“While beauty may be skin deep, ‘pretty’ is still a very compelling argument.”

- Xenocrates

What is beauty? How do we know when someone is beautiful? Is it really in the eyes of the beholder? Is it specific to individual preference? Is beauty something that is culturally indigenous? Is one race naturally more beautiful than another? Are beautiful people better than the rest of us? Are beautiful people naturally shallow? These are all valid questions that most people tend to make incorrect assumptions about. The answers may surprise you (as they did me). As it turns out, a lot of what is commonly associated with beauty is largely based on bias and a lack of understanding of the factors that make someone beautiful. In this post, I explore all of these in great detail. So whether you’re beautiful or aesthetically challenged, you may find this post of great interest.

The Importance of being Beautiful

Being physically attractive seems to make or break your case in life whether or not you choose to admit it. In fact your face is your primary ambassador and your body is the key to your success – in every conceivable way. Beautiful people have an effect on other people that is so profound and unprecedented, that even if you were a totally rotten individual, most people would treat you like royalty anyway – just because you’re nice to look at.

Even before all races were treated with equality, beautiful people from all ethnic groups were savoring that opportunity. The rules, whatever they were, did not apply to them. They could break the law and get away with it. They could publicly embarrass themselves and people would worship them anyway. They could cheat on their spouses and people would revere them equally. Being beautiful means that the world is your footstool.

Survival of the Prettiest

Priyanka Chopra - Miss India 2000

Why does the world instinctively revere beautiful people? It’s because of our DNA. Every human being is hard wired to prefer beautiful people. There is a very good reason for this. Every human brain is genetically programmed to recognize beauty as a sign of genetic perfection. Beauty is a representation of health and genetic viability. It indicates to men that the woman being viewed is a perfect candidate for housing his children. It indicates to women that the man being viewed as a perfect source of Y chromosomes that will maximize the chance of her child’s survival. There’s no way for humans to look inside each other to determine who has a higher level of genetic perfection than another. This is why physical beauty becomes necessary. It is a reflection of the genetic perfection on the inside of the biological machines we call our body. Therefore beauty is not quite as “skin deep” as stipulated by the popular expression.

Of course, nobody actually thinks about these things when they view a beautiful person. We just feel it in our instinct. We are compelled to want beautiful people around us because our DNA naturally impels us to. Beauty is nature’s way of maximizing the probability that the best genes have the best chances of survival while minimizing the probability that imperfect DNA will ever be passed on to offspring. This natural genetic “cleansing” process in turn ensures that humanity on a whole has the best chance of continued survival. All of this is manifested through the inextricable correlation between beauty and genetic health.

This is why models like Priyanka Chopra who had no previous training as an actress could go on to become a famous Bollywood star shortly after winning the Miss World pageant in 2000. The same can be said of many other models who turned to acting after achieving a plateau in their modeling career. Women like Ali Larter, Milla Jovovich and Charlize Theron are now reaping great success as actresses, largely in part because they’re beautiful. They never had to go through the same kind of rigors many successful actors had to face.

Preferential Treatment

Being beautiful also make life considerably easier and more fulfilling. A recent study conducted by  ABC’s 20/20 shows that people literally react more warmly to someone who is in trouble if they are beautiful. It’s not that these people are prejudiced. They are just reacting to their own genetic instinct.

People seem to subconsciously associate physical attractiveness with “trustworthiness”. So a relatively unattractive person trying to hitch hike on a lonely highway will have a considerably harder time getting a ride into town than someone who is drop dead gorgeous. Humans are subconsciously shallow like that.

Life is a DNA Gambit

The representation of genetic perfection is critical to survival because of how easy it is for the cell division process in the womb to go terribly wrong. DNA splicing during pregnancy has several billion ways of going awry. The process is as complex as it is prone to failure. It’s like trying to build a machine with 140 trillion parts from a schematic of 30 million instructions. Multiply those numbers and you have the ultimate permutation of Murphy’s law on steroids. This is why pregnant woman are so heavily cautioned to keep in the best of health and to avoid smoking, alcohol and certain drugs. All of these external factors can massively impair this extremely delicate process.

