Beauty – What is beautiful?

Have you ever asked yourself what is actually beautiful? - Absolutely, because we use the word "beautiful" around 80 times a day. We judge what is beautiful or not beautiful in just a few milliseconds. Other well-known figures on the subject of beauty are the beauty ideal of 90/60/90 - only 0.06% of all women achieve this. And yet many try everything to get closer to this goal or to achieve it. And we all find ourselves in this field of tension between expectations and reality, especially plastic surgeons.

Throughout the centuries, from Nefertiti to Botticelli's Venus, Greta Garbo, Audrey Hepburn, Marylin Monroe and Michelle Pfeiffer, beauty has always been admired and mystified at the same time. Beauty has a special charm, inevitably attracts us and has an indescribable power and magic.

Even a pretty baby receives more attention and is smiled at for longer than a less pretty one. The more attractive waitress gets more tips than her less attractive colleague, the more attractive applicant gets a higher salary offer, the better-looking politician gets more votes. Beauty is omnipresent and does not leave us indifferent.

But why does beauty have so much power over us? How is it that beauty is so central to our dreams, desires and fantasies of happiness? The world's largest cosmetics manufacturer is worth more on the stock market than the world's largest car manufacturer. Media, film and advertising provide us with images of beautiful faces and bodies every day and around the clock. We are presented with up to 5,000 manipulated photos a week as ideals and role models.

But what does “beautiful” really mean? What is it about a beautiful face that draws us so magically? And: Is beauty measurable or achievable?

attractiveness and beauty

One can try to describe beauty:

Attractiveness can be described as the “little sister” of beauty: attractiveness refers to the visual characteristics of a face that are appealing to the visual sense of a viewer.

The “big sister” beauty goes much further and deeper and is therefore more complex: beauty is defined as a collection of qualities that are visually, acoustically or other senses, intellectually and/or morally appealing.

You can try to measure beauty: Measurable parameters are lengths, angles, volumes, colors, surfaces, proportions, lines of symmetry, etc. But there is no defined formula for beauty. Many of our current ideals of beauty come from the past, back to antiquity. The golden ratio has always played an important role in this. It describes the ideal ratio of two lengths and is represented by the magic number Phi. Many ancient works of art and buildings, but also beautiful things today, are based on this ideal ratio, but it is probably not the last word in wisdom. To this day, there is no unit that measures beauty.

The analysis of a beautiful face is complex: In plastic surgery, we often rely on photos (2D). But wouldn't 3D be better? And is there a fourth dimension of beauty? (4D/beauty energy) If you look at the comprehensive definition of beauty, aspects such as movement and facial expressions should not be missing from the beauty analysis. Most analyses are based on two basic facial expressions: neutral and smiling facial expressions. There is also the question of measuring individual parts of a body or, subsequently, body proportions or the entirety of a face or breasts. How do you best measure the quality of the skin and subtract additional factors such as make-up?

New studies on face and breast

On the subject of beautiful breasts, a study by Patrick Mallucci clearly shows that the ideal ratio of upper breast to lower breast is 45:55, i.e. the nipple is ideally directed slightly upwards. This information is important for the plastic surgeon when planning a breast lift or breast augmentation.

In the face area, the eyebrow is often the focus of beauty analysis. Recent analyses have shown that the ideal eyebrow for women rises in the first two thirds and then falls slightly in the last third. This is in contrast to earlier beauty role models such as Marlene Dietrich, who was admired for her rounded eye arch. Older judges who grew up with their ideal still judge her more beautiful than very young judges. Here, the ideal position of the eyebrow has dropped slightly in recent years and for many, Cara Delevingne with her wider and lower eyebrows is the ideal of beauty.

The pursuit of youthfulness

It is not easy to say who or what is beautiful. Well-known determinants of attractiveness are youthfulness, sexual dimorphism, symmetry and averageness. This explains the striving for youthfulness. There are interesting photo studies on the subject of the aging process by an American plastic surgeon, Val Lambros. He analyzed the aging process using standardized photographs and discovered the following: The eyebrows, the horizontal wrinkles on the sides of the eyes and the eyelid-cheek connection usually remain constant and do not really sink.

He concludes that vertical sagging is not always a major component of the aging process. This is evident in the eyebrow area as follows: The normal aging process causes around 28% of the eyebrows to be raised, around 41% to remain the same in height, and around 29% of the eyebrows to sink. In any case, the eyebrow does not sink as much as a typical brow lift raises it. Corrections must therefore be adapted to the individual aging process. And what looks good on a young face does not necessarily look good on an older face. And furthermore - aging is a non-linear, multimodal and individual process.

According to recent studies, loss of volume in the skeleton and soft tissues in the face is likely to play an important role: volume corrections at very specific points and regions play a central role in modern facial rejuvenation. However, in this area in particular, corrections can quickly be exaggerated. A good feeling for the right dose and the ideal proportions is crucial. A well-known and famous representative of our art - Paracelsus - already knew this.

