How do you decide who is more beautiful: Cindy Crawford or Claudia Schiffer? Naomi Campbell or Kylie Jenner? By what standard can we possibly judge, if each is beautiful in her own way? What is human beauty, really?

Think about walking through a supermarket. You instantly know which pears look appealing and which don't. You can tell which bunch of parsley is vibrant and which is wilted. Where does this instinct come from? It comes from a standard in your mind, a mental template for the ideal pear or parsley. We compare what we see to this internal standard and make a judgment: "This is beautiful, this is not."

The very same mechanism clicks into place when we look at other people. We hold a standard of beauty in our minds, and when we see someone, we subconsciously measure them against it. If they are close to that standard, we perceive them as beautiful. If they are far from it, we may not.

But the most important question is: where did that standard in our head come from in the first place?

The Social Contract of Beauty

Our idea of beauty in a given place and time is called conventional beauty, from the word "convention," meaning an agreement. Society, in a specific era and location, implicitly agrees on what type of appearance is considered beautiful. It is a social contract, and it is defined by both time and space.

For centuries, these conventions changed slowly. Consider historical accounts from 17th-century Europe. When a young monarch was seeking a bride, a bride show was organized. The ideal was far from the slender figures we often see today. A prospective bride who was naturally thin might have been viewed as unsuitable for marriage and childbearing. Her family might even try to fatten her up to fit the conventional ideal. Artists of the era, like Rubens, famously painted women with full, lush figures. At that time and in that place, this was the peak of beauty, a sign of health, wealth, and fertility.

Of course, this was not a global standard. In South America, China, and Africa, different ideas of beauty prevailed. Space and time were the key ingredients. This remained the case until the 20th century, when everything changed.

When Hollywood Became the World's Village

With the dawn of the 20th century, the speed at which beauty standards changed accelerated dramatically, shifting roughly every couple of decades. Why? The arrival of cinema and global mass media.

Hollywood, along with European film studios, became the world's primary image-maker. Magazines and newspapers printed in America and Europe were shipped to every continent. Suddenly, a young woman in Rio de Janeiro, Beijing, and London were all looking at the same movie stars and fashion models. "Space" was effectively erased from the equation. Only "time" remained.

This created a new dynamic. Audiences tire of the same image quickly. To keep people buying movie tickets and magazines, the media giants had to constantly reinvent the ideal.

• The 1920s brought a more androgynous, square-shaped "flapper" ideal, a stark departure from the 19th-century hourglass.
• The 1940s and 50s saw a return to curves with pin-up icons like Marilyn Monroe, celebrating a full bust and hips.
• The 1960s and 70s swung to the opposite extreme, championing stick-thin, almost waifish models.
• The 1980s and 90s were dominated by the tall, athletic, busty "supermodel" physique.
• The 2000s introduced "heroin chic"—an ultra-thin, androgynous look often accompanied by an air of detached coolness.

What is striking is that throughout these radical shifts, one thing remained constant: the ideal was almost always a young, white, Caucasian woman with symmetrical features. The vast majority of women on the planet never fit these narrow, often cruel, parameters.

The Psychology of Following the Crowd

How did media moguls so effectively rewire our brains every 20 years? How could a person born in a small South American village, surrounded by people who look nothing like the movie stars on screen, come to adopt Hollywood's standard of beauty over their own lived reality?

The answer lies in our social brain, which is wired to outsource decision-making whenever possible.

Imagine you're walking down a street and see two restaurants. The one on the left is completely empty. The one on the right has several tables filled with happy-looking customers. Which one do you choose? The vast majority of people will go to the restaurant that already has people in it. Our brain takes a shortcut. Instead of researching the chef, checking the menu, and reading reviews, it concludes, "Other people have already vetted this place. It must be good."

We do the exact same thing with beauty. Our brain seeks social proof. When the media presents a certain type of person as beautiful, our brain accepts the consensus. "They say this is beautiful, so it must be."

This isn't just a theory; it's backed by research. In one 2016 experiment, participants were asked to rate the attractiveness of 112 faces. They did this in two stages. In the first stage, they simply gave their own opinion on a scale of 1 to 9. In the second stage, they rated the same photos again, but this time they were shown the average rating given by all participants in the first round. The results were clear: in the second stage, people’s ratings shifted significantly to be closer to the group average. As soon as our brain gets a chance to offload a subjective decision, it does.

Another well-documented phenomenon is the mere-exposure effect: the more we are exposed to something, like a face, the more we tend to like it. If a specific face is shown repeatedly in a series of images, participants will rate it as more attractive with each viewing, up to a certain point. This helps explain why constant media exposure to a certain "look" can make it become the accepted standard of beauty.

The Digital Age: A New Renaissance of Beauty

So, if Hollywood bosses defined beauty in the 20th century, who defines it today? The answer is: everyone.

The rise of the internet shattered the monopoly held by studios and magazines. Now, anyone with a phone can be a content creator, a model, an influencer. They can show themselves to the world. As a result, the narrow framework of the "white, thin woman" has been broken.

Today, hundreds of millions of people consider Kim Kardashian, a woman whose physique is far from the 20th-century ideal, a standard of beauty. We see people of all races, body types, and backgrounds celebrated on our screens and in our feeds. Fashion shows have become more diverse. A powerful real-world indicator of this shift is the dramatic surge in interracial marriages since the 2010s. People have truly started to believe that a person of any race and any appearance can be beautiful. The global village is no longer looking to one source; it has become a network where beauty is defined from all corners of the globe.

How to See Your Own Beauty

So, how can you know if you are beautiful? You start by determining your own type.

Go back to the fruit aisle. You don't compare the beauty of a red Delicious apple to the beauty of a green Granny Smith. They are different varieties, each beautiful within its own standard. It's the same with people.

If your type of appearance is like Jennifer Lopez's, with a curvy figure, that's a celebrated standard of beauty for hundreds of millions. If your beauty is more in the style of Taylor Swift, with a taller, leaner frame, that is also a standard of beauty for hundreds of millions. The single, oppressive standard is gone.

With the power of the internet, every type of beauty can find its audience and its appreciation. The key is to choose your own standard and be beautiful within that type. There is a demand for your kind of beauty. So when you look in the mirror, don't ask if you fit a forgotten mold. Ask it to reflect the unique beauty that is yours alone.

One final thought: beauty and sexuality are not the same thing. There is no "conventional sexuality" because, unlike beauty, our ideas of what is sexually attractive are much more deeply tied to our instincts. The idea of beauty can be socially programmed into us, but sexuality is a far more primal, personal force. That, however, is a fascinating topic for another day.

References

• Haesevoets, T., Reinders Folmer, C., & Van Hiel, A. (2016). The influence of consensus information on the attractiveness of faces. Acta Psychologica, 165, 24-34.
  This study directly supports the article's claim about social influence on beauty perception. Researchers demonstrated that when participants were shown the average attractiveness ratings from a peer group, their own ratings tended to conform to that group consensus. This highlights how our personal judgment of beauty can be significantly swayed by perceived public opinion.
• Peskin, M., & Newell, F. N. (2004). Familiarity breeds attraction: Effects of exposure on the attractiveness of typical and distinctive faces. Perception, 33(2), 147-157.
  This research explores the "mere-exposure effect" discussed in the article. The findings confirm that repeated exposure to a face generally increases its perceived attractiveness. This explains the mechanism by which media can elevate certain individuals to beauty icon status simply by ensuring their faces are seen frequently by the public.