Because of the inherent complexity involved during DNA splicing (as well as population dispersion), in most cases, people are born with an average of 30% of their DNA being bad – hence giving them an “average” appearance (which is really a misnomer, as I’ll discuss in a bit). Beautiful people are those who have less than 30% of their DNA being bad, thus giving them a much better chance at advertising their innate perfection than everyone else. Either way, everyone is hard wired to recognize symmetry as being beautiful – even people who have 30% bad DNA. So it doesn’t matter what the politically correct will say. While beauty may be skin deep,  ‘pretty‘ is still a very compelling argument.

The Definition of Beauty

Scientists describe beauty as being a summation of averages. Geometrically, it is a configuration of symmetrical lines. Mathematically, beauty is expressed as a ratio of 1.618. Some of this may seem like high minded science to you, but it is all pre-programmed into everyone’s brain. You don’t need to think about it or understand how it works because it’s already a part of your genetic wiring. This is what allows us to recognise beauty instantly and automatically.

Because of this, we can instantly tell when an artist’s rendering of the human form is unrealistic as in the case of artwork or  animation. This is what also allows us to tell when someone’s appearance seems “off“, when we can’t quite place what it is. It’s just that part of the brain that interprets visual and other information matching it against nature’s hard coded standard of beauty.

Understanding ‘Race’

Race is nothing more than a phenotypic manifestation of DNA.

Before we can adequately define what beauty is, we need to understand the implications associated with the genetic phenomenon we commonly call “race”. DNA (Dioxyribo-Nucleic Acid) is a binary system of switches, which represent an instruction set for producing life. “Flipping” several of these switches on or off in particular sequences produces various genetic permutations – very much like how computer programs only differ by various permutations of ones and zeroes.

(Fun fact: Computers were actually designed to mimic DNA because of how efficiently nature stores data).

Genetically speaking, race is nothing more than:

The perception of homogenous congruity among ethnic groups resulting from a consistent replication of specific DNA patterns.

By DNA pattern, we are actually referring to a phenotype of human DNA. A phenotype (in layman’s terms) is a particular physiological configuration, such as blue eyes, dark skin, long hair and so on. When humans migrated out of Africa, various groups clustered together in specific regions on earth. After several generations of reproduction, a set of DNA patterns became more commonplace in each group. This created the consistent replication of a particular DNA sequence in each group, thus leading to the phenomenon we call “Race” today.

The human genotype has over 30,000-factorial possible phenotypic permutations. That number is equivalent to 30,000 x 29,999 x 29,998 x …… 3 x 2 x 1. That’s how many possible variations of the human genotype can be produced from our DNA. Don’t try to work that out on your calculator. It will simply overload. In fact, that number is too large to be represented inside any computing machine that exists today without using cloud-based or serially attached computing cluster farms (like those used to build the super computers that predict the weather).

Now that you have an idea of how incredibly complex Human DNA is, this puts everything else into context:

Only 3% of our DNA produces the phenotypes we associate with race. But a phenotyptic permutation is just one of several hundred million possible variations of that same 3%. So our appearance is just one of many millions of possible “shades” or “flavours” of the same DNA. If the earth was much bigger, we would have many, many more distinct races, instead of variations of the three most populous ones we have on earth today: Negroid, Mongoloid and Caucazoid.

Technically speaking, the phenomenon we call “race” doesn’t really exist. In fact, the word “race” is really a misnomer. We invented words like Caucasian, Asian, Negro and so on in our ignorance before we discovered DNA. So whenever we look at someone and observe their racial ethnicity, all that we are seeing is the representation of less variety in human DNA – and that is the major problem with race when it comes to beauty.

The Scientific Definition of Beauty

Beautiful people rarely display the phenotypic qualities commonly associated with their ethnic origin, as seen here: Aishwarya Rai - Miss India / World 1994.

The original “race” of human beings had every DNA switch turned on. However, as groups migrated, some of these switches were “turned off”, largely by interbreeding in particular environments. The DNA “switches” that did not maximize chances of survival in particular environments were “turned off” after several generations. So each race represents a DNA permutation in which some switches have been turned off. The more switches are turned off, the more “hyper specific” the genetic representation of the appearance of a person in that race. When it comes to beauty, hyper specificity is bad. The more hyper specific a phenotype, the fewer “switches” are turned on, and thus, the less attractive that person appears to be.

