Can beauty be quantified or is it arbitrary by nature to the group or society you are in?

i heard about a study where they [some scientists—that’s what they said they were] looked at differnt societies from around the world and tried to find what made a woman beautiful. they found only 3 charactoristics [might not be a good choice of word] lets use variables] that were held by all. at the moment i don’t recall 2 of them. the one i remember was nice clean healthy skin. but i’m sure good bone stucture should fall in there but that wasn’t one of the 3.

Beauty is subjective and truly in the eye of the beholder. I have lived with enough different groups of people to know that each has their own definition. And even within each ethnic group the definition varies dramatically.

So if you are white anglo saxon, your ideal male/female may not appeal at all to an Australian aboriginal.

I think a lot of it is environmental influences. Who you are told is beautiful in the society you live in. And, people you admire while growing up, including family members.

I do believe symmetry is relavant, and proportions. I think people look for features to be within what they consider the normal range, once outside that range less attractive, inside of the range the feature falls on a continuum of average to very desireable. For instance eyes too close together or too far apart., lips too thin, etc.

I think when we care about someone they become more attractive. We have more time to study their faces, find the parts we love. I love my husbands wrinkle near his right eye, he thinks I am nuts. The wrinkle probably does not make him objectively beautiful though.

I could not open all of your photos, but one thing that caught me off guard was the first girl in a bikini. When I think beauty, I first think face, and I found her half nakedness a distraction to the question at hand.

Lastly, I find a lot of people don’t really focus on natural beauty, but focus on the whole package at first glance. A women who might not be a raving beauty, but has great hair, and does a good job with make-up, nice body, dressed well, is beautiful.

I saw a documentary where they studied images of people from various cultures and did scientific studies recording the non verbal responses of people to thousands of images. The conclusion ( that I can remember) was that an important element to beauty was symmetry. At the end of the documentary they composed a picture of the most beautiful face based on their data.
It looked just like my sister whose shadow I have lived in my whole life. Argggggg

I don’t find woman A attractive at all. B is, moderately, and C has attractive features, but I don’t care for the package.
X and Z are very pretty, and Y is just beautiful.
These are my tastes, and not representative of the culture I live in.

As @Judi mentions – there’s a lot of evidence that at a certain level beauty can be quantified. I think that on the program she’s talking about Elizabeth Hurley was the person found to be the almost ideal beauty (The Human Face? With John Cleese? Was that it @Judi).?

The math is based on the golden ratio. It’s the same equation that describes a conch shell and the pattern of seeds in a sunflower.

@iamthemob ; I have no idea. It was one of those TLC or discovery chanel shows a few years ago.
And Elizabeth Hurley doesn’t look anything like the composite picture they came up with.

Woman Y is stunning, and woman C is a commercial for makeup. Beauty is. It’s not just in the eye of the beholder imo. Everyone can agree on a beautiful face, man or woman.

@filmfann X and Z are very pretty, and Y is just beautiful. Thank you, you have helped shed light on the point I had. You and at least @faye found woman ‘Y’ attractive, but whoever uploaded her pic and attached tags to it coined her as plain, homely, etc, they didn’t say cute, stunning, attractive or anything close to that. Those things were said of ‘C’ which most think looks more like an indictment for Covergirl or Max Factor than anything else. Madison Av will tell us ‘C’ is prettier than ‘Z’ but take away the make up and professionally done hair would that still be the case? And of ‘Y’ if you were in a group of 60 and 72% of you thought she was more attractive than Sara Paxton, or Ashley Greene would she be, would the uploader of her pic just have gotten it wrong? What of those who don’t tow the line and see Sara and Ashley as stunning are they out of tune with mainstream because they don’t follow Hollywood and Madison Av? ‘Y’ has on a little makeup but I bet if she didn’t have it she would not lose all that much.

Y was the prettiest one to me too, but maybe it’s because I was turned off by the sexual overtones of all the other pictures.

@iamthemob – I believe the Golden Ratio is the secret to some people’s idea of beauty, but do you think it applies to all?

@iamthemob Quite interesting and eye-opening that link for the golden ratio. Too bad it can’t be applied to any photo. I could not tell if that was a one-size-fit-all mask or if each race or nationality has their own mask? Certainly genetic features of Asians are different from Africans which are different still from Native Americans. Interesting enough #6 had eyes too low or her nose too short, plus her face slightly too wide but many guys I know would say she was attractive, beautiful, or stunning; they certainly would not kick her from the bed. The fact she can be seen as attractive by many and still not fit ”the mask” perfectly what does that say of scientific beauty?