By Bianca Zhou
The main factors to attractiveness in our appearance include intelligence, balance, and health. You might be thinking, “these factors seem arbitrary,” but here’s a quick explanation.
The reason why we find things appealing is because our body is telling us what might be beneficial to us in the long run. It was found that faces associated with intelligence included sharper noses and eyes with a further distance apart, and thus were traits that were considered attractive. In a primitive sense, our brains are trying to judge which people are the most intelligent in hopes they know something we don’t (where to find food, how to find shelter, etc). That’s why those who posses more structured features are considered more attractive.
Balance is an important factor because it demonstrates how reliable a person can be. For example, if someone has a scar on their face, the brain questions whether or not that person is trustable (since they have a scar, they must have been in a physically threatening situation). This is why makeup strives to balance out features of the face, like covering up blemishes that are on one side of the face and not the other, and evening out the eyebrows when they’re not even.
Lastly, health is a very important factor in attractiveness. The brain wants to keep you away from unhealthy people in order to prevent the spread of disease. That’s why sickness naturally repulses us and that’s also why we find wrinkles, eye bags, chapped lips, and skin discoloration to be less attractive.