Hyper specificity is the opposite of a genetic average. People with more of their ‘appearance switches’ turned on, are said to be more “genetically average” than others. People who are more genetically average tend to be more beautiful. So when we say that someone is “average” looking, the word ‘average’ in this context is a misnomer. The word “average” in gene science insinuates total inclusiveness of all genetic components to some degree – not the frequency of the recurrence of specific components (which is what produces the phenomenon we call ‘race’).

Therefore scientifically speaking, the more genetically average the components of someone’s appearance, the more beautiful they are perceived to be. The less genetically average the components of a person’s appearance, the more hyper specific they are, and thus the less beautiful they are perceived to be. Beauty in humans can therefore be scientifically defined as:

Any phenotypic configuration that represents the most average genetic permutation of human DNA.

People who are more distinctively Negro, Caucasian or Asian than their counterparts in the same ethnicity are notably less attractive than people who are more genetically average in each race. People who are more beautiful tend to rarely display any of the phenotypic qualities commonly associated with their ethnic origin. A classic example is the sample of women who have won the Miss World pageant. Women from Asian territories who have won the pageant have been noted to be distinctively less “Asian” in appearance than their kin. The same can be said of women from other ethnic groups.

This is why people who are of mixed ethnicity are generally regarded as being more beautiful than individuals from each of their parents’ contributing race. The hyper specificity of each race is eliminated in offspring when the DNA from parents of differing races is spliced. In every embryo, nature is so programmed that it only takes the very best genes from each parent to make up the embryo. This maximizes the chances of that embryo surviving birth and living a healthy life. This is also why offspring of mixed races tend to have the best qualities of both races and none of the typical hereditary illnesses common to either.

Cultural Implications

The automatic recognition of this law of averages is why Caucasians sometimes seek elective surgery to give them more pronounced physical appearances such as face lifts, botox treatment, or even tanning their skin for that golden-brown appearance. This is also why those of African descent living in western cultures seek chemical options for the treatment of the hair (often with the use of implanted hair in women) to give themselves that appearance, while showing preference within their own communities for fairer skinned phenotypic representations.

The law of averages explains both scenarios succinctly since the average of all genetic extremities (of any particular race) is generally preferred by all races and cultures. This average represents what the original race of humanity once looked like. This is one of the key reasons why less distinct races like Latinos, East Indians, and multi-ethnic Caribbean descendants have been top picks at international beauty pageants. Each of these ethnic groups contain the average of all the qualities that are universally recognized by our DNA as being beautiful. They are not hyper specific to any genetic extremity we would call a “race”.

The Geometric & Mathematical Beauty of the Body

The female brain latches on to geometric symmetry in the upper body of a male (face to stomache).

A person who is considered to be beautiful also possesses perfect symmetry in the physical shape of their bodies. By this we mean that whatever curves are represented on one side of the body are perfectly mirrored on the other. Symmetry also refers to the curvaceous shape around the muscles of the limbs and the cheeks of the face. Symmetry covers the shape of the eye sockets, the concave curvature of the nose bridge relative to the arch of the eyebrows which should be mirrored in the lips by a ratio of approximately 1.618 – also known as the Golden Ratio.

Symmetry is what allows the female brain to recognise the size of the biceps in a man’s arm relative to the muscles in his lower arm. It allows her to recognize the breadth of the shoulder which is at a ratio of 1.618 with his stomache, which is at the same ratio with his thighs, which are the same ratio with the width of his knees and ankles.The same ratio also exists in the length of the thighs in comparison to the length of the shin.

Women automatically fixate on a male’s upper body because it is a relatively good representation of a strong, healthy specimen. This ratio of all physical elements of the body are hardwired into a woman’s brain. She doesn’t know it, but it’s how she determines which male is more handsome (and thus, more suitable) than another.

The Male brain fixates on the geometric symmetry in the mid and lower sections of a female's body (breasts to thighs). The determination is automatic.

Symmetry is what allows the male brain to recognise the size of a woman’s buttocks relative to her breasts as a ratio of 1.618 . It allows him to recognize the width of her chest as being the same ratio with her hips with her waist being the complete inverse in ratio with both her breasts and hips. This sends a signal to a man that the woman has a well formed birth canal and has hips perfect for having children.

The same ratio applies to her relative height to his. Even if a woman is short, if the ratios on her body retain adherence to the Golden Ratio of 1.618, she will still be regarded as being symmetrically perfect. This ratio is genetically hardwired into a man’s brain. He doesn’t know it, but it’s how he determines which woman is more sexually appealing than another.

