that quality or combination of qualities (beauty quality) in something
that evokes in the observer a combination of strong positive emotion and a
high degree of attraction (the beauty response).
classical visual perception of beauty depends on 4 main factors:
colour - for a face, this usually means the various shades of
brown
texture - for a female face, this usually means smooth - hence
use of foundation in cosmetics.
size - for a face, this is 1/7th to 1/8th of body height - the
illusion can be altered with use of hats or hair styles
form or shape -
classical visual beauty appears to be a genetically programmed
perception that is reasonably constant across ethnic groups and
seems to be largely dependent on "phi" proportions and
symmetry which presumably indicate a person's "good"
genetic makeup and health to overcome environmental stresses of
growing up.
it may be that we are born with a subconscious image (archetype)
of humanness which we carry throughout our lives and perhaps is
modulated somewhat by our experiences, thus when we see a person who
is attractive, in addition to their innate beauty qualities (how
close they are to our subconscious archetype), there are
subconscious positive emotions arising from prior positive emotions
associated with a person with similar qualities, thereby generating
subconsciously within us a subtype of beauty which we prefer - so
next time you find someone attractive across the room, try to
consider WHY before you make a fool of yourself - after all,
it may not be the visual qualities of the prior person that caused
the positive emotions and this new person is likely to have a
totally different set of non-visual qualities that you will only
discover later - visual beauty is only skin deep!
as an aside, commercial advertisers use this biology to
actively deceive us into thinking we will experience the
positive emotions if we purchase the advertised product which is
displayed in association with an image of something which most
of us find attractive such as an attractive person, car or
holiday. In our rampant consumerism, we have failed to learn the
lessons of the ancient Greek, Epicurus
who believed that the root cause of unhappiness is advertising
which deceives us into thinking what we need for happiness is
material objects, beautiful partners & holidays rather than
his three necessities for happiness:
close friendships
freedom
time to think and reflect
This archetype has evolved in order to
help us identify members of our own species and further sort members
of our species according to their relative health and ability to
successfully reproduce and to provide other resources to us and
those who are close to us.
phi proportions are based on the ancient Greek "Golden
Ratio" of 1.618:1 (phi or Fibonacci ratio) and two golden
ratios are regarded as a "golden proportion". A line
divided into 2 sections by the golden ratio has the interesting
property that not only is the ratio of the small section to large
section a golden ratio, but so is the ratio of the large section to
the sum of the sections. From this, one can the generate
"golden acute triangles", "golden obtuse
triangles" and "golden pentagons", etc.
Marquardt postulates that classic facial beauty is based on the
golden decagon matrix.
