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Andrei Holman1
Psychology of Beauty: An Overview
of the Contemporary Research Lines
Abstract: We present a synthesis of the contemporary approaches on the topic of corporal
beauty, by dividing them into eight major research lines, each illustrated by a set of most
representative theories and results: evolutionary, sociocultural and body image approaches,
researches on the cross-cultural standards of beauty, on its factors, effects, personal benefits and
media representations.
Keywords: beauty, research lines
Beauty is frequently conceived in contemporary psychosocial studies as physical
attractiveness. Yet, as we will show, the concept of attractiveness can include references
to other traits than the strictly physical ones, usually when dealing with contexts which
imply a hypothetical or real social interaction (or relationship) between the perceiver and
the perceived such as the context of mate choice. Moreover, the sociocultural approaches
prefer the term beauty in order to underline the cultural dependencies of this construct,
the delimitation from the material level of the actual body. As a way of dealing with these
ambiguities which complicate the task of synthesizing the various positions, we will keep
track of the plurality of possible semantic loadings of the concept investigated in each
research line.
The research lines presented are mainly differentiated on the bases of the concept
representing the main focus of research (such as body image). Nevertheless, in some
cases, it becomes as informative to mention their particular scientific approach such as
anthropological or cultural studies or, in the instances where their option is more
consistently ideological, the peculiar vision which supports them (such as feminist studies).
a. The evolutionary approaches attempt to explain attractiveness as a function of the
genetic quality of the individual, defined as health status (past developmental incidents,
current and future disease and stress resistance) as well as reproductive potential and
quality (heterozygosity). Such biological endowment is signaled through a set of features,
evolved through sexual selection, with a high degree of cross-cultural and even cross-species
consensus in terms of their attractiveness: symmetry, averageness, and sexually dimorphic
traits. As such, the strongest support for this perspective comes from the studies which
reveal the cross-cultural homogeneity of attractiveness ratings of the same targets and the
1. Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iaºi, România; holman@psih.uaic.ro.
82 ANDREI HOLMAN
lack of influence of the degree of exposure to Western mass-media on these ratings (Fink and
Neave, 2005), as well from those suggesting that beauty preferences appear from the early
childhood, supposedly before any cultural influences would begin to manifest.
According to the fitness hypothesis which is at the core of the evolutionary discourse
on beauty, due to the presence of such features in healthy individuals, humans have
evolved to prefer them in their mating choices (e.g. Fink and Neave, 2005; Frederick and
Haselton, 2007). Yet, some evolutionary-inspired researches debate the importance of
these physical traits with various methodologies. Some argue, for instance, that facial
averageness is less attractive than expected (Pollard et al., 1999), or that the effect size of
averageness is smaller for the evaluations of the opposite sex than of the representatives
of the same sex (Langlois et al., 2000) thus being less important in heterosexual choices.
One of the fundamental elements of the evolutionary perspective has also been questioned
by some authors namely the association of attractiveness to the health status of the
individual. One the one side, research (e.g. Henderson and Anglin, 2003) support this
thesis at the level of social perception, in the sense that people with attractive faces are
considered to be healthier by their perceivers. On the other hand, as the meta-analyses on
the topic show (e.g. Langlois et al., 2000), the results of the medical investigations on
participants with various health and attractiveness levels reveal only moderate relationships
between the latter and physical health, as well as weak associations to mental health.
Moreover, other studies suggest that such a relationship to health in a moderate degree
exists for women, but not for men (Hume and Montgomerie, 2001), which is also the case
with the link between one of the three main criteria proposed by the evolutionary view
sexual dimorphism and attractiveness (Rhodes, 2006).
As a consequence of these results, other studies explored the variations of the importance
of the evolutionary criteria and their health correlates depending on the attractiveness level
of the target perceived. Their conclusion is that the link between attractiveness and health
is limited to faces below the median in attractiveness. Such individuals appearance
present strong deviations from the evolutionary criteria stated above, which are also
associated with some chromosomal disorders and, consequently, with a low health status
(Rhodes, 2006). In other words, high levels of health stress affecting the functional state
of the body determine low levels of attractiveness through the deviations from the geo-
metric standards that they induce, thus signaling the individuals poor health state. Never-
theless, such a signaling function of these negative geometry-related apprehensions in
the case of unattractive people seems less relevant for the other background referent put
forth by the evolutionary perspective ones genetic potential. For instance, the idea that
asymmetry signals poor genetic quality and developmental instability was empirically
infirmed by biological data (Saad, 2004).
