It is innate in us that we gravitate towards anyone who is physically beautiful or anything pleasant to our senses. Our neurons and hormones react to it in a rave! Genetically speaking, these traits have advanced into the gene pool, among other characteristics.
Unfortunately, we have decoded these cryptic worthy-of-inheriting traits differently. For instance, men like big breasts or wide pelvis are hard-wired in them as instinctively these traits are good for nursing your future offspring or housing your baby in the womb, and I believe these favorable traits have been used as sex symbols instead.
On the other hand, girls are starving themselves to lose excess fat, specifically the abs, and look more attractive to men. Hips are emphasized more when your waist is tiny.
Blame it on our ancestors!
We are wired to get attracted to the physical features I described above. To understand this better, we need to go back to the time when humans were still living in caves.
To survive, men needed to hunt and kill to feed their families. This required an incredible physique to carry out the task successfully. Strength was always the most favorable trait, not necessarily the physical features. Men preferred that their women could provide an abundant milk supply to nurse their children. Man needed a woman who could bear children to help in their daily plight. These were never sex symbols in the past but necessities for survival!
What about good looks?
Did our ancestors prefer good looks? I thought great looks as a consideration to finding a partner is one of the many vanities modern society has introduced us to. However, I was surprised to learn that we are wired to like ourselves, our very own facial features!
In the episode, Facial Attraction, of National Geographic’s Brain Games, it was proven through an experiment that we tend to like or get attracted to people who may have similar facial features that we also possess. Could this be the reason why most couples look the same?
Click to Watch NatGeo Brain Games – The Face Experiment
We also know our brain always seeks patterns, connections, relations, or correlations! This is also why humans naturally attract symmetry, ratio, and balance. We are drawn to it quite quickly if we find any of these in anything- faces or body or movement as in dance.
The Law of Relativity and Aging
As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, tangent with Albert Einstein’s law of relativity- that ‘everything is relative. My perceived beauty may not be similar to yours. My choices are driven by the environment (demographics- race, country, etc.) I was brought up with the genes that make up my physical being and the insights my previous experiences bring.
Whether we like it or not, we go through the dreadful aging phase. Even if we put our bodies under the knife incising the fats or the saggy skin off, everything still sags in the end. Everything follows the gravitational pull, regardless of the thread count (scientifically known as collagen) tethering your face together. Are you sure your partner is ready to see you in this state, or are you?
What is natural beauty?
I am confident that humans, whichever continents they belong, understand the universal language and meaning of compassion, respect, patience, resilience, wisdom, and pure love- but none of these is relative, like physical beauty. These are the beautiful traits that even flourish as we age. So these beatific traits are worth passing on to the next generation.
We have had great leaders who helped shape this world into a better place; not all of them are pretty darn good-looking (based on society’s measures of good looks)! But their contributions are tremendous and life-changing.
As we go deeper into the relationship with our sweethearts, partners, or spouses, we realize that physical attributes are secondary prerequisites to building a better home and raising good citizens. There are more to relationship, life, and love than physical attributes.