Now I should mention that no person actually goes out with a ruler and a calculator to make these measurements and do the calculations to determine beauty. All of these mathematical and geometric quantities are hard wired into every human’s brain. So we make these recognitions automatically. However, in the case of humans who are considered to be beautiful, measurements were taken by scientists and the magic numeric ratio of 1.618 turned up in all cases.

Where humans were found to be physically imperfect (thus indicating that they are a genetically undesirable host), the ratio disappeared. So beauty is not just the recognition of an appearance. It’s the recognition of the mathematical and geometric quantity of this Golden Ratio of 1.618 that is programmed into our psyche by our DNA.

Misconceptions about Beauty

There are a lot of misconceptions about beauty. Many were propagated by people who are not beautiful, which is not surprising. The human mind is such that it is hard wired to develop the propensity to level the playing field – if only in one’s mind. This function of the mind is the same function that would cause a drowning man to cling to a straw. As such, the following misconceptions were all produced by people who misunderstand beauty and (in most cases) come up with misconceptions that allow them to feel less cheated by nature:

Misconceptions of Cultural Preference

The occurrence of interracial unions prove that beauty isn't culturally defined.

If you are one of those who say that beauty is a function of culture, you would be wrong. If you raise a child of one ethnicity in a community that is predominantly of another, that child is still more likely to choose a genetically average (i.e. beautiful) member of the community as a mate. If that child becomes aware of other humans outside of its community (by way of the media or travel for example) who have a more genetically average appearance than those living in the community in which it was raised, it is naturally going to develop an attraction for a specimen from that group.

This is why people are more likely to become engaged in interracial unions if they live in countries in which the majority of the population is not representative of their own ethnicity. The same principle applies for every race. Therefore, beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. The recognition of beauty is genetically determined. We can recognize a beautiful person even if we lived in a cave for decades and saw only unattractive people our entire lives. This is why some ancient cultures have been documented to worship people from more modern civilizations when they visit for the first time.

With that said, some will argue that each culture may have its own standard of what is perceived to be beautiful. While that is true, it doesn’t mean that members of that culture will necessarily adhere to those standards. Cultural standards were created in a box (so to speak) oblivious to the rest of the world. However, with the advent of the age of mass communication, people break away from those standards all the time. In fact, it has been proven that people who stick to their cultural dictation of beauty are doing so largely because of a psychological fixation on the need to belong which is more important to them than their capacity to recognize beauty in its purest form.

Misconceptions of Race & Cultural Indoctrination

CNN Anchor Soledad O'brien - "I don't think that being beautiful takes away from your credibility". Indeed, it shouldn't.

Some people are of the opinion that beauty is perceived by individuals based on cultural indoctrination. This, they assert, is why women of non-Caucasian descent (particularly women of African descent) are “brain-washed” so to speak by the media to think that white women are more beautiful. This is far from the truth. This assumption is based on an illusion of perception.

Television and other forms of media tend to feature people who are more genetically average in appearance – meaning (again) that they are more attractive. It doesn’t matter whether they are Negro, Caucasian, Asian, Latino or of any other phenotype. The Caucasian women who appear on television and in the media represent that law of average among Caucasians – meaning that the more physically attractive than other Caucasians from the gene pool and are thus more likely to appear on Western television. The same rule applies to women of other phenotypes as well.

However, as television production is more commonplace among Caucasians in the west and in Europe, it is only natural that Caucasians would be more prominently featured. This however doesn’t imply that the media has a predilection for Caucasians nor is it making a statement about the standard of beauty among women being determined by Caucasians. No single race has a monopoly on beauty. We all carry the genetic components to produce that effect. However, depending on our selected mates, we may either promote or prohibit the propagation of such genes in our offspring.

With the advent of globalization and the shrinking of the global village provided by the internet, there has been a notable drift towards the “middle” in the recognition of all races by media entities. They are beginning to recognize more people around the world outside of their own ethnic bubble who are also quite beautiful. On the news networks like CNN for example, news anchor women such as Soledad O’Brien are becoming more commonplace. She is of mixed ethnic descent, having one black and white parent. Again, this is a perfect example of the law of genetic averages playing out on television.