Another significant moderating variable seems to be the level of societal development,
especially in terms of the health risks that individuals are exposed to in their physical
environment. As Gangestad and Buss (1993, cited in Rhodes, 2006) show, attractiveness
in a mate is valued more in societies with high parasitism rates and poorer health. In the
Western cultures, due to the availability of medical cure and pharmaceuticals, as well as
to the better nutritional status of the population, the link between health and beauty has
been severely undermined. This raises the possibility of a biomedical underpinning of the
cross-cultural variations in beauty standards a theme which will be reviewed in the
following pages.
Because of the contradictory results of the investigations carried out from a strict
evolutionary perspective, other studies in this field include social factors in their analyses
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83PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY: AN OVERVIEW OF THE CONTEMPORARY...
of these complex relationships. An example from this sociobiological research field is
the study carried out by Cunningham (1986) on the attractiveness of different types of
facial features in various contexts. In his two quasi-experiments on the sociobiology of
female facial beauty, he elicited attractiveness ratings of female photographs from male
participants. The results allowed the extraction of several specific facial features with a
high degree of attractiveness, grouped into three categories: neonate, mature and expressive.
In the second study, which required male participants to make personality inferences and
to relate to several potential contexts of interactions with the depicted women, these
features proved to be correlated to personality attributions, altruistic inclinations and
reproductive interest.
b. The investigation of the cross-cultural standards of beauty is based on the opposite
hypothesis to evolutionism: it recognizes the universal character of some attractive
features, but makes the assumption that there is a large inter-cultural variability in this
respect. The empirical comparisons involved in such research are either:
cross-national: for instance, Bjerke and Polegato (2006) investigated the ideal self-
-image of women in terms of health and beauty, in a sample of participants from five
European cities, through their preferences for one of the two models, representing
distinct advertising beauty types. Results revealed significant cross-cultural variation
in ideal self-image in terms of health and beauty.
cross-continental: for example, Swami et al. (2006) compared participants from
Japan and Britain on the relative contribution of Body Mass Index (BMI) and Waist to
Hip Ratio (WHR) in female physical attractiveness. BMI emerged as a significant
predictor of attractiveness, but with a significant cross-cultural variation, in the sense
that Japanese participants preferred images of women with lower BMIs than Britons,
on one hand, and the latter placing a lower importance on body shape when judging
female physical attractiveness than the former. This result is interpreted by the authors
as a consequence of the cross-cultural differences in the sex roles occupied by the two
genders, representatives of the cultures with traditional sex roles manifesting stronger
preferences for traditionally attractive body shapes.
between representatives of various ethnic groups in the same country: Poran (2002)
compared Latina, Black and White women participants in what regards their conceptions
of beauty, perceptions of cultural standards of beauty, as well as their tendency to
engage in a specific social comparison process the denial of personal disadvantage (a
self-protective psychological mechanisms revealed in the studies on minorities). Results
indicate similarities in the personal definitions of beauty, but significant variations in
the cultural standard of beauty. For instance, Black women were most likely to
mention Whiteness overtly as an important part of the cultural definition of beauty,
Latina women sometimes mentioned Whiteness, while White women rarely did.
Putting together the corpus of results from the two approaches reviewed so far
evolutionary and cross-cultural we can conclude about the validity of a joint model,
which would include elements from both. As weve mentioned, the evolutionary-inspired
associations between beauty and health status seem to appear only in individuals with low
levels of attractiveness. We can hypothesize that for those more endowed in terms of
physical appeal, their evaluations have less to do with the rigid evolutionary standards,
being dependent instead, as Osborn (1996) suggest, on cultural norms. In other words,
Beauty is skin deep, but ugly is to the bone, where skin deep implies the superficiality
84 ANDREI HOLMAN
and modifiability of cultural beauty, as well as the individuals possibility to conform
to its norms in contrast to the structural, deep ugliness brought by the physical
deviance from the geometrical standards.
