What Is Human Beauty?

11.1 Introduction

Paul Valery said, “Health is the silence of the organs” and the World Health Organization said that, “Health is not only the absence of illness but a state of complete mental and social well being.” On the other hand, beauty, which Plato placed behind health and before fortune, has not been well defined.

An esthetic surgeon by definition must create or conserve beauty. Surgical techniques abound in the textbooks of Europe north, south and Central America but, in my opinion, artistic teaching on beauty or human beauty is not taught enough.

The esthetic surgeon often finds it difficult to define beauty, he is not alone. Ask different people and the answers vary considerably and, in the main, are not satisfactory. This is why one thought it would be useful to approach the subject from a psychological point of view, and attempt to understand what it is that enters the mind of a person, esthetic surgeon or not, when she perceives, or does not perceive the feeling of beauty. It is important to understand this feeling within us in order to guide us during our operations.

P.F. Fournier

57 Avenue de Villiers, 75010 Paris, France e-mail: pierre.fournier27@wanadoo.fr

11.2 Beauty

11.2.1What Is Human Beauty? What Do the Books Say? Dictionaries? Philosophers?

ssRight from the start we are told that beauty is about proportion, equilibrium, symmetry. I therefore want to explain beauty objectively and describe the different canons of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman. Apparently the centimeter is not the sole judge, little by little the subjective has entered into the equation.

ssBeauty is an ensemble of shapes and proportions, which bring us pleasure and which we admire, but the concept varies according to different cultures.

ss Beauty is a balance between shape and volume.

ssBeauty stimulates an esthetic feeling within us, pleasing to the eye, a sense of admiration. Some say beauty is a visual pheromone!

ss Beauty is a combination of qualities such as form, proportion, and color in a human face (or other object) that delights the sight.

ssThese last four words are important, beauty does not exist itself, it exists in the eye of the beholder. If something pleases someone, it is beautiful to him. If this same thing does not please another, it is not beautiful to him. It is not that which is beautiful that pleases him, it is that which pleases him that is beautiful.

ssDavid Hume (1711–1776) the Scottish philosopher said, more than 200 years ago, “Beauty is essentially a private and personnel experience. Beauty is in the eye and mind of the beholder.” He a1so said, “Beauty is not a quality of the thing itself but that which exists in the mind of those who contemplate it.” Everyone experiences beauty individually.

ssEric Newton: “Beauty is something which gives pleasure, but that which gives pleasure to one person does not necessarily give pleasure to someone else.”

ssSome philosophers conclude, “that which is beautiful is good, that which is good is beautiful.” What

the poetess Sappho said a long time ago was “that which is beautiful is good and he who is good will soon become beautiful.”

ssOur past feelings are partly responsible for how we feel today. Our parents, love, former loves, women, and friends. They remind us of past experiences, and beauty is not represented by the detail but by the whole collection being greater than the sum of its parts. Equally, today’s “emotions will be responsible for tomorrow’s emotions.” The happy and unhappy times of our past life leave permanent impressions guiding our preferences. The faces we have loved during our youth, warm and comforting, continue to live on in our mind.

ssBeauty is not only a question of the face, voice, body, or a graceful physique. People are beautiful because of their character, personality, and their ability to bring joy, their capacity to love. We see emerging the notion of charm.

ssWhen we like a face, we like the spirit that animates it and it is not enough to say that someone is physically attractive; a person can be attractive in many ways.

ssBeauty and charm are often confused. Cleopatra, George Sand, Louise de la Valliere, and Theodora were famous for their beauty; in fact they were not very beautiful but possessed great charm. Beauty is more an illusion than a reality.

ssBeauty is not for the eye but for the mind. “Attraction is in the eye of the beholder,”said Hungerford. Steven M. Hoefflin states: “I must correct, attraction in the eye of the beholder, while beauty is shared by all.”

ssThe beauty of the personality eclipses the beauty of the face. We have seen many ways to define beauty and that it is often associated with charm. Charm differs from beauty in that it lasts forever, whereas beauty fades. The English say, “Charm last! Beauty blast!” Finally we see that it is not only the eye that judges whether someone or something is beautiful; it is, above all, the mind and that which we term the heart or inner beauty.

ssAccording to the American sociologist Frumkin, a woman is deemed beautifu1 according to her “sexual aptitude.” Whether she is judged beautiful or not

depends not only on the symmetry of her proportions or shape but equally by the potential sexual functions suggested by these attributes, and the sensual emotion is transformed into an esthetic emotion.

ssThe preceding classic assertions allow us to conclude that the notion of beauty differs according to the culture and the individual, and that it is not exclusively a question of shape, form, and symmetry. A person’s personality, charm, and interior beauty powerfully contribute to elicit a pleasing impression in the beholder. The eye is not the sole judge; there is also the spirit and, above all, the heart. The mind is influenced by old memories which reside within us and shape our judgment in the same way that today’s experiences will influence the future. This is seen in a phrase of Buddha “Today is the son of yesterday and the father of tomorrow.”