Misconceptions of Selection and Recognition

Beauty influences, but doesn't automatically determine selection as proven by the union between Kate Winslet & Sam Mendes.

Some people argue that beauty does not guarantee selection and is thus a frivolous or inconsequential factor in the selection of a mate or that it represents a failure to recognize beauty’s necessity. This is far from the truth. Selection of a less genetically average phenotype says nothing about nature’s failure to recognize beauty in its purest form. In fact, the distinction must be made that selection and recognition are mutually exclusive. So if someone selects a mate that is not particularly beautiful, it doesn’t mean that they lack the capacity to recognize beauty.

There are a number of factors to consider when evaluating selection. In addition to beauty, there are opportunistic and psychological proponents that affect selection. For example; less attractive people who encounter beautiful people are sometimes intimidated by them and are thus less likely to court and subsequently select one as a mate. So in this case, the function of selection has little to do with genetic recognition, and more to do with a psychological phenomenon called an “inferiority complex“.

In another example, people who have had to deal with the intense competition for the attention of someone who is beautiful, are less likely to select a beautiful person as a mate. People who have been repeatedly hurt psychologically by beautiful people are also less likely to select them as mates. People who simply resent beautiful people just because they are beautiful are also unlikely to select such a person as a mate. These conditions of selection apply to everyone equally.

In each of these cases, all of the people in question can readily recognize beauty. What they do with that recognition however is more a function of psychological or opportunistic circumstance. It doesn’t nullify the necessity of being beautiful and it does not take away from its impact on the selection of a mate. In fact, such claims are hypocritical. For if the very same persons who make this assertion were selected by a beautiful person, the odds that they would turn them away are negligible.

Misconceptions of Shallowness

On the flip side, many beautiful people also have a hard time finding a mate that is suitably mature and genuine – provided that they are willing to look that deep. If they aren’t, then they could be termed as being shallow. This is not usually the case, however. More often than not, it’s largely a function of manageability.

Beautiful people attract so many people that they usually have a lot more work to do with respect to narrowing down the selection in order to pick a mate. Beautiful people attract everyone – including mostly people who have characteristics that are undesirable (which is why some women say “beauty is a curse”). Unattractive people by comparison tend to settle for physical mediocrity, since they don’t get that much attention in the first place.

Now because beautiful people have so many to choose from, it is impractical to give each and every single suitor a chance at love with them. The entire process may take a lifetime. It is therefore more pragmatic to pick out only the most beautiful people from the lot (who will number in the minority most of the times) and then narrow those down for people who fit the qualities they desire. Being beautiful automatically means that one has the best pick of the gene pool. However, this selection process is not necessarily fool-proof since pretty people with poor personalities often get picked first.

This propensity for more efficient mate selection is what unattractive people often perceive as “shallowness“. When beautiful people primarily select other beautiful people, they are not usually conscious of the fact that they are doing it, since the process is automatic. If unattractive people were likewise genetically gifted, their behaviour would be no different.

Misconceptions regarding Wealth, Fame and Talent

TV shows like American Idol™ search for that rare combination of beauty, marketing appeal and talent, like Jordin Sparks.

There are many people who are of the opinion that only the rich are beautiful or only the beautiful become rich. They go on to say that because the world naturally prefers beautiful people, they are more likely to become wealthy or famous. While there is some truth to this perception, it is largely based on a correlation propagated by popular culture and the media. The truth is quite the opposite.

Most of the rich, famous, talented people in the world aren’t beautiful. Most of the beautiful people in the world are neither rich nor famous nor talented. However, because the media primarily highlights people who are beautiful, rich, famous and talented, the rest of the world tends to fallaciously think that beauty, wealth, fame and talent are inextricably linked. Of course, only people who spend too much time in front of the Television are inclined to think in such  narrow minded terms. There are several logical explanations for these misconceptions:

When Beauty predicates Wealth

A beautiful person tends to be confident because of the same genetic parameters that graced them with a beautiful face. Confidence propagates boldness and boldness is strongly correlated to wealth. This is because people who are willing to take risks tend to become wealthy. However, not every beautiful person is bold and so this remains just a correlation.