c. The research on the factors of beauty other than the evolutionary ones listed
above can be split in two major arrays on the basis of the focus of analysis:
the perceiver the idea that beauty is in the eyes of the perceiver has been a very
popular one. Some of the studies testing this hypothesis inspired by the social
relations model (e.g. Osborn, 1996) focused on the variations in attractiveness judgments
brought by experiences in ongoing relationships between people. For instance, Park
and Flink (1989) compared the changes in variances of attractiveness ratings statistically
explained by the perceiver and, respectively, by the target across three days of social
interaction between the two. Their results show the decrease in the variance attributable
to the target (from its high value in the first day) and the increase in the variance
attributable to the perceiver, which more than doubled as a result of the interaction
between the two (from 22% to 48%).
Another topic in the perceiver realm is the critical periods in the development of
personal tastes in appearance styles. In their study using fashion advertisements with both
male and female models, covering the interval from 1933 to 1990, Schindler and Holbrook
(1993) reveal a marked gender difference in the preferences expressed by their participants.
While men seem to have a clear developmental stage around the age of 20s in which
their lifelong preferences for women styles are decided, womens preferences (in general,
for both genders) seem to be built during a broader and older range of years. The
explanations of mens critical period in attractiveness assessment development, as suggested
by the authors, are both in emotional terms (nostalgia), as well as in cognitive-perceptual
ones (mere exposure).
Another investigation in the area of gender differences in judgments of attractiveness
was conducted by Marcus and Miller (2003), who had participants of both genders rate
each other on the dimension of attractiveness, while also providing metacognitions of the
evaluations they thought they would receive from the others. Comparing the two sources
of variance of the attractiveness scores, the authors found the highest levels of consensus
to appear when men judged female targets, and the highest levels of idiosyncrasy in the
situation of men rating other male targets. Regarding the metacognitions, womens were
highly associated to mens judgments of them. Overall, results suggest that women have
a high level of accuracy in self-assessment on the attractiveness scale, which could be a
consequence of the consistency of evaluations received from men, thus, in time, enhancing
their correctness of self-apprehensions.
the perceived a similar point to the evolutionary one concerning the importance of
the spatial arrangement of the body parts in terms of symmetry is noticeable in the
literature on the ideal proportions. One of the differences between the two positions
is in terms of localization: while the influences of symmetry on human attractiveness
have mostly been studied at the face level, proportions are usually analyzed on the
overall level of the body shape or profile.
According to this approach, the harmonic body shape as perceived by the human eye
is a result of a series of definite numeric relationships between the sizes and positions of
various segments of the body. The most frequently applied canons of beauty have been the
85PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY: AN OVERVIEW OF THE CONTEMPORARY...
ratios of unity (1:1) and the golden ratio (1,618:1), based on the number phi. This
holistic perspective on the body claims that the attractiveness of particular physical traits
is dependent on the evaluation of the body as a whole in terms of its deviations from the
ideal proportions. Support for its arguments comes from the various referents of these
geometrical relationships in art history, from the ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman art,
to the body representations in the Renaissance period, initiated by Leonardo da Vinci.
These geometrical standards are of particular importance for aesthetic surgery the
medical branch involved in the artificial increase of ones beauty status. For instance,
in an article published in the Aesthetic Plastic Surgery journal, Atiyeh and Hayek (2008)
present in detail these numeric principles of bodily harmony, as addressing the need to
determine the beauty of the final result as precisely as possible (p. 209). Moreover, as
the authors admit, modern plastic surgeons have frequently used the neoclassical canons
of beauty as working guides on their patients, even though studies on real Caucasian,
Asian, and African Americans revealed that such proportions do not represent the average.
In other words, the Renaissance geometrical relationships, developed as a mathematical
formalization of the ideal body, as depicted in art, have been applied in reshaping real
human bodies.
