I can’t say all, but quite a largish number of species in the Animalia kingdom select their mates based on a single distinct feature. Such traits include strength, color, sound and many other easily identifiable characteristics. But homo sapiens seem more sophisticated in their taste. Humans are attracted to beautiful-looking individuals.
Whether such partiality for facial pulchritude evolves out of civilization or is pre-wired in our brain, I honestly can’t say with certitude. People say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. While I do not repudiate this age-old adage, I certainly notice that such a statement is uttered only when a not-too-pretty person is concerned. Ugly people aside, we all have common opinion when it comes to really charming and gorgeous looking people. No one would deny that Angelina Jolie or Orlando Blooms is charming, though we have varying judgments on how pulchritudinous a person is.
That brings us to query what is beauty. Why do we know a person is beautiful when that person is beautiful? Unlike those easily discernible qualities mentioned above, beauty cannot be judged quantitatively, or so it seems. There exists many kinds of beauty, spanning the entire gamut of cultures and origins, with each having very distinct facial features. Yet, Hispanics or Orientals, Whites or Blacks, if one is pretty, we all agree that he or she is pretty. Intuitively, it suggests to us that there must be something in common amongst all these pretty people, even if they have vastly different facial characteristics.
Surprisingly, the answer to that question lies in the field of mathematics. The answer is 1.618. 1.618 is an approximate ratio of two successive numbers in a Fibonacci series. It is commonly referred to as the Golden number. But what does this Golden number has in relation with human’s facial beauty? Apparently, it does not matter what facial attributes a person possesses. The salient factor is that the ratio of size or distance between facial features must be approximately 1.618. This number also applies to the size ratio between body parts. People with facial feature proportions of this number are therefore good-looking, theoretically. The beauty of a person is effectively encapsulated in this golden number.
Reproduction is the pivotal key to survival. Therefore we can logically deduce that individuals of a species are attracted to those with features most suited for survival. Yet it does not make sense when humans are attracted to each other based upon physical beauty. This is one of the reasons why we suspect that attraction to facial beauty evolves out of the progression of civilization. Civilization is the cardinal manifestation that humans have begun to acquire reasoning, which then gradually overrides their natural instincts and tendencies. For instance, apart from facial features, certain tribes in Africa actually take corpulence as beauty. This seems to corroborate the fact that beauty is subjective, and therefore our attraction to facial beauty can’t possibly be pre-wired as natural tendencies.
Then, is beauty an objective or subjective matter? The golden number seems to support the former, but the African tribes mentioned above bolster the latter. Notwithstanding that, they actually do not contradict with each other. Golden number remains the universal beauty constant; but the other standards are complementary to it. Beauty is thus both objective and subjective.