Hey, 42 here.
In 1878 Charles Darwin's cousin,
explorer, inventor, and polymath Sir Francis Galton
Discovered a new technique to combine
portraits to create a composite image,
an average face.
What he discovered was that whenever you average people's faces to create a new face,
the resulting composite face is always
beautiful.
He thus concluded that as humans we find averages beautiful.
We dislike extremes, anomalies and oddities.
Sir Francis Galton deduced that facial symmetry, as well as averageness, both contribute to beauty.
Around the same time that Sir Francis Galton published his research
a Polish businessman by the name of Maximilian Faktorowicz took immense interest in what Galton had to say about beauty.
Galton's findings inspired Maximilian to create a strange device
which he called the Beauty Micrometer. Its purpose was to measure a woman's face and check for
averageness and symmetry. It was able to pick up on minor structural flaws that were barely
noticeable to the human eye.
Women flocked in their droves, mostly from the film industry, to try out Maximilian's new device.
Conveniently, he also happened to produce and sell a range of beauty-enhancing products to fix the so-called
imperfections that the beauty micrometer picked up on.
He named these products
makeup.
So successful was his range of makeup, that he started a company
named after himself.
Maximilian Faktorowicz
Max Factor
Which as you all know, would become one of the largest makeup brands in the world.
But this raises a poignant question – why do we find symmetry and averageness to be beautiful?
Why aren't quirky, odd, and disfigured faces
considered beautiful,
by most people?
Researchers have longed for, that the reason for this is that imperfect,
asymmetrical faces can indicate
That potential mates have an ailment or a disease and so the laws of sexual selection dictate that we are
predisposed to choose not to mate with such people because they may produce
unfavorable offspring.
Although this is not a very nice theory, it does make sense after all, it's true that various diseases
we can have as children do leave permanent scars and
physical disfigurement on your face and body in some cases.
Albeit less so today with modern medicine.
But, if this were true wouldn't so-called "ugliness" and "physical imperfections"
have died out long ago through sexual selection?
Kind of like a natural eugenics?
Well, there must be more to this beauty thing than wanting to avoid a disease and genetic disorders.
Also, today with modern medicine illnesses we have as children such as chickenpox,
Rarely leave any permanent physical marks and our faces, as they would have done so in our hunter-gatherer days.
The answer to why we find symmetrical faces so beautiful could in fact be so simple.
It's almost beautiful.
Some scientists think it's simply because humans find beauty in all things symmetrical in nature.
Symmetry represents order, calmness,
and certainty. It is the opposite of chaos, so seeing symmetry whether it's in nature or a
Significant other's face makes us feel calm and content.
Be it the wings of a butterfly,
The orderly leaves of a plant, all the gentle ripples in a pond all these sights bring us peace.
The same chemical reactions that caused these feelings of content,
could also be triggered by the symmetry in a person's face.
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But can beauty be measured like we measure intelligence?
Turns out yes, believe it or not there is a unit of measurement for beauty
It's called the Helen.
The more beautiful you are the more Helens you possess
No, I've not gone crazy!
Again, I forgot to mention that it's meant as a joke coined by Cambridge mathematician
W.A.H. Rushton
It comes from the fact that people would write that Helen of Troy was so beautiful,
that she had quote-unquote a face that launched a thousand ships.
And so, the more Helens a person has the more likely their beauty is to inspire actions in others such as
Waging war on one's behalf. There are also Millhelens
For situations when someone it's so darn ugly that they are simply not deserving of one full Helen.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary,
Now this suggests that beauty is subjective
And since we are all unique and we all find pleasure in different ways it is true that
Beauty must be in the eyes of the beholder.
So then maybe perfect symmetry, averageness and physical proportions to set norms
Aren't true beauty.
Well this of course depends on your point of view, but the Japanese have a novel way of approaching the idea of beauty that
I, personally, find rather appealing indeed. They call it wabi-sabi.
Wabi-sabi is the appreciation and natural beauty found within imperfections.
This isn't just another ancient Eastern tradition that is mostly ignored by modern society.