Research testing the relevance of these proportions for human attractiveness has
suggested a different set of numeric relationships as important for the two genders. They
usually represent ratios of sizes of two body parts, and their optimal state (their beauty
standard) is derived from various fundamental geometrical proportions. In womens ratings
of mens attractiveness, waist-to-chest ratio, body mass index (BMI), and waist-to-hip
ratio seem to be the most important cues, while in the evaluations of women, the set is
comprised of five such ratios: bust-to-underbust ratio, bust-to-waist ratio, bust-to-hip
ratio, waist-to-leg ratio, and an androgyny index (Atiyeh and Hayek, 2008).
Other studies have revealed the importance of specific physical features. For instance,
Grundl et al. (2008) investigated, in a research published in the Aesthetic Plastic Surgery
journal, the features that create an attractive eye, by manipulating specifically the eye axis
of the female targets judged by German participants of both genders. The results of this
study show significant age differences in the eye axis preferences, in the sense that young
subjects regarded the oblique type of eye axis as more attractive, whereas older subjects
showed a preference for the more horizontal eyes.
Various situational factors have also been taken into account in the area of the
perceived. Jones et al. (2006) analyze gaze direction and emotional expression, revealing
significant interactions of these two factors with physical attractiveness. Expression seems
to determine different attractiveness ratings for faces with direct and averted gaze, in the
sense that for judgments of faces with direct gaze, preferences were stronger for smiling
faces than for faces with neutral expressions, while the opposite result was found for faces
with averted gaze. These results are interpreted by the authors in a social interaction
frame, suggesting that individuals base their attractiveness ratings on the inferences drawn
from the facial cues regarding the others interest in the perceiver.
A target-related factor investigated in a study published in the International Journal of
Cosmetic Science by Mulhern et al. (2003) is the use of cosmetics by Caucasian women,
aiming to assess the contribution of each type of facial cosmetics in overall attractiveness,
as judged by Caucasian participants of both genders, as well as their interaction effects.
Results show significant between-genders differences, eye make-up proving to be the
stronger predictor of attractiveness when evaluated by women, while the combination of
foundation with eye make-up having the strongest impact on men preferences. Overall, the
86 ANDREI HOLMAN
effects of make-up in the attractiveness evaluations of women seem to be comparable with
those of the more traditional criteria put forth by evolutionary approach the structural
geometric facial features. Other examples of attractiveness factors in the perceived targets
control, whose importance was assessed using a similar research design, are body dynamics
(Riggio et al., 1991) or posture (Osborn, 1996).
An interesting idea put forth in this last study is the connection between these
appearance enhancing actions and the cultural standards of beauty. Osborn (1996) observes
that the effectiveness of these beautification practices is assessed through a set of cultural
criteria. The term conceived for this relationship between the individual space of action
and the societal appearance norms is the social role theory of beauty. As we will see,
the theme of cultural operant conditioning in what regards appearance the cultivation
and reinforcement of specific beautification behaviors, in agreement with the prevalent
norms has also been extensively researched in the sociocultural studies.
d. The effects of beauty on the perceiver are investigated at various levels:
the neural activity level, revealing the brain regions which respond to attractiveness.
For instance, Chatarjee et al. (2009) report a study using functional MRI (fMRI) in
order to investigate the neural activity associated with the apprehension of faces.
Participants were required to perform two successive judgment tasks facial beauty
rating and facial identity recognition on artificial (computer-generated) faces, which
allowed the precise control of various geometric parameters. Results reveal that despite
the differences in neural correlates between the two tasks, there was a specific brain
region the ventral occipital region which remained responsive to facial beauty in
both situations. As the authors conclude, this area is activated automatically by beauty
and may serve as a neural trigger for the mental effects of beautiful faces.
the cognitive processing level including, for instance, studies on the processing
advantages of attractive targets; in their three computer-based experiments on this topic,
Becker et al. (2005) found that physical attractiveness leads to more efficient matching for
female faces, but not for male faces, in the sense that attractive women are less confusable
with one another. The significantly weaker effect discovered in the case of male
attractive faces processing is interpreted by the authors in a sexual selection frame, as
revealing different socio-sexual functions that attractiveness has for men and women.
