Listening: A News Report on Perceptions of Beauty

Announcer: What is beauty? An oft-quoted expression is, “Beauty is only skin deep.” In other words, someone can be beautiful on the outside, but be mean or unpleasant on the inside. Another famous saying is, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” That is to say, each person’s idea of beauty is different. But is it true that each person perceives beauty

differently? Or, does our social and cultural background influence our ideas about beauty? We turn to reporter Lindsey Novak for the answer to this question.

Lindsey n Novak: It’s said that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, yet the opposite seems to be true. What I mean by that is people within a culture usually have similar ideas about beauty. Numerous studies on beauty have had surprising results. It was Judith Langlois, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, who showed that most people think average-looking faces are beautiful. In addition, her research shows that a beautiful face is a symmetrical face. To put it another way, if both sides of the face are exactly the same, we consider a person beautiful. Faces that vary excessively from the average, symmetrical face are usually not considered beautiful, Langlois says, and may even be alarming to observers. The latest research on facial beauty was completed by

psychologists Pamela M. Pallett, Stephen Link, and Kang Lee. These researchers were interested in finding out if there was a relationship between the parts of the face that

people considered to be most beautiful. So, in four separate experiments, the researchers asked university students to compare images of twelve faces. Each face was actually the

same person, but there were different distances between the eyes and the mouth. After the experiments, the researchers discovered a “golden ratio”—the ideal distance between the eyes, the mouth, and the edge of the face. Faces were judged most beautiful when the

distance between the eyes and the mouth was 36 percent of the length of the face. Not surprisingly, these measurements are exactly those of an “average” face.

Scientists have also studied the role of beauty in physical health. Perrett, men consistently preferred women with large eyes, full lips, and a small nose and chin. Think of classic beauties such as Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn or nowadays, Angelina

Jolie or Halle Berry. This preference for big eyes and full lips is not random. According to anthropologist Don Symons, the brain tells men that full lips and big eyes equal health and the ability to produce healthy babies. It’s an instinct that has evolved over a

hundred thousand years, Symons believes. However, not everyone agrees. Anthropologists do not agree that there is one standard idea of beauty. Around the world, different cultures have different ideas about what constitutes beauty. For example, the Maya people of Central America considered crossed eyes beautiful. Maya's parents would hang objects, such as stones, in front of their babies’ eyes to encourage them to develop this trait. A number of African tribes think scars make both men and women more beautiful. However, among these tribes, the appearance of these decorative scars differs, especially between men and women. Among the Maori people of Australia, a woman is considered

most beautiful when her lips are tattooed blue. These tattoos are called moko and are part of a tattooing tradition that dates back centuries. Men also get extensive facial tattoos. It does appear, therefore, that the old saying is wrong: Beauty does not lie in

the eye of the beholder . . . well, at least not exclusively. Certain aspects of beauty seem to be universal, such as the “golden ratio.”

However, people from the same culture usually envision beauty in similar ways, although there are many distinct variations—and many different types of beauty—around the world. This has been Lindsey Novak, reporting.

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