Beauty is like an iceberg: only one part of it is visible. We could say that the baits are the face and body; and the hooks are the heart and the mind.

11.2.2 Konrad Lorenz’s Theory

Konrad Lorenz, Nobel Prize winner for Medicine and Physiology in 1973, has contributed in a decisive way to the progress of the biology of behavior. It is he who helped us understand human beauty.

In his work “Essays on animal and human behavior” he proposed the drawing, which explains the release of an emotion in both human and animals to care for young. In the left column one sees a child’s head and the heads of very young animals, a gerbil, a Pekingese, and a robin red breast. In the column on the right we see an adults head and the heads of the same animals as adults.

If one asks which column is preferred, the left is automatically chosen. Konrad Lorenz concluded from this that beauty is an emotion, an emotion associated with the desire to protect. Only the left column evokes this emotion. This emotion is associated with a desire to protect as much in humans as in animals. It is, he says, the release of an innate behavior. A relatively large head, a disproportionately large forehead, large eyes placed underneath prominent curved cheeks, short thick limbs, a firm elasticity, and awkward movements are the essential defining characteristics of “sweet” and “pretty.” These present

themselves according to the law of the “summation of excitations” of a small child or “bait,” like a dog or a cuddly animal.

On the left are those that give the impression of a “Sweetie” (child, gerbil, Pekingese, red breast), the adults to the right do not elicit this caring reaction (man, hare, hunting dog, blackbird). The conclusion is obvious: beneath the traits of an adult, the face of a child must show through. When a face attract a human it is because the face has childlike characteristics.

Everyone is instinctively attracted by a child’s face. The sight of a child’s face immediately provokes within us an emotion and this emotion is automatically accompanied by a desire to protect. This is found equally in man and beast. Konrad Lorenz explains that adult animals which are driven to protect their offspring are attracted by “something” which the offspring emanates – a physical trait, a sound, a smell. It is the same with man. There are signals that elicit protection, sympathy, and tenderness.

What are the cues according to Konrad Lorenz? For the small child, the signals are on its head. They are roundness, fullness, curves, the rounded forehead, full cheeks, and the little turned up nose; all these infantile characteristics elicit a desire to protect. An infant’s face is associated with purity, sincerity, honesty, and vulnerability.

The adult we see on the right hand column does not elicit these reactions. His face has changed, his head is flattened, the forehead receding, the nose lengthened, and cheeks hollowed. He has lost all his childlike characteristics. He elicits no emotion, no desire to protect. It is the same for adult animals, and the contrast is startling on viewing the two columns: in the man angles have replaced curves with the naso-labial angle, angles of the jaw, external angles of the orbit, and angles of the chin. Designers and painters know this theory well and reveal it in their work aimed at students. Cartoonists know that to touch the hearts of their readers, they must exaggerate certain traits in an adult or child’s face, making the head bigger than normal, with a rounded forehead, full cheeks, and shortened limbs.

We see that women maintain their curves, whereas men lose them. We understand therefore that in his interventions a good esthetic surgeon should optimize the traits that, as in a baby or child, evoke reactions of attraction, tenderness, and protection.

Softness, roundness = tenderness.

Again, and this is fundamental to giving the impression of beauty, in the adult face one must find and recognize the traits of a child. However, the traits are not the sole source of the protective reflex; there are also the expressions. These at least have the advantage of being accessible to everyone. Some adults know how useful expressions are in order to please or to move someone. The emotions provoked by the childlike features of Brigitte Bardot were increased by her famous spoiled child “pout.” Also well known are the childlike expressions used, and some say abused, by Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn.

It has been said that Marilyn Monroe made herself up badly to give the impression of a little girl who did not know how to apply her makeup and also that after a long session at the hairdressers she would ruffle up her hair to obtain a certain look of disorder that reminded one of a little girl who had just finished playing.

Also, if women do not have a childlike demeanor and wish to dominate men, men will not feel a protective desire and will be reminded more of their mother than of their wife.

Women, who are more concerned about beauty than are men, may show these childlike expressions consciously or unconsciously. They can appear knowingly or unknowingly shy, fragile, weak, innocent, naïve, ignorant, temperamental, sulky, admiring, curious, etc. Some women highlight apparent weaknesses in order to provoke this protective emotion. Has it not been said that it is the apparent weakness of women that is their strength? Considering that all this has the aim of striking straight to the heart of men, Napoleon I would have said “Women’s two weapons are makeup (the significance of this will be discussed later) and tears, as in a helpless little girl.” One therefore understands how a child’s features on an adult can be moving: freckles, rosy cheeks, a glowing complexion, long eyelashes, blond curls, full cheeks, and full, well-defined full lips.