On the flip side however, wealthy people are able to afford the medical treatments that will either create beauty in themselves or enhance their existing aesthetic appeal. Most of the time, famous people who are beautiful are just average looking people (not to be confused with genetic averageness) who can afford the botox, the plastic surgery and all the other medical enhancements to which they subject themselves in order to achieve that deceptively attractive look. Most movie stars are not very attractive at all without their makeup. Therefore the perceived connection between beauty and wealth in this case is largely economic. The rest is artificial, force-fed media propaganda.

When Beauty predicates Fame

Where there are famous people who are also beautiful, it is very likely that their attractiveness played a key role in their fame – but not necessarily. If we omit those who just happen to be wealthy (thus giving them the capacity to afford to artificially induce beauty), then the remainder are most probably famous because they’re beautiful. Most of these people tend to be models or actors. This means that they had to have some talent to backup the pretty face. You tend to need both to become famous at all.

When one is both beautiful and talented, that’s what later leads to becoming wealthy. While talent does not predicate beauty, it does predicate fame. Beauty is rare. Talent is also rare. But people who are both beautiful and talented are rarer still. So whenever such people are discovered, the media wastes no time in pushing them into the limelight – eventually making them rich. You will see this phenomenon quite frequently manifested on American Idol where contenders are judged not only by their ability to sing, but their physical and marketable appeal.

The Role of the Media

The truth is that programs like American Idol (and virtually every other media-scripted “reality” show) employ multi-million dollar marketing companies to scour the demographics in western civilization for people who are both beautiful and talented. Out of the hundreds of hours of footage and thousands of candidates, they trim down a typical episode to feature only the most attractive and talented of the lot. This is what you see on TV – and is thus what leads to the common misconception of a correlation between beauty, fame, wealth and talent.

The primary beneficiaries of this marketing campaign are media and cosmetic industries. This is also why television personalities appear to be largely beautiful people. A substantial portion of television audiences who tune in to a particular program tend to subconsciously do so exclusively because they like seeing pretty people on TV. This in turn, charges up the ratings and thus the price that media companies can charge for an advertisement slot during a given program. Now you know why you see so many ads that promote anti-aging in women during prime time.

Propensities of Pretty People

Everybody who is pretty knows that they are pretty. People who know that they are not also know as much. Knowing makes all the difference and that’s why pretty people tend to behave differently from everyone else. Whether they wallow in the obviousness of their genetic superiority or use it to get their way with the rest, every pretty person knows that they wield insurmountable power over the rest of humanity. With that said, the following propensities tend to be conspicuous among some people who were born beautiful:

The Entourage

HBO's popular drama series "Entourage" captures many of the innate human propensities driven by these social groups.

The Entourage is the quintessential people accessory for many pretty people. An entourage is basically a pretty person’s closest group of friends (an inner circle, if you will). They may themselves be attractive, but are never more attractive than their pretty person. They usually sit around the table like scavengers and feed from the scraps of the kill of their pretty kin. The pretty person in a male entourage is called an Alpha Male. The female equivalent is usually called the Queen Bee. Entourages are more popular among women than men.

The members of an entourage complement their existence with the aura of their pretty monarch who in turn benefits greatly from having the extra hands (and brains) at their disposal. The entourage is nature’s way of evening out the odds for less attractive people who have a harder time fighting for the win on their own. Moral support is always helpful. So in a way, an entourage is a useful, somewhat symbiotic relationship.

The Yo-Yo Friend

A ‘Yo-Yo’ friend is a close confidant of pretty people who is usually an unpretty member of the opposite sex that is incredibly useful. The Yo-Yo friend is usually that geeky guy that a hot girl keeps around to fix her computer when it’s broken. They are also that unattractive fat chick who fawns over the school jock and is more than willing to do his homework while he goes on a date with the aforementioned hot chick.

Basically, yo-yo friends have little or no self respect. They are usually so nice that they don’t even realise that they’re being used. Yo-Yo friends are not usually included in an Entourage because the pretty person has a reputation to uphold (an Entourage usually says something about a pretty person’s status). They will usually accept any explanation for being excluded from the entourage. However, despite this disparity, Yo-Yo friends are fiercely loyal, and will Kamikaze anyone who threatens their pretty person (even if it’s another pretty person). Yo-Yo friends are so labelled because:

Fun Fact: Yo-Yo’s were originally invented as a disposable, yet very effective long range weapon.

