trying to raise funds for a country in difficulty or in the battle against poverty and misery. It is also well known that a child who begs will receive more handouts than an adult. The Walt Disney films that so enchant their viewers use only small and vulnerable animals; it is always the little mouse, little dog, or little deer that we see, never the adult. This is also the case for toys; it is most often a little animal or a child’s head that is used for a doll. As Saint-Exupery said: “It is the heart that is the final judge, not the eye.”

It is necessary to know that a physical defect can also evoke a protective desire. Some celebrities or women in politics voluntarily keep a discreet squint, which could easily be corrected by surgery, in order to elicit this famous protective impulse and by this strategy increase their powers of seduction and attraction. They do not want to be operated on. As is also well known, if one of the features on a face is not perfect, other traits should be enhanced in order to lessen the attention paid to the defect and to dazzle the eye with the other traits. If, for example, the eyes are beautiful and the nose ordinary, embellish the eyes even more and the ordinary nose will be noticed less, advise beauticians who, even if they do not know the theory of Konrad Lorenz, do know how to make a face more beautiful. A facial scar can detract from the beauty of a man’s face. To avoid the embarrassment that it can provoke in social situations, Passot said: “Give him the Legion of Honor and he will be taken for a hero.”

It has also been said: “the defect is standing proud, the featureless eclipes”.

Equally, the beautician who does not know the Muller-Lyer illusion of two lines of equal length with arrowheads pointing in different directions at each end knows how to give the illusion of making the eyes look closer together by applying makeup to the internal angle of the eye, or contrarily increasing the apparent distance between the eyes by applying makeup to the external angle. The same applies for making up cheek bones on an either too long or too wide face. The rouge can be placed closer or further apart.

11.3 Conclusion

Why be beautiful? It has been said that this is because of pride, pretentiousness, and a desire to be admired and to be ranked above the others!

The cult of beauty is in fact a culture. Humans are the only animals who do not accept their fate and seek to improve it: to cultivate beauty is to increase your quality of life, to want to make it more beautiful. Progress of civilization in all areas has increased life expectancies, but this does not seem to be enough. People want to be and appear even more beautiful, and this is what has made some say: if medicine has given years to life, it is medicine and esthetic surgery that has given life to years.

Beauty and fashion, it is still said, are external signs of our internal need to express ourselves and to reinvent ourselves, and we have defined fashion as an attempt to apply works of art on the living.

Finally, beyond wanting to be admired, the desire to be beautiful in some stems from a great desire to be loved. This desire to be loved even more is the final message that the followers of the beauty cult want to get across. Konrad Lorenz affirms this: everyone loves children and wants to protect them; this is innate. Can one blame someone for wanting to resemble them to be loved more? His theory is without failings. We must remember that esthetic surgeons must try to reproduce juvenile characteristics in their work when possible and desired in order to elicit emotion and admiration. We have seen the links that exist between beauty and admiration, and the deep reverberations felt by the mind and the soul. This is well summarized by Theodore Gautier: “to admire is to love with the mind, to love is to admire with the heart.”

Beauty, as everyone knows, is not eternal, but equally, beauty has no age. One can be good looking at 20, but it is also possible to be irresistible at any age, as Coco Chanel said. Madame de Pompadour stated: “The first requirement of a woman is to please and as time passes this becomes more and more difficult.” This reminds me of a very old woman who came to me one day to ask me to do a facelift. In response to the lack of enthusiasm I showed about performing this intervention because of her advanced age, she said very calmly “when one has ceased to please, one must not displease.”

In his book Essays on animal and human behavior, Konrad Lorenz again offers us two drawings in which he compares the changes that have occurred in animals that have become domesticated, and he evokes a parallel with similar modifications in humans over time and the idea that modern life imposes upon him a sort of “domestication”.

11.4 Summary

Konrad Lorenz’s theory about human beauty is developed in detail:

ssTo trigger an emotion, inspiring at the same time a desire to protect, an adult face should have childish features or expressions. The emotion of human

beauty is in fact subjective; the personality and the main qualities of the person are also part of the emotion.

We should remember that whenever it is possible and desired, a skilled esthetic surgeon should optimize the features that provoke an attraction reflex of tenderness and protection, like a baby does.