[Yo-Yo]

They’re both the same face.

[CondiArmy]

Just damn! Time to move to Burma or Ethiopia.

But seriously, did anyone tell the researchers that South Africa is 90% black?

[edpc]

What feature makes a face attractive?

It's very subjective. Personally, I don't find square-featured jaws or cleft chins attractive on females. But...that's just me.

[DainBramage]

Recalibration photo

[LoveUSA]

The problem with this study is that it relies on two-dimensional images. There are specific features that make a person "photogenic" and one of them is a square-shaped face. This makes sense because a square face allows the features to be viewed in perfect context to the size and shape of the head when flattened by a photograph. OTH, there are people who are attractive, even beautiful, who have elongated or more angular faces. In the three-dimensional experience of the real world, their faces are attractive because a particular feature such as a large nose or thin-lipped mouth is reduced in visual importance because the edges of the face are not sharply defined.

The net is: beauty here is defined as "photogenic".

[Optimist]

creepy

[Doc Savage]

Shouldn’t she also have beard???????????????

[seowulf]

So, when someone tells a cop that the perp looked average this is what they mean.

These photos should come in handy.

Round up the usual suspects!

[miele man]

Amazingly beautiful women for “average” faces. Very interesting study.

[corkoman]

whoa - these two look like my two eldest kids - hes 20 shes 22. It figures - Dad is Irish and Mom is cuban.

[Chode]

phi = 1.61803399

[martin_fierro]

Average faces are attractive, but not all of them. It is crucial which faces are used to compute an average face. Composites made from unattractive faces remain rather unattractive and average faces from attractive faces remain attractive.

I'm just glad they left you two out.

[RegulatorCountry]

It’s not “averageness” per se, it’s the absence of asymmetrical flaws and the presence of ideal proportions. It’s what makes any physical thing beautiful, good proportion and absence of flaw. A tree, a building, a car, a flower, a woman or child. It’s related to the so-called “Golden Mean” or phi proportion.

A great book that goes in depth on this was authored by Jonathan Hale, entitled “The Old Way Of Seeing.” He spends a great deal of time on architecture, because that’s his primary thesis in the book, that we’ve lost the ability to recognize just what makes us respond to a beautiful building, and instead use symbols and surface decoration in a futile attempt at regaining the old power and beauty. He does spend several chapters on the Golden Mean or Golden Ratio, phi proportions.

It’s worth the time, he’s an entertaining old fellow, pleasantly plodding along inventorying this or that grand old structure or cathedral with illustrations or photos, and discussing it’s strengths and weaknesses, then wham! off he goes into a stunning tangent that’s almost like some sort of vision. He does this several times throughout the course of the book. It’s actually one of my favorite books. Pretty cheap used on Amazon, don’t know if it’s on archive.org or not.