Oddities

First! Seriously, beauty is all well and good, but an unhealthy obsession is just that. Read Voltaire, Dickens, Satre, and work on your inner beauty.

Oops. Sartre. See.

Why is womens' beauty constantly picked apart and analyzed and critiqued?? As if we don't have enough to tackle on a daily basis. It never ends and it's a sad commentary on society.

I think that its God's cruel joke to have so many of us ugly people in the world and then try to tell us its "what's on the inside" that counts. What a bunch of bull. Study's show that beautiful people get better jobs, better pay, live a life of less adversity. Maybe if you're rich and ugly you can enjoy life but the rest of us just wait for a fatal disease or old age to take the pain away. If plastic surgeons want to help they ought to donate their time to people improving their looks. Maybe one a month wouldn't break their bank and they could write it off as charity.

People are obsessed with physical beauty because it is rooted in basic human responses. Alternate lifestyles aside, it's a cliche that attractive women consistently go out with good-looking jerks while attractive guys go out with superficial hotties. One interesting point is that in one study, scientists created composite photos that "averaged" the looks of everday people, and discovered that people considered the "average" faces to be more attractive than faces of the everyday people and that celebrities considered to be attractive had faces that were close to the "average" faces. The reasoning was that people are genetically programmed to avoid extremes in appearance and to seek out the "average" mate. It would also explain why men and women wonder what the opposite sex finds so appealing in people who are "nothing special".

Beauty. The word itself makes you think of sleeping beauty, cinderella, Marylin Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, I could go on and on. Those are real beauties, and without plastic surjery. My Mother, my aunts, cousins, the lady at the coffee shop, the little old neighbor who stays in her flower garden. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so they say. Every woman in the world has her own special beauty whether it be inside or outside. Looks is not what makes a woman beautiful! The most beautiful woman in the world? That's simple,,, it was my GrandMother! And, i miss her so much.

This is so oversimplified. Attractiveness (sexual attraction specifically) is a combination of genes, pheramones, culture, appearance, intelligence, personality, personal experience and the perception of the observer.

It is silly to state there is a mathmatical formula for beauty. Just like it is silly to state that we are a product of only nurture or only nature.

Humans are extremely complex beings. This article merely shows that some people lack the intelligence to realize that physical beauty/attractiveness is the result of a combination of attributes.

This is obvious in that this product was developed for commercial purposes and has no legitimate place in the scientific community.

Aphrodite, like it or not, outer beauty plays a huge role in a person's life. It's not the point he was making, but even Sartre, whom you mention, was famous for saying that hell was other people. I include other peoples' judgments about appearance in that hell.

Brenda, I generally agree with your pro bono plastic surgery idea. I think it needs to be coupled with psychological help in a lot of situations, though. Someone who thinks a tummy tuck and a facelift will solve all of her problems might be surprised about how few problems they solve.

Are You Hot or Not? I'd say the woman in the photo is definitely not. But then again, I'm not computer...

I guess it's a good thing that I've been told I'm not hard to look at. I've got a great job, a (mostly) good woman, and she's commented to me, many times, how it makes her so mad that good things just seem to fall into my lap (knock on wood)...and I act like I've been expecting it. I've never noticed myself, but I guess it does have some truth to it. I think it's more about attitude than looks, however. If your constantly pining and whining, you never get what you want, but if you have an optimistic outlook, and know good things will happen to you, then somehow...they do.

in a perfect world all women rated btwn 5-7 would be wives; all women rated 8-10 would be prostitutes and all women rated below 4 would be house keepers! this computer can help make sure the rating process is fair and balanced!!

yo it is hard being beautiful trust. i have to worry about people coming up to and telling me i look hot.

yo it is hard being beautiful trust. i have to worry about people coming up to and telling me i look hot.

I certainly hope this wasn't paid for by tax dollars. This belongs on the society page, not the science page.

Looks are irrelevant for men. All you need is money.

People are naturally curious of things they don't understand. And beauty is something that we, altogether, do not have a good grasp of. Don't you think that it would be good for humanity to once and for all understand beauty, so that we can get over it and notice what's really beautiful about people?