In the same vein of sexually selective cognition, Maner et al. (2003) examined, across
five experiments, the cognitive biases induced by beauty. Their results indicate a differential
selective processing of attractive men and women by the two genders, in the sense that the
two cognitive phenomena investigated biased estimates and recognition of attractive
targets appear less in the case of male targets, as well as being less manifested by female
perceivers. The other between-subjects variable included in the research design ones
involvement in a stable relationship also had a significant interaction effect with gender,
in the sense that being committed to a relationship reduced womens, but not mens,
attention to attractive targets of the opposite sex. At a more general level, these differences
indicate a consistent tendency to focus on attractive women, which manifests not only in
men, but also in women. This result is in line with other studies in the field, and can be
read in two frames, either as revealing the intense social comparison processes that
women engage in as competitors in the sexual market (the evolutionistic account),
either as a sign of the self-objectification perspective that women have interiorized,
87PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY: AN OVERVIEW OF THE CONTEMPORARY...
adapting to and striving for the decorative role that the patriarchal society has limited them
to (the feminist account).
Another relevant study in this area is the investigation carried out by Olson and
Marshuetz (2005). Their results reveal another cognitive effect of beautiful faces, similar
to the ones specific to the studies on implicit attitudes, namely the priming of positive
words by attractive upright faces, while no priming effect emerged for unattractive faces
or for other sorts of attractive stimuli. Another important result of this experimental
investigation was that attractiveness can be perceived from minimal amounts of visual
information: even when the faces were presented under severely impoverished viewing
conditions (induced by masking or rapid presentation), participants could judge correctly
their attractiveness level.
the emotional level, investigating the effects of attractive people on ones mood and
body satisfaction, usually introducing the perceivers body image as a mediator of
these influences. For example, Pinhas et al. (1999) found that women were more
depressed and angrier as a consequence of exposure to pictures in fashion magazines.
Other studies focus on the interaction of physical attractiveness with other personal
traits. Gutierres et al. (1999) investigated in their experimental research the effects of
exposure to physically attractive and dominant same-sex individuals on self-evaluations,
measured on the dimension of mate-value (desirability as marriage partner). Results
show a different between genders pattern: womens self-assessments of their mate
value are negatively influenced by exposure to highly physically attractive women,
while mens self-assessments were more affected by the social dominance of the men
to whom they were exposed. These two threats to self-esteem mirror and are
determined by their high importance in the perceived attractiveness of the opposite
gender; in his investigation on 37 cultures, Buss (1994) discovered the universal
character of the preferred characteristics in ones ideal mate, the patterns for each
gender being related to the threats mentioned before: for men, beauty and youth are
the essential qualities, while for women it is men social status which mostly determine
their attractiveness.
Other studies also reveal mediators of these effects; for instance, Choi et al. (2008)
notice that the mechanism of how women are negatively affected by beautiful female
models is still unclear, and propose a third-person effect framework as a possible such
mechanism. Overall, their results show that lower body satisfaction is specific to women
who believe that men (especially close male friends) would be more influenced, in their
female beauty evaluations, by the images of fashion models they were exposed to.
the social inferences level (stereotypes) includes the vast person perception research
on the personality traits which are ascribed to beautiful targets by perceivers, in
various interpersonal settings (e.g. Ellis et al., 1983). This phenomenon can be traced
back to the antic assumption that character is immanent in appearance as Aristotle
formulated it, Beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of introduction
or to the theories of physiognomy regarding the connection between beauty and virtue,
respectively between beauty and vice.
Other studies on the whats beautiful is good phenomenon reveal its limits and
variations; for example, Dermer and Thiel (1975), in their study on the inferences drawn
by women about attractive female targets, show that attributions favorability is not
consistent along all the personality dimensions. More specifically, their results reveal
88 ANDREI HOLMAN
various socially undesirable personal characteristics which were ascribed to targets of high
attractiveness, such as vanity, egotism, materialism, snobbism or likelihood of a marital
disaster. Generally, as Eagly et al. (1991) conclude on the basis of their meta-analysis,
the differences in subjects perception of attractive and unattractive targets were largest
for indexes of social competence; intermediate for potency, adjustment, and intellectual
competence; and near zero for integrity and concern for others.
the attitudinal level studies focused on the development of sexist attitudes and
behaviors have revealed their influences from the exposure to media images in sexually
objectifying frames. Generally, individuals of both genders exposed to such content
have a higher acceptance of rape myths, sexual harassment, sex-role stereotypes,
interpersonal violence, and adversarial beliefs about relationships compared to those in
control conditions (Machia and Lamb, 1999).
e. The personal benefits of beauty mostly represent consequences of the advantages
in social perception outcomes stated above. Such self-fulfilling prophecies come in many
forms: psychological (mental health, sense of personal competence, life satisfaction, etc.
