1.2 What Makes a Face Attractive?
This is Chapter 1.2 of the JawHacks ebook. See the full Table of Contents here.
The Lizard Brain Knows Beauty
Why do we find some people beautiful and others ugly?
Most people know beauty when they see it, but can’t pick out the objective features in a beautiful face that make it so.
It’s very similar to food. Our lizard brain knows delicious flavors when they land on the tongue.
But what precisely is it about fresh blackberries picked from a tree at peak ripeness that lights up our brain with such delight? Hard to say.
“They’re just...delicious. I don’t know! Shut up and eat them Mr. Philosopher.”
This is about as far as we go in analyzing our aesthetic preference for other humans as well.
Why is Brad Pitt more handsome than Fogell (McLovin) from Superbad?
No offense to Fogell by the way. My sister in law met him while out in Boston one night and he came back to her place to party with her and her friends. She says he’s an awesome dude.
But stand Fogell, Mr. Bean, Napoleon Dynamite and Brad Pitt in a lineup, and 99 out of 100 people would agree that Brad Pitt is the best looking.
Something innate within us all recognizes what is beautiful and what isn’t, even though we can’t quite put words to it.
Fitness is Attractive
What are the objective features that the human mind recognizes as attractive?
While what a person “looks like” has to do with the appearance of the whole package from head to toe, including body weight, hair, clothing, etc.), beauty is disproportionately determined from the neck and up.
Indeed, it is primarily determined by facial structure—the arrangement of the facial bones with respect to each other.