Survival of the Prettiest

Posted Monday, September 10, 2007 to MARKETSPACE > Books

Posted by The Original Anti-Aging & Cosmetic Surgery Magazine

Survival of The Prettiest - The Science of Beauty by Nancy Etcoff provides a look at exactly what beauty is and where we get our ideals - using many sociological studies, artists' and philosophers' ideas and observations.

This book opens with: "Philosophers ponder it and pornographers proffer it. Asked why people desire physical beauty, Aristotle said: 'No one that is not blind could ask that question'. Beauty ensnares hearts, captures minds, and stirs up emotional wildfires."

Nancy Etcoff is a practising psychologist in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital. She demonstrates how beauty is everlasting, and not a fashion that comes and goes. It does not exist to sell fashion or tyrannize women, but is a universal fascination with the human form that has been in existence since time began.

She asks questions that challenge what we think on the subject: "Before beauty sinks any deeper, let me reel it in for closer examination. Suggesting that men on Madison Avenue have Svengali-like powers to dictate women's behavior and preferences, and can define their sense of beauty, is tantamount to saying that women are not only powerless but mindless. On the contrary, isn't it possible that women cultivate beauty and use the beauty industry to optimize the power beauty brings? Isn't the problem that women often lack the opportunity to cultivate their other assets, not that they can cultivate beauty."

Etcoff considers what beauty is and through studies shows that we all notice the attractiveness of each face automatically; we can see a face for a fraction of a second and rate its beauty. Throughout time artists have tried to define beauty with measurement and balance. And although exact measurements have never been consistent in creating beauty, balance and symmetry do appear to play a part.

"Donald Symons, an anthropologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, related this Cartesian experience to me. He attended a talk given by a plastic surgeon in southern California. The surgeon accompanied his talk with a series of slides of very beautiful people. What impressed Symons was that each of these individuals was very beautiful but imperfect. He couldn't help but notice an upper lip that was too long or a nose that seemed too sharply angled. For Symons, the experience of looking at such strikingly beautiful faces and seeing these minor deviations from 'perfection' was compelling evidence that we possess an innate beauty template which we are unlikely to access directly, but against which we measure all that we see."

Cosmetic surgery plays a part in Etcoff's study of beauty as it has become a modern phenomenon. "Until recently, many people who sought cosmetic surgery ended up getting psychiatric diagnoses they were labeled depressed, hysterical, obsessional, narcissistic. In the last 20 years, the number of 'healthy' recipients of plastic surgery has vastly increased according to psychiatric studies. perhaps this is a reflection of more mainstream acceptance of plastic surgery and a greater diversity among its clients. But it is equally likely to reflect a change in modern psychiatry, which can look at appearance enhancement as something other than an unhealthy need."

Survival of The Prettiest accepts there is such a thing as beauty, and that it is a desirable trait not to be ignored. It is an interesting compilation of studies dedicated to finding out what beauty is, how it effects our everyday life and what it means to those that surround us.

Survival of the Prettiest - The Science of Beauty by Nancy Etcoff is published by Doubleday, a division of Random House Inc.

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