Sullivan, 2001), social (e.g. help from strangers Patzer, 1985, cited in Sullivan, 2001),
economical (financial earnings beauty bonus Umberson and Hughes, 1987). There
are virtually no areas of social interaction which are left uncontaminated by physical attrac-
tiveness, in which the beautiful would not receive certain privileges, most of the time
outside the conscious awareness of their victims. Moreover, attractiveness brings an
advantage in terms of the accuracy of personality traits ascribed by people with whom
beautiful individuals interact, as compared to the less attractive ones, because it motivates
the perceivers to initiate a closer social contact, to engage in a more in-depth social
interaction with the perceived. In other words, people do judge a book by its cover, but
a beautiful cover prompts a closer reading (Lorenzo et al., 2010).
There are also distinctive and significant social consequences assigned by society to
those at the other end of the beauty continuum. We might say that these negative effects
of being ugly are one of the few forms of social discrimination which have escaped the
censorship of political correctness. As Berry (2007) remarks, unattractive and ordi-
nary-looking people are fair game for insults and discrimination (p. 2). An illustrative
example that the author offers of this still legitimate prejudice and its consequences is the
case of short men in the US, who are more likely to drop out of school, drink heavily,
date sparsely, and become emotionally depressed and physically ill. They have less
opportunity than tall men of marrying and having children. Their salaries are far less than
those of tall men (p. 60). As I can be noticed, the drawbacks of not attaining the
appearance standards mirror the advantages received by those at the opposite end of the
beauty continuum.
One of the hidden purposes of this looksism would be, as the author suggests, a
commercial one, namely the persuasion of those less gifted in the attractiveness domain to
invest their earnings in the solutions provided by beauty industry, in order to avoid
discrimination and receive access to the forbidden privileges of the beautiful.
f. Body image for instance, Jung and Lennon (2003) investigated the fluctuations of
womens body image after exposure to attractive images, taking into account participants
appearance self-schemas (cognitive representations of organized information about the
self in relation to appearance). Their results show that only in women who were schematic
on appearance such exposure led to lower body image and mood. Similarly, Wiederman and
89PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY: AN OVERVIEW OF THE CONTEMPORARY...
Hurst (1997) studied the relationships between womens sexual self-schema and physical
attractiveness, body size and shape, and body image. Bulhmann et al. (2009) examined the
mental associations of beauty in individuals with Body Dysmorphic Disorder in three
samples: individuals diagnosed with, individuals with subclinical BDD symptoms, and
healthy control participants. Using the Implicit Association Test, the authors revealed that
BDD participants manifested a stronger stereotype about physical attractiveness its
association to competence , indicating a higher degree of inferential reactivity (of
contamination of personality inferences with beauty evaluations), which might reflect a
cognitive mechanism responsible for their disorder.
Ones body image is also investigated in many studies in this area as a mediator of the
effects of exposure to the beauty ideals in the mass-media. These effects are analyzed on
a behavioral level such as eating disorders or at a psychological one which includes
many of the dimensions listed above: body dissatisfaction, negative self-appraisals, low
self-esteem, etc.
g. Socio-cultural approaches, preoccupied with the societal roles of beauty definitions
and norms, usually emphasize the ubiquitous influences of beauty in all social aspects
the social aesthetics research field , as well as the opposite relationships, the socially
constructed character of attractiveness criteria and norms. As Rhodes (2006) notices, this
idea of the beauty standards being arbitrary cultural conventions already has a respectable
history, being formulated by the first time by Darwin, after observing large cultural
differences in beautification practices.
