Can science justify “beauty”? JYJ’s Kim Jae-Joong, “Asia’s most beautiful man”

As voted by Chinese netizens at least. Apparently China alone now counts as all of “Asia”.

Anyways, according to the article, plastic surgeons say that for a person to be ‘beautiful,’ the face must not be: 

too triangular or too angled, but rather, closest to the mean and maintains the neutrality in the most precise way… Further, the right and left sides of the face must be precisely symmetrical so that the balance of the facial features is well-met. The distance between the eye, nose, and mouth must have the golden proportions of 1.618:1… the biggest factor in creating an image is the clear and straightly-carved nose which gives off a sophisticated impression and makes the face look small…

It is good, however, that towards the end, the article doesn’t neglect to talk about Jae-Joong’s inner beauty as well, which is just as important, if not more, than his looks. But in general, I can’t helped but get slightly ticked when it comes to corroborating ‘beauty’, a wholly subjective concept, with ‘scientific research’. Something that comes to mind every time is this trash of an article Psychology Today published earlier this year; a piece written by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa*, who tried to argue why black women were less physically attractive than other women. 

*I may have talked briefly about this guy before. In a nutshell, I don’t like him so much.

I’m not trying to directly compare these two cases, because there’s a huge difference: Kanazawa was implying that there is indeed a scientifically universal standard of beauty (which is inaccurate*), whereas the K-pop Express article above talks about a standard specific to the region of (Pacific) Asia. Then again, is there really such a thing?

*First of all, objectively speaking, different ethnicities and cultures have been socialized with different values. To try and impose a so-called universal criteria is inaccurate, let alone unscientific. Secondly, in reference to a comment I came across, testosterone levels cannot explain objective differences in physical attractiveness — rather, these levels are exactly what makes our perceptions of beauty subjective. Black women come off as “more masculine” due to higher levels, but that’s only to those who possess lower levels (ie. nonblack people).

Of course there isn’t. It’s merely perceived as so, but that doesn’t make it true. Nevertheless, we tend to make the mistake of believing that it is.

And as for the ‘statistics’, ‘measurements’, and “because-evolution-says-so” gibberish these experts throw at us… well, for one, it completely dismisses the millions of outliers out there — those who have their own preferences of beauty. Can science really be a force that tells these people their perceptions of attractiveness is invalid? Moreover, when you think about it, these measurements are just ‘measurements’. Whether or not they’re deemed standards of beauty is not fact, but merely interpretation. You may have an asymmetrical face, a high BMI, or a flat nose bridge, but does that have to make you less beautiful? When science is utilized to justify the superiority of one group to another on the basis of something that simply cannot be helped, whether it be beauty or something else, you can’t help but feel like it’s being used in ways it shouldn’t be.

All in all, when it comes to ‘attractiveness’, the only thing that science ends up proving in the end is the invalidation of something we ought to believe, no matter what: that everyone is beautiful, whether it be on the outside or in. 

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