The Upgrade

Pretty people have the ability to pick from the best in the gene pool without notable consequence. Thus the temptation to upgrade will often be too strong to resist.

Pretty people naturally prefer other pretty people. But even no matter how much one pretty person is enamoured with another, there is always someone prettier still. While most people will either outgrow this propensity as they get older (falling in love with the who and not the what), pretty people tend to ignore this and go for an “upgrade” whenever possible. Because they’re beautiful, they know they will be forgiven for wanting to upgrade. This behaviour is more common in men than women (since women love with their emotional right brain, unlike men who are more savvy with their logical left).

The most famous example of this propensity is the recent ditching of F.R.I.E.N.D.S star, the lovely Jennifer Aniston for the sultry Tomb Raider femme fatale, Angelina Jolie by A-list movie star Brad Pitt. Most men would categorically agree that Angelina Jolie represents absolute genetic perfection among brunettes – so much so that she trumps most blondes and other multi-ethic acolytes.

Gene scientists were actually very excited to see what the children of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston would look like. However, as insensitive as it sounds, when news first hit that he’d “upgraded” to the ultimate brunette, they almost wet their pants with blissful euphoria. The genetic implications of their offspring are staggering.

Upgrading is immature and childish – not to mention a grotesquely selfish abuse of human emotion. However it’s a powerful genetic unction that is tough to resist. Now while I can never assert what the full back story behind the Brangelina phenomenon could be, I can only feel bad for all the Jennifer Anistons in the world. It’s hard cold proof that nature is a bitch that has time and again shown preference for functional perfection over all else.

The Snob Complex

It is a commonly well known fact that many beautiful people never develop cognitively beyond the age of 14 (in the case of men) and 16 (in the case of women) respectively, regardless of their level of education. This was the point of the popular television program Beauty and the Geek and similar Ashton Kutcher offerings. With that said, this explains the often rotten behaviour of people who were born pretty (like Jennifer Lopez).

Because they have such a powerful effect on people, many pretty people never usually have to work on being more mature. This is one of the reasons why pretty people often abuse their friendships. It’s not because they’re evil people. It’s largely because many of them have life so easy, they genuinely don’t know any better. Some of them behave that way out of frustration from having drawn the attention of so many people. They genuinely don’t know how to handle the fame. This is why many celebrities hire publicists to do that job for them.

The Ditz Conjecture

Tara Reid: "I make Jessica Simpson look like a rock scientist" ...ORLY?

Pretty people are sometimes hopelessly clueless about their world for all the same reasons they develop snobbish propensities: They’re beautiful – and it’s so intoxicating that they rarely focus on anything else. So they become a lot like grown children stuck in adult’s bodies. Some pretty people use this cluelessness to assert that they “have people” (see “Entourage” above) to figure that out for them. This is called the Ditz Conjecture, because it is a way for people to assert their beauty as the only thing they really need to justify their existence. The problem with this conjecture is that everybody gets old. If you knew what happened to Tara Reid recently, then the rest is self explanatory.

Conclusively;

Not all pretty people like Entourages, keep a Yo-Yo friend, upgrade their lover, act snobbish or make Ditz Conjectures. In fact, unless you were born in the cradle of the most decadent societies on earth, it is highly improbable that as a pretty person, you would be inclined to manifest any of these unpleasant propensities. Thankfully, most of the pretty people in the world are just as beautiful on the inside as they are on the outside. It’s just that those pretty people are often drowned out by the noise being made by pretty people with bad attitudes on MTV.

Life is made up of two components:

1. Genetics
2. Environments

A pretty person who is raised in an environment that heavily values sobriety, responsibility, education and selflessness will become someone that is genuinely loved by everyone for all the reasons humans have the capacity to love anyone. Pretty people who are not born in such environments often underestimate the value of their beauty and instead use it for just its surface value – thus grossly underestimating their (and everyone else’s) worth. Thankfully, there are more beautiful people out there in the former than the latter category. I know this because many of them are my friends.

I will admit however, that I have met my fair share of beautiful people with ugly interiors. It is that experience that has led me to realise that less attractive people have beautiful personalities because of their aesthetic deficit. They have to make up for this genetic deficiency by being easily liked. As such ugly people are really God’s abstract art pieces. So the next time you meet someone, spend less time looking into their face and more time looking into their soul. It’s amazing the bevy of surprises you may find.

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