Does beauty lie in the eye of the beholder?

By

Syed Ibrahim Rizvi

Summer vacation is a time when latent desires come to the fore. It’s been a routine for me for the last many years to make a list of things to do before the summer vacations.

An important work that tops my list every year is to weed out all the old papers and magazines which occupy huge space in my already overflowing makeshift office.

As I lifted each stack of paper, a deluge of memories flooded my mind. Each file that I picked up and dusted its cover, I realized that it had an interesting story within its fold.

Invariably, I had to coax my mind into understanding that the story of the file had outlived its utility and it was no longer relevant to me.

It was in this exercise that I chanced upon an old issue dated February 9, 1981, of the TIME magazine. I dusted its cover, and my eyes got fixed on the cover, which had a beautiful face that seemed to stare at me.

My mind took me back to 1980 when I was in my first year of undergraduate. This age was indeed the period when my hormones were beginning to exult. With the old magazine in my lap, my mind went into a tailspin.

In the free fall of memories, I was catapulted some forty years back. I remembered how I had bunked a class in the University to go to the Palace cinema hall to see the movie ‘Blue Lagoon’. Its heroine, Brooke Shields, had become my dream companion for several months.

I also remembered the day in 1981 when I had chanced upon and purchased the issue of TIME magazine which had the face of Brooke Shields on its cover from a Civil Lines book shop for a staggering price of Rs 100.

After all, the beautiful face of Brooke Shields was worth much more than a hundred rupees. This issue of TIME magazine has been with me for the last four decades.

I again looked at the magazine on my lap and decided against throwing it. After all, this was not only a magazine, it was indeed my first tryst with a female crush.

I wiped my eyes, not for the dust but for the thin film of moist tears, and again looked at the smiling and alluring face of Brooke Shields.

Even in my sixth decade of life, when my hormones were in the process of bidding me goodbye, I found the face extremely beautiful.

That afternoon, having sorted out two shelves of my almirah, I found myself contemplating what was there in the face of Brooke Shields that it had endured my imagination for almost four decades. I came to the conclusion that beauty is timeless.

But then, why should some faces stand out and be classified as beautiful? My scientific mind took over this enigma and I started thinking about what is beauty?

Facial beauty is perhaps an evolutionary concept of humans. No other animal has the cognitive ability to judge other members of their ilk based on facial contours.

The story of beauty goes back to more than fifty million years back when certain genetic changes, which scientists call mutation, had created a lineage called primates.

Monkeys, chimpanzees, and gorillas belong to the group of primates. Another major change happened around five million years ago when human-like animals evolved from chimpanzees.

The major change that happened when chimpanzees gave way to humans was the loss of body hair. All members of the class of primates had body hair, except humans, who lost all body hair except at certain places.

Interestingly, animals use their body hair for protection and warmth, but hair also provides animals with a tool to express emotions. Animals use body hair and facial hair to convey anger, social display of health, and can use the same for attracting prospective mates.

When humans lost body and facial hair, something very important happened. Over some time of a few million years, humans developed a face that became very expressive.

The face became the high point of human evolution, it could express happiness, sadness, astonishment, fear, and a host of other emotions.

The face also became a lighthouse that could provide a cue to the male or female about an idea of the reproductive health of the prospective mate.

The concept of facial beauty probably only started when humans evolved. An insight into the paradigm of facial beauty brings forth certain common characteristics across cultures.

Fuller and red lips in females are a tell-tale sign of good vascular health, depicting good blood circulation. Similarly, a lighter skin is an indication of good metabolism of vitamin A and D.

The face is also an important indicator of health for males, which provides important cues to females. Facial hair is a sign of good testosterone levels.

Needless to mention that the present trend of youth sporting beards is perhaps dictated by the evolutionary forces of mate selection.

Scientists have delved deep into understanding other features of facial features that define beauty. It has been found that symmetry, averageness, and skin tone play important roles in the concept of beauty.

It is extremely amazing that humans have used their own concept of beauty to inbreed pets like cats and dogs, which now mimic human baby faces.

Interestingly beauty is a concept which goes beyond living systems. Human cognitive abilities also find beauty in non living subjects. We, as humans, find a host of inanimate objects within our definition of things classified as beautiful.

It was the genius of Leonardo Bonacci, commonly known as Fibonacci, an Italian mathematician from the Republic of Pisa, who gave the concept of golden ratio and hypothesized that anything conforming to the equation of ‘golden ratio’ which is 1: 1.6 would appear beautiful to our brain.

Later scientific studies proved that the rule of the golden ratio holds true for things far removed; it holds true for arrangement of flower petals, organization of seeds in a kernel, structure of our ear pinna and the constellation of galaxies in the Universe.

Indeed, if the saying ‘beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder’ is expanded and the beholder is construed not as an individual but as the species of ‘homo sapiens’ then it becomes easy to explain the universality of beauty.

For humans, the concept of facial beauty is dictated by mate selection, and the concept of non-living beauty by the golden ratio.

However, all said and done, humans being ‘humans’ are ingenious creatures. Our mind sometimes plays tricks that, on the face value, look insane and do not conform to established norms. If tales are to be believed,

Laila was never beautiful in the classical sense, but Majnu was mad for her. Beauty does indeed lie in the eye of the beholder !!

The author is a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Allahabad.