Wabi-sabi is deeply ingrained within modern Japanese culture. It's even taught in schools,
Writer Leonard Koren wrote that wabi-sabi is
Wabi-sabi is loving that mole on your partner's cheek.
It is appreciating the way that crooked old tree warps and twists in its eternal struggle against gravity,
it is loving the curves ,bumps and oddities of a person's body,
And finding beauty in the way that cracks meander through your favorite architectural monoliths.
The famous Zen garden in Northwest Kyoto
Contains 15 stones that are placed in such a way that no matter what angle you look at them from on the ground
You can only ever see 14 stones. The 15th is always just out of sight.
Thus symbolizing
wabi-sabi
No matter how you see the garden, it is never complete,
never perfect.
The idea of wabi-sabi comes from Buddhism
But it truly
Originated from Japanese tea ceremonies, as people would favor unique handcrafted cups on tea making apparatus that had
Imperfections and unique marks from their makers hands over perfect ornate crockery, which is only intended to show off.
Wabi-sabi is a deeply complex ideal and a way of living that cannot be fully explained using the english language.
But it's a refreshingly
beautiful take on
beauty, compared to the obsession of striving for perfection and symmetry that is often promoted in the West.
Speaking of perfection, it turns out that it's not all it's cracked up to be.
A study on catwalk models discovered that the more symmetrical, and technically perfect, a models face is,
the more likely they are to have low self-esteem and
Generally have a lower well-being than average.
Other research is conducted at City University in London
Found that people who make a living from their looks such as catwalk and catalog models were more suspicious,
non-conforming,
intensely emotional,
inter-personally alienated,
eccentric
and self-centered.
But it turns out that there are also considerable benefits to what society would call "beautiful".
These studies also mention that more physically attractive people are
Considerably more likely to be hired and to be promoted.
On average, attractive individuals earn higher salaries. They are also more confident. It's for that
This is because they put themselves out there more often and have thus had more experience at making conversation and socializing
However,
vanity and striving for perfection can be dangerous and lead you into a pit of misery a
recent study by london-based Royal Society of Public Health found that
Instagram is the worst social network for mental health.
Researchers found that a desire to take perfect,
Sugar-coated images of one's own life in an attempt to gain likes followers and keep up with one's peers
Only increased mental issues such as depression ,anxiety and feelings of FOMO
A fear of missing out
Interestingly this study found YouTube to be the most positive social network on the Internet
Being the only social network in existence that scored positive marks for mental health.
So that's good.
I've talked in past videos about how damaging social media to the mental health of young people today
truly is,
But these recent studies showed how it's the way that Instagram and other sites like Facebook only show the very best of other
people's lives.
That is so mentally damaging, when all we see is our friends' edited and cherry picked photos
On holiday or having a good time with their friends, it makes us feel
self-contempt like we are missing out on life some people may compensate by
manufacturing their own
scenarios so that they can post pictures on Instagram that make their own lives appear better than they are to try and
Rival their friends which is always a futile and empty pursuit only adding fuel to this vicious cycle.
The study also found that the worst-affected are women
seeing airbrushed images of over women on Instagram with perfect bodies, hair and makeup
Makes women feel inadequate as if their bodies and looks aren't as good as their peers.
Instagram may seem harmless on the surface and sure it can be and is used harmlessly by many people.
But sadly for many other people
It's just a mechanism for them to put a filter on their own life and show it off to the world.
Hey, I'm not judging. We're all guilty
myself included.
But next time you're obsessing over how perfectly you can filter and showcase your
figure, your holiday snaps or just your lunch on Instagram or Facebook,
maybe you should just take a moment to indulge in some wabi-sabi and instead put your phone down and
Appreciate the subtleties and beautiful imperfections of the world around you
The leaves on the ground, the landscape, the insightful, interesting conversation of the people around you
Full true beauty is not what you see or what you strive to be.
But it is the fantastical wonder and the greatness of life, which you experience every day and equally so that
Which you give to others.
Thanks for watching.
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