You would be considered beautiful in another era? The answer will surprise you!

• You would be considered beautiful in another era? The answer will surprise you!

We invite the reader to figure out who and why is driving us crazy.

Dawn French, British comedienne and broadcaster curvaceous unlikely someone would call the "sex symbol", but maybe she was just born at the wrong time? "If I lived in the time of Rubens, I would be incredibly beautiful model - once she noticed - and Kate Moss would be a maximum of a brush."

Dawn French

French, of course, said it as a joke, but the interesting question lies in her words. Are standards of beauty vary depending on age? Or some features of appearance has always considered beautiful at all times and in all cultures?

There are evolutionary arguments in favor of "timeless beauty". For example, some biological features indicate health, strength, and human fertility, making him sexually attractive to the opposite sex. However, the more biologists and psychologists are studying the issue, the more inclined to think that biology can not be the basis of the perception of human beauty.

Consider the widespread assertion that people prefer pronounced symmetrical faces. The scientific explanation goes something like this: illness and stress carried by a man in a child subtly affect the development of the organism, which leads to a "skewed" in the structure of the face. That is unbalanced facial features may indicate a physical weakness of man and make it less attractive for breeding and producing offspring.

The problem is that most experiments have revealed a preference subjects symmetrical persons had too few participants. When Stefan Van Dongen University of Antwerp gathered all the results of such studies within the meta-analysis, he found that the effect of the influence of symmetry almost disappeared. In fact, the symmetry of the face can not say anything about your health. Although previous studies have supposedly proved the existence of such a relationship, a great experiment in 2014, which was attended by nearly 5,000 teenagers, found no evidence of a correlation between the individual fizieskoy symmetry and strength of their respective owners. Biologists have also suggested that we prefer to persons having expressed "masculine" or "feminine" traits: broad chelyus Jon Hamm in men, fine lines Miranda Kerr in women. Again, the rationale for this idea sounds very scientific: bone structure reflects the amount of sex hormones in the body, and this occurs precisely in order to "promote" the fertility and sexual health with the help of his appearance.

Miranda Kerr

However, most studies proving this, considering only the western type of persons. Isabelle Scott of the University of Brunel, took for his experiment, a sample of all races and types of appearance: Asian, African, Eastern European, South American ... As a result, researchers have found many preferences. For example, residents of urban regions preferred to "brave" men and "feminine" women, and in the more remote regions of the focus shifted to the opposite direction and "feminine" men receive more attention, as well as a woman with a "male" Description of persons.

The same is true of the body shape. In the West, prefer, for example, long-legged women, but in Namibia tastes exactly the opposite. Even Western sympathy seems to be transformed over time, such as Botticelli Venus - one of the western ideals of beauty - pretty kortkonogaya compared to current standards. Although figures such as "hourglass" for women and broad-shouldered man admired in most countries, the preferred degree of severity depends on the tastes of a particular society. The Birth of Venus (1485)

Perhaps nature is not endowed people no flavor to the exterior as well as our choice of partner should be flexible and depend on the current situation. "For example, in cultures where hunger occurs frequently, most of sympathy on the side of a heavy people, since they are resistant to food shortages, - says Anthony Little of Stirling University - This seems to be the thing. If any nation has a higher risk of developing a particular disease, the symptoms are not the propensity to this illness, encrypted, for example, the symmetry of the face, make a person "more beautiful" than others. Men with square chin - a sign of high testosterone - are appreciated by women in cases where the representatives of the male must compete with each other, that is, when men more than women, and so on. "

Thus, although our concepts of beauty may seem to us something immutable and objective, rather, they merely a consequence of the circumstances. It is also worth noting the presence of the corresponding effect: if you hear or see that a certain type of appearance attracts the majority of the representatives of your floor, you will also find these features attractive. That is the taste of individuals affect the taste of the whole population, thereby reducing the time to choose: you do not have your own to explore all the existing types of appearance, to form an opinion on each of them and bring your own preferences. Thus, social media can shape the taste of the whole nation.

Consider the recent experiment of the Business School of Baltimore. The researchers used the dating site that allows you to put the evaluation to random people. After the subjects put their evaluation, they showed an average score of the views of other visitors. Although the experiment did not have any conditions for the "correctness" of someone else's opinion, users find out which type of appearance was popular, started involuntarily shift the focus of their own preferences with the holders of such traits persons. Their taste has changed (and unbeknownst to them) - only through a single website. We come to the conclusion that the concept of universal beauty does not exist: we are subject to the opinion of the environment, the influence of the media, even the choice of the partners of our friends is important for us. On the view of the beauty of fashion influences, but the opposite is true: we can shape the fashion of a certain kind of beauty, is enough to make an effort to ensure that this type met all on television, on billboards and in glossy magazines as often as possible.