what is beauty?! "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is a common phrase that expresses this concept.

The subjective experience of "beauty" often involves the interpretation of some entity as being in balance and harmony with nature, which may lead to feelings of attraction and emotional well-being. In its most profound sense, beauty may engender a salient experience of positive reflection about the meaning of one's own existence. An "object of beauty" is anything that reveals or resonates with personal meaning. As a cultural creation, beauty has been extremely commercialized. An "ideal beauty" is a person who is admired, or possesses features widely attributed to beauty in a particular culture.
The characterization of a person as “beautiful”, whether on an individual basis or by community consensus, is often based on some combination of inner beauty, which includes psychological factors such as personality, intelligence, grace, charm and elegance, and outer beauty, which includes physical factors, such as health, youthfulness, symmetry, averageness, and complexion. Inner beauty is a concept used to describe the positive aspects of something that is not physically observable.

While most species use physical traits and pheromones to attract mates, some humans claim to rely on the inner beauty of their choices. Qualities including kindness, sensitivity, tenderness or compassion, creativity and intelligence have been said to be desirable since antiquity.

However new research comparing what humans claim to find attractive to their actual mating habits underlines the superficiality of "inner beauty," underlining the fact that the human animal relies on physical traits and pheromones just like every other animal to find a mate. That said, whether "inner beauty" does or does not measurably affect humans' mating habits, some traits classified as "inner beauty" do give an evolutionary survival advantage to either the individual or mating couple or group or all three.

Beauty is desired by women the world over. Millions fork over their hard earned cash for products which promise to “make them beautiful.” In the Western world, the word beautiful is usually used to describe a svelte woman with flawless skin, straight, sleek hair (usually blond), perfectly white teeth – I could go on perpetuating the image with predictable notions, but I am essentially describing a blank canvas, devoid of personality, “battle scars” and those lovable flaws that could potentially ignite the flame between her and her future mate.
Beauty & sexual desirability
On an animalistic level, a woman is more desirable when she carries features such as a waist-to-hip ratio of around 0.7, a symmetrical face and full lips, as these are signifies of high fertility and good health. These features may have been useful in that long gone era when having sex was purely for conceiving a child – how things change (!) – but in the modern age, there are also many other factors that contribute to our perception of beauty.
In an absurd contrast to the notion of males seeking females whose physical appearance suggests fertility, studies have shown that males find pedomorphic characteristics in females to be favorable; in other words – features that make a woman appear childlike. Such features include being of less-than-average height and a face with traits of neoteny. It is believed that these unlock the urge to protect the female, and therefore become her “mate”.
A slightly more difficult path to tread is determining whether skin tone affects beauty. Any comment that one skin color is more beautiful is perceived as being under-tonally racist and it is a tricky issue to explore. In Victorian times, a woman possessing a paler skin tone was seen as being more of a “gentlewoman” – the pale skin was a sign that the woman did not engage in outdoor labor due to her superior status within society. Yet, in modern society, tanned skin is typically seen as more attractive, as it implies a more active lifestyle, which in turn implies good health.

Many people look up to the fashion world as the ultimate source of human perfection. The stunning proportions of the models in comparison to the average population is rather striking aesthetically, yet, is beauty simply all about living up to this standard of what is almost human-based artwork?
A female model is supposed to be just that – a model. A stand on which designers will prop and promote clothing which they have designed, their function similar to that of a moving coat-hanger. In essence, they are a blank canvas for the designer to produce their latest piece of artwork. Hence, the more human aspects of beauty are lost to the more aesthetic facets.
For example, standard model proportions in inches tend to be around 34-24-34 (bust-waist-hips) which in essence produces a flat body from which the clothes will hang gracefully, without accentuating any of the more human features of standard beauty – remember the waist to hip ratio that proves so popular when looking for a mate?
Also, like a piece of art, any characteristic the model carries which the designer classes as an imperfection (a wrong brush stroke here, a little cellulite there) must be erased. In the world of painting, this is remedied by a few precise daubs of paint, perhaps. In the fashion world, the remedy is perhaps a crash diet, or a painted face to produce, once again, a blank canvas.
The harsh contrast between sexual desirability and aesthetic beauty is very striking, and the problems lie where the two get confused. By taking the human out of human beauty, we turn women into no more than a painting, something pretty to look at, with no real substance beneath. Yet, in turn, by rendering sexual attractiveness the most important part of beauty, we turn women into no more than baby-makers, ranked by childlike sexuality.
Alas, when exploring female beauty, the shallowness behind the notion of the word becomes exemplified, and we tend to realize that we are neglecting perhaps the most important part of beauty itself – imperfection.