The characterization of a person as “beautiful”, whether
on an individual basis or by community consensus, is often based on some
combination of inner beauty, which includes psychological factors such as
personality, intelligence, grace, and elegance, and outer beauty, which includes
physical factors, such as health, youthfulness, symmetry, averageness, and
complexion.
- the qualities that give pleasure to the senses
- smasher: a very attractive or seductive looking
woman
- an outstanding example of its kind; "his roses were
beauties"; "when I make a mistake it's a beaut"
- Beauty is the phenomenon of the experience of
pleasure, through the perception of balance and proportion of stimulus. It
involves the cognition of a balanced form and structure that elicits
attraction and appeal towards a person, animal, inanimate object, scene,
music, idea, etc.
- a Primary Principle, is defined as such combined
perfection of form and charm of coloring as affords keen pleasure to the sense
of sight, that quality or combination of qualities which affords keen pleasure
to other senses (eg, hearing), or which charms the intellectual or moral
faculties, through inherent grace, or fitness to a desired end, an
embellishment, ornament, grace, charm. Beauty is defined by Plato as the
Luster of Good. ...
A common way to measure outer beauty, as based on
community consensus, or general opinion, is to stage a beauty pageant, such as
Miss Universe. Inner beauty, however, is more difficult to quantify, though
beauty pageants often claim to take this into consideration as well. Many people
will agree that Mother Teresa, for example, was a beautiful person, but such
general measures are hard to define. Likewise, Helen of Troy was often described
as being a magnificent beauty. Cleopatra, for example, is often thought of as
being one of the most beautiful women in history. Shakespeare described her as
“beggar’d of all beauty”, meaning that words can not describe her beauty. Yet a
coin from 32BC, shows the queen to have a pointed chin, thin lips, and sharp
nose-- signs not usually associated with beauty.[4] Subsequently, outer physical
appearance does not necessarily predetermine the measure of a person’s
perceptual beauty, which may perceptually change, in people’s minds, based on
inner personal qualities.
Coin dated 32BC shown Mark Antony (left) on one side and Cleopatra (right) on
the other.A strong indicator of physical beauty is "averageness". When images of
human faces are averaged together to form a composite image, they become
progressively closer to the "ideal" image and are perceived as more attractive.
This was first noticed in 1883, when Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin,
overlayed photographic composite images of the faces of vegetarians and
criminals to see if there was a typical facial appearance for each. When doing
this, he noticed that the composite images were more attractive, than as
compared to any of the individual images. Researchers have replicated the result
under more controlled conditions and found that the computer generated,
mathematical average of a series of faces is rated more favorably than
individual faces.[5]
Another feature of beautiful women that has been explored by researchers is a
waist-to-hip ratio of approximately 75%. The concept of waist-to-hip ratio (WHR)
was developed by psychologist Devendra Singh of the University of Texas at
Austin. Physiologists have shown that this ratio accurately indicates most
women's fertility. Traditionally, in premodern ages when food was more scarce,
fat people were judged more attractive than slender.
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