For instance, the study carried out by Robertson (2001) on the evaluation criteria used
in the Miss Nipon contests in the first half of the XX-th century illustrates an idea at the
core of the feminist perspective personal is political but in a more literal fashion
without any reference to the gender relationships. Instead, the author emphasizes the
political intentions which were guiding the selection of Miss Nipon, which were the
improvements in the Japanese race through sports and a more Western-like clothing
style (less body restrictive). As such, the main criterion for this selection was the girls
height, as well as other eugenics oriented dimensions, such as their reproductive
potential, proportionate health or purity of their spirit and blood.
A similar case is the cultural construction of obesity, a topic on which representatives of
this approach have remarked the variability and arbitrariness of the medical (supposedly
scientific) standards, suggesting their dependency on a political war against fatness. As the
media portrayals of beauty use increasingly thinner models, body weight has received moral
connotations, obesity as defined by the current standards being associated with lack of
self-control, self-discipline and generally, an inferior moral status. Moreover, the correlation
between body weight and socio-economic status in contemporary society seems to manifest a
historical reversal: in the Western societies of today, it is the thin people who are the rich ones.
The gradual lowering of the obesity thresholds seems contradictory even with the
biomedical results, which show that people who are moderately overweight have a higher
life expectancy than people who are not overweight. One of the possible hidden causes of
this phenomenon is the financial interests of insurance companies, since these it allows
them to deny coverage or to increase premiums for heavier people (Berry, 2007), using
the medical legitimization of the risks of obesity-related illnesses.
The feminist perspective, most often employed in this array, claims that beauty ideals
and practices are tools for the oppression of women, reducing them to an inferior,
unnatural and decorative role (e.g. Jeffrey, 2005; Wolf, 1991). Although initially reserved
90 ANDREI HOLMAN
for the analysis of feminine beauty, the feminist perspective has also included masculine
beauty, drawing attention to the increasingly stronger cultural forces directed at men in
this respect. The specificity of the feminist writings which are reserved a larger space in
the following section, dealing with cosmetic surgery is the inclusion of patriarchy as an
essential referent in the cultural exploration of beauty and, generally, of the roles and
meanings of the body. Even though there are differences within the various feminist
positions, the concept of oppression of women in more or less a general one. This
oppression is carried out, among other instruments, through contemporary beauty stan-
dards and practices, which have a series of masked roles and consequences: to assign
women an inferior status, to legitimize it through the cultural focus on superficial,
unimportant characteristics such as appearance and to limit womens involvement in
actions which would contribute to their real social ascension. Thus, they create an artificial
space of competition in which they would invest their efforts, while raising the beauty
standards high enough in order to make sure that most of them would fail to attain them.
This, in turn, ensures the diminishing of womens self-esteem, a necessary and final piece
of the puzzle which would guarantee their interiorization of the lower social status. Being
submitted to the continuous scrutiny of their appearance by men, women learn to evaluate
themselves first and best, which leads to their own self-objectification, treating their
bodies as exterior objects (Jeffreys, 2005).
For instance, Scott (1997, p. 12) puts forth the following four central themes of the
feminist studies on beauty:
1. Beauty is fundamentally feminine.
2. Beauty is imperative for women.
3. Beauty is paramount among womens qualities.
4. Womens beauty requires substantial modification of the natural appearance.
h. Media studies on the representations of beauty apart from the theme of
self-evaluation effects of mass-media portrayals of beauty above (e.g. Pinhas et al.,
1999), other studies point out, for instance, variations in the beauty representations across
cultures. In this respect, Frith et al. (2004) analyzed advertisements collected from
womens fashion and beauty magazines in Singapore, Taiwan, and the United States,
taking into account models clothing style, beauty type, product categories. Their general
conclusion is that overall, Western models were assigned a seductive role in adverts more
often than Asian ones, being more used in pictorials body oriented. Yet, there are also
studies (e.g. OBarr, 1994, Griffin et al., 1994) which conclude on the increasing
homogenization of such representations across cultures.
A connected area of research is the analysis of the specific definitions of beauty in
various communication spaces. Smith et al. (1999) examined the personality characteristics
of physically attractive characters in U.S. films across a random sample from 5 decades
of top-grossing films. They found a consistent beauty-and-goodness stereotype, stable
across time periods, character sex, and characters centrality to the plot, in the sense that
in the Hollywood movie industry, the beautiful characters are endowed with more positive
personality traits than the unattractive ones.
