Mystery That’s No Beauty
When Ohio native Cindy Jackson decided to transform her pleasantly average face, she followed what she calls “some basic anthropological laws of human attraction.” Among other things, she had her square jaw surgically narrowed and her chin reduced; the skin lifted above and below her small eyes; her thin lips inflated with fat and implanted with Teflon to resemble two puffy pink pillows.
Ten years, $100,000 and 27 procedures later, Jackson, now a 44-year-old London beauty consultant (https://www.cindyjackson.com), finds she is being pursued by the sort of men who never would have given her old face a second glance. Professional men. Men with money. Good-looking men. Men who can’t bring her champagne fast enough.
None of this surprises biopsychologists, researchers who, among other things, are studying the genetic roots of physical attraction. More than a relative matter of culture or historical era, perceptions of beauty are universal and automatic, they say, in direct response to specific facial characteristics.
While previous studies have shown that average and symmetrical faces are more attractive than others, new research indicates that most people prefer “hyper-feminine” and “hyper-masculine” faces. For women that means larger eyes, plumper lips, narrower lower jaw and smaller chin; for men, bushier eyebrows, sunken eyes and a wider, longer lower jaw, according to Victor Johnston, a professor of biopsychology at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.
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The prototypical beauty for women is the young Ingrid Bergman; for men, the young Paul Newman, he said. While youth is a factor in physical attraction, it is less important than specific characteristics, he said.
In one of Johnston’s surveys, more than 10,000 visitors to his Web site (accessible through https://www.psych.nmsu.edu) judged the relative beauty of computer-generated female faces. In a recent study conducted among 50 of Johnston’s female students, respondents answered questions about a face that can morph from extremely feminine through an androgynous one he calls “Pat” into an extremely male face. Respondents universally preferred the faces at the more extreme ends of the spectrum, he said.
Such preferences linger from our hunter-gatherer ancestors who needed physical cues to find mates most likely to ensure their genetic survival, said Johnston, author of “Why We Feel” (Perseus, 1999). The characteristics we find most beautiful are the “hormone markers” that appear in puberty and distinguish the sexes, he said. Testosterone causes boys’ lower jaws to grow long and broad; estrogen makes girls’ lips swell with fat deposits. The markers
provide unconscious cues to good mating material--health and fertility.
It’s no news that men place more importance than women on physical appearance. “Men are always mainlining testosterone from puberty onward and are sensitive to fertility cues all the time,” Johnston said. They consistently prefer the “hyper-female” faces.
Women, however, are more selective, and their preferences change depending on circumstances, he said. A woman may want to marry a man because of his resources, but she may desire someone else when she wants to get pregnant and still another for an affair. For instance, women said they prefer more androgynous-looking men for long-term relationships and more masculine-looking men for short term relationships--what Johnston calls “a holiday male.”
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Johnston’s current research seeks to replicate findings in other studies showing that women prefer more masculine-looking men during the fertile times in their menstrual cycle and more androgynous-looking men in the nonfertile phase.
(Contraceptives that interfere with natural hormonal changes complicate the picture, he said.)
While much of the world’s spoils--affection, money, votes--still seem to fall unfairly to the “beautiful” people such as the remade Cindy Jackson, Johnston said real attraction between people obviously goes beyond appearances to include character, kindness, a sense of humor, and in some cases, a bank account. When people are in love, they sometimes literally see their mates as more beautiful than others do, he said.
But Jackson said she would never have had the life she has now if she hadn’t retooled herself from head to toe. Five years ago, she felt as if she didn’t exist. Now, she said, her phone never stops ringing. She’s met members of the royal family. She dated Princess Diana’s ex-lover, James Hewitt. She modeled jewelry for Ivana Trump. She will soon be looking for a publisher for her memoir, “Nobody’s Perfect.”
When she’s tired, she gets to feeling a bit cynical about the world--about what she believes she had to go through to be accepted, to gain an entree into society.
“I just wanted a better life,” she said. “I wanted to be told I was beautiful and be treated kindly.”
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Lynn Smith can be reached at lynn.smith@latimes.com.
