Prismatic wrote:

Misty wrote:The endless variety of everything in life provides the endless variety of what is called beauty, art, love, tragedy, etc., which is in the eye of each beholder. Beauty, art, love, tragedy etc., is different things at different times to each person. As far as beauty goes - just ask any mother if she thinks her child is beautiful - the answer is usually yes. There are no absolutes in any of these areas.

As far as facial attractiveness is concerned research consistently shows it is not individual—in the eye of the beholder— but common across races and genders. It is the average face that is attractive. Using computer images, faces can be averaged, and the more images you throw into the process the more attractive the face becomes. A demonstration of this in which you can select the faces to be averaged is online at:

http://www.faceresearch.org/demos/average

It's fun to try different combinations, but if you use very many the composite faces will all look alike. There may be others available now.

What is unattractive to humans apparently is deviation from the norm, for example a face that is not symmetric or one in which proportions are unusual. There may be an evolutionary reason for this, namely that such a face might reflect the presence of mutations, making its owner less suitable for breeding.

The original observation that average faces are more attractive goes all the way back to Sir Francis Dalton, who discovered the famous Dalton's law—that offspring tend to regress toward the norm. Children of tall parents will be taller than average, but generally not as tall as their parents. Nature favors the norm.