Englis et al. (1994) compared the emphasis placed on different ideals of beauty across
two US-based communications media (print fashion magazines vs. music television) and
formats (advertising vs. entertainment). The results reveal a multiplicity of beauty ideals,
each strongly associated with contextual cues, but also a set of ideals more prevalent than
others, namely the sensual/exotic, trendy, and classic/feminine forms of beauty. In a
91PSYCHOLOGY OF BEAUTY: AN OVERVIEW OF THE CONTEMPORARY...
similar vein, Sypeck et al. (2003) analyzed the trends in print medias depictions of the
ideal of feminine beauty between 1959 and 1999, by measuring the body size and the
proportion of the body depicted on the cover of four American fashion magazines. They
found that while the first indicator decreased in the sense that the models were
increasingly thin , the second increased, in other words the depiction of the entire body
of the models became more and more frequent across time. Garner et al. (1980) and
Wiseman et al. (1992) revealed a similar consistent trend towards thinness in their
examinations of the evolution of Playboy magazine centerfolds and Miss America Pageant
contestants, together covering the period from 1959 to 1988. The same phenomenon
appears in the fashion world: while in the 1950s models weighted 8% less than the
average American woman, in the 1990s the difference went up to 23% (Berry, 2007).
Such data indicate the higher importance of and cultural pressure from the thin ideal for
women in contemporary society.
As the socio-cultural approach has suggested, men have also been included in the
target audience of beauty industry, the pressure on their remodeling of appearance
according to its norms being on the rise. An example of the instruments of this pressure
comes from the results of the study cited by Berry (2007) on the evolution of the muscle
size of the GI Joe dolls from 1982 to mid-1990s; the muscles that the doll was gradually
endowed with have reached unrealistic proportions during this time interval as compared
to the actual possibilities of the human body. Of course, the evolution of the Barbie dolls
has also included unrealistic modifications, each moving it closer to a material prototype
of current beauty standards.
Gottschall et al. (2008) investigated the gendered attractiveness emphasis (the difference
of attractiveness between the two genders) in a large sample of traditional folktales from
13 diverse cultural areas. The research aimed to empirically compare the hypothesis of the two
confronting perspectives on this topic: the feminist, constructivist one, according to which
the greater cultural emphasis on female attractiveness is a specific Western phenomenon,
and the evolutionary account, which suggests that is it a universal one. The results of their
analysis reveal that across culture areas, information on physical attractiveness was much
more likely to be conveyed for female characters, thus providing support for the evolutionary
hypothesis. The authors conclude that the beauty myth the term used by feminism
when referring to the Western societal definitions of beauty and their misogynistic
character is no myth, since it appears virtually in all the cultures.
A similar result was found in cross-cultural studies on the portrayals of the two
genders in advertisement productions (Saad, 2004), women being placed in decorative
roles, generally depicted as younger and more attractive than men.
Psihologia frumuseþii: o privire sinteticã
asupra abordãrilor contemporane
Rezumat: Articolul prezintã o sintezã a abordãrilor contemporane ale temei frumuseþii corporale,
clasificate în opt linii majore de cercetare, fiecare fiind ilustratã prin cele mai reprezentative teorii
ºi rezultate: abordãrile evoluþioniste, socio-culturale ºi centrate pe imaginea corporalã, cercetãrile
asupra standardelor transculturale ale frumuseþii, asupra factorilor, efectelor, beneficiilor personale
ºi reprezentãrilor sale în media.
Cuvinte-cheie: frumuseþe, linii de cercetare
92 ANDREI HOLMAN
La psychologie de la beauté: Une synthèse
des approches contemporaines
Résumé: Larticle présente une synthèse des approches contemporaines sur le thème de beauté
corporelle, classifiées en huit lignes principales de recherches, chacune illustrée avec un group de
théories et résultats significatives: les approches évolutionniste, socio-culturel et centrée sur
limage corporelle, les recherches sur les standards cross-culturel de beauté, sur ses facteurs,
effets, avantages personnels et représentations dans les media.
Mots-clés: beauté, lignes de recherches
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