Is there a science to beauty?

[Mems]

The sum of your facial parts

By Sarah Kershaw Published: October 9, 2008

Is the woman pictured on the right more attractive than the woman on the left? Do her wider-set eyes, the longer distance between her hairline and the bridge of the nose, and the rounder shape of her face make her more beautiful?

The photograph on the right was doctored by the "beautification engine" of a new computer program that uses a mathematical formula to alter the original form into a theoretically more attractive version, while maintaining what programmers call an "unmistakable similarity" to the original.

The software program, developed by computer scientists in Israel, is based on the responses of 68 men and women, age 25 to 40, from Israel and Germany, who viewed photographs of white male and female faces and picked the most attractive ones.

Scientists took the data and applied an algorithm involving 234 measurements between facial features, including the distances between lips and chin, the forehead and the eyes, or between the eyes.

Essentially, they trained a computer to determine, for each individual face, the most attractive set of distances and then choose the ideal closest to the original face. Unlike other research with formulas for facial attractiveness, this program does not produce one ideal for a feature, say a certain eye width or chin length.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/09/hea...ence/09skin.php

James Franco <3

But seriously, do you believe beauty is quantifiable, and can be simply boiled down to mathematical equations, or is it something beyond math/science?

I think this shit could actually be accurate to a certain degree, but applications would be very limited. Each culture has a different idea of what beauty is, and can be further divided into sub cultures with tastes eventually varying from individual to individual. However I think there are some universal traits that humans simply find more appealing.

[headcoat]

Beauty is objective. Personal tastes are merely minor deviations; deviate too far and you're only hurting yourself.

genetic checks and balances, kid.

[mrip]

both b pretty uggz

[indesertum]

i think people's face wise, a beautiful face is an average of all the faces you've ever seen, which would explain for cultural differences and individual preferences (http://www.beautycheck.de/english), but there's a distinction between people you would bone and people you would marry.

[sistersuzie]

I think beauty is many things. When you see someone fast somewhere, I think the thing that's most noticeable is usually the face, and also the rest of the body, but more as a proportion thing, not being skinny or tall, just the way everything is put together, style etc.

But when it's about the real beauty (someone you know better) I think it's everything the person is that really matters, then the way you perceive someone's beauty can change a lot by knowing that person. it's just the way everything is put together, cohesion between the inside and the outside.

[Jkissi7]

lol oh man the one on the left

agrees with suzie 100%