to "themselves" Basically the study group we're given a selection of pictures to choose from, most ended up choosing an altered image of themselves with certain attributes changed like hair or eye color.

Those "Miss Germany" photos look like they were taken by the researchers; they remind me of mug-shots. That is, the lighting is harsh, no attempt was made to modify the lighting, the models' makeup, the camera angle, or the pose to make them more attractive, as would normally be done for a photo shoot of "beautiful" women. Note the sharp-edged shadow to the right of each head, indicating that there was a single bright light source (a flash?) coming from the photographer's left side. So the fact that the "virtual" Miss Germany looks more attractive (to many people) than the real one is at least partly due to the fact that the "virtual" picture has a more polished look to it; no blemishes, no shiny highlights, much softer shadows, and so on. If you prepared a picture of the real girl with better makeup and lighting (or just re-touched the photo), she'd look a lot more like the virtual picture, and would probably rate as equally attractive.

It's easy to measure differences; it's hard to measure only the difference you intend to measure!

Of course the "virtual" Miss Germany was selected as most attractive -- that composite image looks far more cleaner and easier to see, for one. Plus any imperfections are gone thanks to the morphing. The real Miss Germany looks like shit, thanks to crappy lighting mostly.

From the linked site:

"Why are the resulting average faces generally beautiful? One reason might be the fact that by calculating average proportions unpleasant asymmetries and irregularities become levelled out. Moreover, by blending together several faces wrinkles and pimples gradually disappear. As a consequence, the skin looks younger and perfectly smooth.

"By conducting another experiment we could show that it is these skin-smoothing side effects rather than the averaged proportions that account for the increased attractiveness ratings of the composites (see reformed facial proportions)."

(http://www.beautycheck.de/english)

"...the most attractive faces do not even exist in reality" yet. :)

I was arguing with a retard about this earlier in the week, and he just could not wrap his head around the basic concept: There are ideals, and reality can never live up to those ideals.

The perfect woman, if she exists, has feet that have never touched the ground. As soon as her feet touch the ground, they'll be damaged and will no longer be perfect.

Human beings are imperfect, but the ideal is perfect.

And, while a person may be very attractive, that does not mean they are anything near the ideal. And vice-versa.

What really disturbs me, though, to the point of disgust: People have a clear concept of the ideal in male beauty, but not female beauty. The statue of David -- ideal. Any image of a female body -- relative.