Beauty : An Introduction

Beauty is a quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (such as shape, color, sound, etc।), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else (such as personality).Said another way, "beauty" is a quality of a person, object, place, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, affirmation, meaning, or goodness. The subjective experience of "beauty" often involves the interpretation of some entity as being in balance and harmony with nature. This leads to powerful feelings of attraction and emotional well-being.

The earliest theory of beauty can be found in the works of early Greek philosophers from the pre-Socratic period, such as Pythagoras। The Pythagorean school saw a strong connection between mathematics and beauty. In particular, they noted that objects proportioned according to the golden ratio seemed more attractive. Ancient Greek architecture is based on this view of symmetry and proportion. Modern research also suggests that people whose facial features are symmetric and proportioned according the golden ratio are more attractive than those whose faces are not.



Beauty, throughout history, generally has been associated with that which is good. Likewise, the polar opposite of beauty is generally considered to be ugly and is often associated with evil. Evil witches, for example, are often depicted with unpleasant physical features and personalities. This contrast is epitomized by classic stories such as Sleeping Beauty.

OUTER BEAUTY

A common way to measure outer beauty, as based on community consensus, or general opinion, is to stage a beauty pageant, such as Miss Universe. Inner beauty, however, is more difficult to quantify, though beauty pageants often claim to take this into consideration as well. Many people will agree that Mother Teresa, for example, was a beautiful person, but such general measures are hard to define. Likewise, Helen of Troy was often described as being a magnificent beauty. Outer physical appearance does not necessarily predetermine the measure of a person’s perceptual beauty, which may perceptually change, in people’s minds, based on inner personal qualities.

A strong indicator of physical beauty is "averageness". When images of human faces are averaged together to form a composite image, they become progressively closer to the "ideal" image and are perceived as more attractive. This was first noticed in 1883, when Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, overlayed photographic composite images of the faces of vegetarians and criminals to see if there was a typical facial appearance for each. When doing this, he noticed that the composite images were more attractive, than as compared to any of the individual images. Researchers have replicated the result under more controlled conditions and found that the computer generated, mathematical average of a series of faces is rated more favorably than individual faces.

Another feature of beautiful women that has been explored by researchers is a waist-to-hip ratio of approximately 0.70 for women. The concept of waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) was developed by psychologist Devendra Singh of the University of Texas at Austin. Physiologists have shown that this ratio accurately indicates most women's fertility. Traditionally, in premodern ages when food was more scarce, fat people were judged more attractive than slender.

INNER BEAUTY

Inner beauty is a concept used to describe the positive aspects of something that are not physically observable. The term typically applies to living things and is most often used to distinguish something that does not have typical outer beauty but has good qualities otherwise.

While most species use physical traits and pheromones to attract mates, humans additionally rely on the inner beauty of their choices. These qualities include: kindness, creativity or intelligence.