Posted on 12/17/2009 10:28:09 PM PST by myknowledge
Beauty is not so much in the eye of the beholder as in the measurements between the eyes, mouth and ears, US and Canadian researchers say.
In four experiments aimed at finding "an ideal facial feature arrangement", US and Canadian researchers asked students to compare colour photographs of the same woman's face, in which the vertical distance between the eyes and mouth, and horizontal distance between the eyes, had been doctored using Photoshop.
The features - eyes, mouth, nose, contour and hair - remained the same and a woman's face was only compared to her own, never to another's.
Students looked at different pictures of the same woman's face laid out side by side and selected the face they found more attractive.
In all four experiments, they chose the faces with specific proportions that the researchers have dubbed the "new golden ratio".
Two of the experiments tested for the ideal distance between the eyes and mouth as compared to total face length, measured from the hairline to the chin. Both came up with 36 per cent as the golden ratio for "the maximally attractive face".
The other two experiments measured both the ideal length and width ratios.
They both confirmed 36 per cent as the golden ratio for the length of the maximally attractive face, and 46 per cent as the ideal width ratio - where the distance between the eyes is 46 per cent of total face width, measured between the inner edges of the ears.
Happily, the 36/46 per cent ratios "correspond with those of an average face", the study said, meaning there's no pressing need to get out the measuring tape and calculator or to rush to the plastic surgeon.
In fact, there are easy, non-invasive ways to trick beholders into thinking a woman's face is "maximally attractive", says the study, published in Vision Research.
Changing the hairstyle is one example.
"Our study... explains why sometimes an attractive person looks unattractive or vice versa after a haircut, because hairdos change the ratios," said Kang Lee, a professor at the University of Toronto and one of the lead authors of the study.
Lee also told AFP that the researchers studied the faces of a few celebrities.
"Angelina Jolie does not have golden length and width ratios," he said.
"Elizabeth Hurley gets the golden ratio for length but is different from the width golden ratio by one per cent."
But Canadian country pop musician Shania Twain has "both the length and width ratios."
The study looked only at white women. More research is needed to determine if the golden ratios for men's faces, the faces of people of other races, and children's faces, are the same as for the women's faces in the study.
How bout legs and arse?
Please.....no-one post the Helen Thomas picture......
I mind me of the old Scottish ballad that says, "If that she be ugly, where's the odds at night?"
I'm thinking other proportions may make those proportions less relevant.
If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, make an ugly woman your wife.
The incomparable Shinozaki Ai (born 1992)
She looks like a ten year old girl with a boob job.
First, I look at the purse.
Please. She’s still a minor.
I wish they would have posted the photos they used in the study rather than the stupid one of Angelina Jolie.
So are all the half-naked cheerleaders at your local high school. So what? The good-natured, harmless appreciation of older teenage girls is as American as apple pie.
Miss Shinozaki a legal adult in Japan now, and her eighteenth birthday is on 26 February, 2010. (NB: The age of consent in Japan is 13.) While I'm old enough to be her dad (and happily married besides), I think it's ridiculous to pretend that something magical happens to young women at the stroke of midnight on the day they turn 18 that changes them from innocent children to reproductively-ready adults.
I don't advocate the romantic pursuit of such young beauties by men outside of their age cohort — only a cad would do such a thing. (Did we learn nothing from Gigi?) However, I think that it's prudish and hypocritical to pretend that girls like Miss Shinozaki aren't charming and pleasant to behold.
My late, beloved grandmother was married at age 14. My own mother, God bless her, married at age 16. While getting married at such a young age isn't advisable for a variety of reasons, biology isn't among them.
Imagine taxpayers having to pay for this nonsense.
That’s disgusting. She’s a child with breast implants.
She’s neither a child nor a cyborg. If you find the human body disgusting, I can’t help you.
She could use some braces.
For her teeth.
Beauty standards in Japan are different.
So I’m a prude. You wouldn’t be the first to call me that. And if I posted a giant picture of Levi Johnston in all his Playgirl glory on these threads,or a boy even younger, I’m sure you’d have a reaction, too. Think about it.
malkee
Catholic. Republican. Pennsylvanian. Any questions?
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