Today, times have changed, and such “bait” may not be used as often as before since our modern society is becoming more and more egalitarian between men and women.

For men, wearing a side parting of the hair, as sported by many of the great seducers (Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, George Clooney), a “floppy mop” (Leonardo Di Caprio), and shaving every day can only be explained by a desire to resemble a child. It is not necessary to have all these signals; only one is needed to please.

Each individual can always have childlike expressions. As for traits, if one does not have them, they can sometimes be acquired thanks to esthetic surgery. Beauty is not entirely a natural phenomenon. It has long, and especially in our time, been a cultural phenomenon. Humans seek to improve themselves, and women, for whom beauty is more important than for men (men are attracted above all by force and power), improve their beauty and charm with makeup and what we call accessories: glasses; false eyelashes; earrings; hairstyles; highlights; tattoos around the lips, eyelids, and eyebrows (the word “tattoo” should not be used when talking to women, rather semi-permanent implantation of natural pigments!); hats; necklaces; and the invisible accessory, perfume. Some of the more modern accessories have been studied by beauty professionals in order to hide faults: wide arms on modern glasses hide “crow’s feet” and a high bridge can accentuate the length of a too short nose. Placed lower down, it reduces the length of a long nose. All these stratagems are explained discreetly and at length in women’s magazines. An old proverb summarizes this perfectly: “30% of beauty is made by nature and 70% by nurture, by adornment.” The disadvantage of these accessories is that without them one may no longer seem as young or as beautiful.

The desire to make oneself more beautiful is not a trap that women set for men, it is a wish to please, to be better accepted by society and the family. It is agreed that life is harder for a woman than for a man, although great improvements have been made in the last few decades. In addition, makeup gives confidence, a little like the war paint of the North American Indians. Do we not say “change the appearance and you change the person” and “if one prepares, it is for the parade!” Its importance is extreme. Have we not read Sharon Stone state in a women’s magazine: “I have never considered myself as a great beauty, only a great magician”? Tyra Banks, a well-known black beauty, said, “I am not ugly but my beauty is a total creation.”

We have always had makeup, and to improve a face makeup must be natural, and by increasing it, remind one of the qualities of a young face. Lipstick must make one think of the more intense red of a the lips of a child, who has a faster metabolism; blusher must make one think of a child’s rosy cheeks, and powder the pale and velvet skin of youth. This is what Desmond Morris calls over stimulation. Very long false eyelashes are only a reminder of the long lashes

of a child. If makeup can improve, badly applied, it can also spoil the beauty of a face. It can be friend or foe. Have we not read in certain ethnology books that it was the witch who was asked to make up ill peoples’ faces so that they would not needlessly shock those with whom they lived?

Childlike traits and expressions are therefore important in order to evoke emotion with a desire to protect. There is also the voice, which must be soft and pleasant, like that of a child. A harsh voice, found among many smokers, does not make one think of a child. Clothes must also be pleasing to the eye and to the heart, and have a youthful cut. Does the mini skirt not evoke the long legs of the adolescent? Colors also have to evoke childhood; light colors, such as blue and pink, have always been chosen by old ladies. Of course black is to be avoided. In summary, all the human senses must be solicited, sight, hearing, smell (children have no smell, hence the use of deodorants), and touch; the firmness of the skin is important. Beauty institutes have long understood this and centered their advertising on it. Do we not read in women’s magazines: ladies, perhaps you have beautiful breasts, a beautiful stomach, and beautiful legs, but are they firm? Firmness, the elasticity of tissue, is a fundamental quality of children’s skin and forms part of its beauty. It can be very expensive to be beautiful: jewels, the beauty accessories, are easily available to those with a sufficient income, but more difficult to obtain for those with a modest budget. This fact explains why medicine and esthetic surgery are popular among those who are not well off and who cannot please with their natural gifts alone, or with the artificial means of the well off. Only being able to please with their bodies, if patients of modest means have acquired or natural defects, they will allow themselves to be operated on more easily as it is their only way of continuing to be pleasing.

The idea of using a child’s image is well known. One sometimes wants to sensitize the heart for more mercenary, rather than noble reasons. It is well known that every time one shows a child’s face next to a product, distribution is improved and profit increased. Whether it is a medicine or any other product, the number of consumers, if they are sensitive, will increase. Marketers are of course looking for a path to the heart, but also, and above all, to the wallet. The strategy of showing a child’s face is used in public awareness campaigns by charity organizations when