The changing face of beauty

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The subjects of love and beauty are of particular interest to me because I can't say that I understand either in the least.

Concentrating just on the beauty part of it, the following questions come to mind. What makes someone attractive to another? Is there a difference between physical attraction and sexual attraction or does the latter necessarily underlie the former? What factors influence a person's perception of beauty? How do cultural ideas and ideals of beauty change over time?

The following excerpt addresses the last question above. It comes from the book About Faces, by Terry Landau (Anchor Books, 1989), p. 216.

To give beauty a face and capture that elusive and ever changing value that we understand as beauty, video artist Nancy Burson created two composites. ``The First Beauty Composite'' is a combination of the great beauties of the 1950s: Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Sophia Loren, and Marilyn Monroe. ``The Second Beauty Composite'' is a combination of Jane Fonda, Jacqueline Bisset, Diane Keaton, Brooke Shields, and Meryl Streep. These videographic composite portraits capture and epitomize the differences in the ideal of the 1950s and that of the 1980s. Note, for example, the arched eyebrows and heavily made-up mouth of the fifties beauty versus the more ``generic'' natural look of the eighties.

One might also observe that the 1980s face looks younger and, perhaps, less Western European.

Which reminds me of another composite face in the same book (p. 272). It's a ``racial composite weighted according to population statistics for the three major racial groups: Oriental, Caucasian, and Black.''

To me, this looks almost completely Chinese (and, yes, I mean Chinese, not Japanese or Korean -- although I've been told I can't really tell the difference).

Personally, I can't see any ``White'' or ``Black'' features in the picture at all.

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Section: Donald Lancon Jr / Other stuff

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