Skin Deep, but in the Eyes of All Beholders

Beautiful people have always enjoyed special opportunities denied to the plain and ugly multitudes. To validate that statement we have to be rigorous in our definition of beauty – a purely physical, biological quality – not rolling it up, as is so often done, with other desirable qualities such as charm, generosity, always being in the height of fashion, or sexual availability. If we make a meticulous study of the evidence, we find that standards of beauty (as distinct from fashion) do not change greatly from age to age. What does change is the value placed on beauty: in ‘traditional’ (or pre-industrial) societies, while beauty was always fascinating, it was considered dangerous and valued well below status and wealth. But with industrialization and, above all, the advent of mass communications, the ‘modern’ perception of beauty slowly emerged, identifying it as a purely physical quality with an autonomous value of its own, putting it ahead of status, and making it in itself a potential source of great wealth.