Maths of beauty

“Symmetry defines beauty” .... this should not be news to most of us. Symmetry is all around us both natural and self induced ranging from the wings of a butterfly to that perfectly hung painting because the minute it’s crooked the symmetry of the frame is thrown off (lets ignore the painting for now).

People happily hypothesize about the importance of symmetry but never its driver. What drives nature, and through transitivity us, to seek symmetry? Why is it that all things must have an axis around which the object must be foldable?

My theory ... laziness ... it’s a lot easier for our eyes to process a symmetrical object requiring less process aligning the separate images received by each eye. So the easier it is to process an image the more aesthetically pleasing it is to the eye. That easy of processing is labelled as beauty.

There may also be balancing advantages to symmetry in nature.

As far as our faces go, we “distort” our symmetry through hairdos and accessories so an argument that symmetry is the be-all for all beauty is flawed. With the introduced warping of our appearances we have developed a secondary benchmark for the signs of “beauty” ... wait for it ... the “Jaw line”.

Having taken enough pictures I can definitively say that the most prominent feature of the face is its outline, defined by the jaw which frames the face. If the face is not 100% symmetrical you can always tilt it but a good jaw-line says that you are reasonably proportioned. You can be as big as the marshmallow monster from ghost busters but if you have a defined jaw-line I can guarantee that you will look good in pictures.

So a quick and easy way to look good in pictures is to suck in that double chin at the sound of “cheese” !!!