A minimum level of symmetry is viewed positively. There is no such thing as perfect symmetry on the human body. Many beauty icons such as Karl Lagerfeld and Marc Jacobs repeatedly emphasize that certain deviations from the ideal are what give a person a special appeal and can give them that certain something. However, if the deviation from the norm exceeds a certain level, it is increasingly viewed negatively, as a possible indication of weaknesses or illnesses. This aspect also plays a major role in choosing a partner - and the choice of partner therefore also influences our criteria of beauty.

Sexual Dimorphism and Averageness

In simple terms, sexual dimorphism means that a woman has typically female characteristics and a man has typically male characteristics. Examples of this in women are high cheekbones, a narrow nose, full, well-groomed lips and a narrow neck. These characteristics are also perceived as particularly attractive.

The following phenomenon is understood by averageness: If, for example, you put the faces of the state winners of the Miss Germany pageant on top of each other (with computer support this is called morphing), the product is always more beautiful than the winner chosen by the jury. The average thus wins out over the individual beauty. However, with morphing the skin automatically becomes more beautiful and the face is drawn softer - and this alone makes it more beautiful than the original image: aspects for which morphing is often criticized.

The American Stephen Marquardt had a similar approach to creating an ideal of beauty by overlaying beautiful faces from magazines from the 1990s. From this he developed the Phi mask for the analysis of facial structures and components. The Phi mask supports the representation of proportions and symmetries of a human face. It works on faces dating back many centuries and is also suitable for optimizing faces that are not beautiful. Figure 2 shows a work by the artist Pirmin Blum, who artistically reworked the Phi mask by Stephen Marquardt (Marlene Dietrich, 2015, Inkjet Print 106×89, Edition 2+1 AE).

The Phi mask has been criticized time and again for representing primarily white people and for masculinizing faces too much. In fact, there is a separate mask for women and men that takes into account the individual characteristics of the female and male face. Stephen Marquardt has even developed a mask for babies and children. And he has also taken ethnic differences into account. From personal communication with Stephen Marquardt, I know that he sees Audrey Hepburn and Pierce Brosnan as the people who best fit the mask. More information on his theory can be found at www.beautyanalysis.com. But the Phi mask may not be the last word in wisdom either.

A world-famous and popular ideal of beauty is Barbara Millicent Roberts, born on March 9, 1959 in Wisconsin, also known as Barbie. She celebrated her 55th birthday last year and has the unearthly converted body measurements of 99-46-84. According to a scientific study, she would not be able to survive: Barbie would not be able to breathe or walk upright, there would only be room for half a liver and a few centimeters of intestine in her abdominal cavity, and Barbie would also be infertile. Nevertheless, there are human imitators of Barbie and Ken who come relatively close to their ideal, even if ribs have to be removed and plastic surgery would be a major contract.

The ideal of beauty is influenced by a temporal component, as can be clearly seen in the body ideal of the last hundred years. In general, one can see an ever faster change in fashions and ideals in recent times.

Another component is the local component, despite globalization. The American journalist Esther Honig started an interesting experiment here. She sent her untouched and unedited portrait to 40 people who worked a lot with Photoshop, asking them to improve their portrait. The results are surprisingly different. Despite the general trend towards globalization, a cultural and local influence can be clearly deduced.

Is beauty possible?

A topic that concerns aesthetic dermatologists and plastic surgeons every day is the question of the feasibility of beauty: The options available to us today are: nutrition and diet, training, make-up, styling/fashion, aesthetic treatments and operations or even concentrating and working on inner beauty.

The natural limits that we notice again and again in the 21st century and also as plastic surgeons are the resilience of tissue and the scars that form, genes and the quality of the skeleton, soft tissue and skin, strain and stress, as well as financial and time constraints. Interestingly, according to analyses, beautiful parents do not automatically have more beautiful children. Nutrition and the social situation of the parents play a far more important role than previously assumed.

When you think about the feasibility of beauty, you inevitably think of Michael Jackson, who as a fictional character was above skin color, gender, age and even class. If you analyze his transformation, you can see that at some point the tissue in particular could no longer keep up with the desire for even more change.

Cindy Jackson is another protagonist when it comes to change. As an art student, she designed her own personal ideal and made it a reality with selected aesthetic treatments and operations. With over 60 major plastic surgery operations, she made it into the Book of Records as the woman who has had the most operations in the world. The model for the first half of the operations was Barbie, and for the second half Brigitte Bardot. Cindy Jackson, with great effort, comes very close to her role models - but who is/was more beautiful - Cindy Jackson or Brigitte Bardot? And which of the two will grow older more beautifully and better? ▶Fig.3 shows what a beauty formula could look like.

Conclusion

In summary, one can say that beauty is always individual (beauty is in the eye of the beholder; time, place and personal taste all play a role). A residue of mysterious mystery will always remain. And finally, as in the introduction, the questions arise: Can we measure beauty at all? And finally: What is beautiful?

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