The Beauty Delusion: it's soo last milennia

‘Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder’. If that is the case, then beauty ideals are far too subjective to be given definition, and are therefore non-existent. Some prefer blue eyes to brown, some prefer pale skin to tanned. However, there seems to be some universal agreement in what people find beautiful, and thus a set of objective criteria that make someone beautiful. But mankind in Western societies seem to be deviating from traditional beauty, and even promoting images that directly defy historical ideals. I therefore propose that a political and social revolution is occurring – we are omitting the beauty delusion.

Granted, there are innate preferences for the archetypal attractive person. In females, this is generally large eyes and a small nose and chin, which shows youth and thus fertility. It’s also an hourglass frame, also indicating fertility. From an evolutionary perspective, the increased desire for youth and fertility is seen as a male’s desire for successful reproduction, and passing on heir genes. It has been shown that each time a male remarries; he marries a woman younger than the last.  In men, attractiveness is translated as muscular with prominent features, like jaw and brow. This implies high testosterone levels, and therefore an increased chance of survival amongst our ancestors, as they will be successful huntsmen and protectors. Symmetry of facial features is a universal trait of attractiveness as it indicates either good genetics or successful resistance from harmful things; both being good traits in a partner.

prominent brow, jaw and cheekbones are a sign of high testosterone levels in men, and therefore increases survival chances

With this instinctive checklist tainting our judgements, it can be argued that beauty can be defined, and affects our interactions with others. To some extent, this is true. It takes as little as 0.7 seconds to determine if you find someone as attractive or not, and if someone who falls into these ideas of beauty come within a certain proximity of us, we unknowingly change our behaviour. Therefore, we cannot deny the influences of biologically inbuilt mechanisms. However, we are not primitive organisms controlled solely by endogenous behaviours; we have a high degree of social conditioning which, particularly in recent years, encourages us to be inclusive and non-judgmental of someone’s looks. So even if beauty could be defined, modern people will try not to let it corrupt their judgements. Gone are the ages of physiognomy and assuming the deformed are devil possessed; people are resistant to let someone’s looks affect their interactions with them, whether it is their level of beauty or a visible disability. Humanity is, now more than ever, conscious of others’ feelings and aware that personality can often overrule looks in sexual selection.

  

Furthermore, there has been a shift in beauty ideals that contrast our innate tendencies. As seen in the urns of Ancient Greece, the painted portraits of the Renaissance and the starlets of the twentieth century such as Marilyn Monroe; feminine beauty has been epitomised by a curvaceous figure and youthful features for millennia, but in the last few decades, thin physiques and strong bone structure have dominated media ideals. As seen in the world of high fashion, beauty trends are often about making a statement or standing out rather than trying to enhance historically stereotypical beauty or to impress potential mates.

Historical beauty ideals still influence our behaviours, but so does our attraction to abnormality and uniqueness. Similarly, people are enforcing new, unconventional beauty ideals, as well as people overlooking physical appearances altogether. This shows that in this age where desire for uniqueness, originality, equality and sensitivity has risen, changing the face of beauty so that it is not only unrecognisable, but unidentifiable. 

Science versus Religion: two of the same?

For years the debate of sciences versus religion has been central to many social reforms, scientific research and political divide. But what if the two were born of the same human instinct, or even further, had a causal relationship.

One of the main differences believed to exempt humans from other primates is pursuit of knowledge. This is something that goes beyond casual curiosity; it is the need to explain and justify events and theories.  This trait has been largely attributed to the complex relationships between anterior pituitary, the caudate nucleus and precuneus grey matter in the brain (among others), some of which are known to be responsible for memory, arousal and learning. As these areas of the brain developed with the evolution of man, so did the desire for knowledge and understanding.

With the limited knowledge of the Neanderthals, whereby community settlements were in their early stages, their conclusion for the changes of seasons, weather and death was that they were all controlled by a higher being or higher beings like themselves. This created the first belief in a deity, or deities.

With their new found knowledge, rituals and prayers were quickly developed as a solution to problems that the ‘gods’ were thought to control. These included various sacrifices, material offerings and the construction of temples in their honour.  The belief of omnipotent deities resulted in the formation of religions; worshipping the divine for promise of reward such as rainfall, or the promise of an afterlife.

All the while, the philosophical and imaginative cognitions of early humans exercised the various regions of the brain, furthering its development, which would be either inherited or equally trained in their offspring. Simultaneously, advancing civilisations meant that more factual elements of the universe previously unknown to humanity were being discovered. These vary between the ages, ranging from planetary, anatomical, agricultural, pharmacological and geological discoveries.

Science had taken off as an independent discipline, with people being more preoccupied with the pursuit of empirical evidence, rather than denoting phenomena to a higher power that could not be proven. For millennia, scientific research and religious doctrines lived in harmonious conjunction. Although many scientific discoveries had debunked popular religious beliefs, generally, people still practised a religion. It wasn't until the sixteenth century where there was a rise in atheism and open questioning of religion in Western cultures, although it was made illegal in many states. The most notable change of mass division between the ‘scientific’ atheist community and the religious was after the publication of Darwin’s ‘The Origin of Species’.

Although there are many conflicts between religious, scientific and religious-scientific communities, it would appear that science and religion, two doctrines exclusive to humans, appear to stem from the same brain area, and the same human desire to understand and act upon knowledge. Furthermore, there is time scale evidence to show that religion perhaps nurtured humans’ scientific abilities, changing the way mankind perceives the relationship between science and religion forever.