Beauty and the beastly business of quantifying it

The speed and temporary nature of social media feeds lead to some interesting contrasts.

In my Facebook newsfeed yesterday, I first took note of a Design Taxi link posted by Marc from Osocio about "The World’s Scientifically Most Beautiful Woman".

Here she is:

18-year-old student Florence Colgate has the most naturally perfect face, according to a British lifestyle show's nationwide search.

“Florence has all the classic signs of beauty,” Carmen Lefèvre, of The Perception Lab at the University of St Andrews’ School of Psychology, told The Daily Mail. “She has large eyes, high cheekbones, full lips and a fair complexion. Symmetry appears to be a very important cue to attractiveness.”

Along with — apparently — blonde hair, blue eyes and light, unblemished skin.

I won't even get into the Nordicism of all this. (The Mail actually called her "'Britain's most beautiful face".) There have been enough blogposts about that issue already. I'm more interested in the parts that sociobiologists have tried to rationalize.

For example, symmetry is seen as a sign of good genes and good health. Maladaptive mutations, as well as childhood disease and injury, can affect symmetry. It's seen as a way to advertise good health and disease resistance — in other words, that person is a good source of healthy babies.

The other features are ethnically specific. Blonde hair and big blue eyes are what are known as "neoteny" — that is, babylike features kept into adulthood. All humans are very neotenic apes, retaining our round-headed juvenile chimp features throughout our lives.

Via pbase

The loss of pigment that gave northern people lighter skin is also an adaptive mutation to absorb more vitamin D from less sun exposure. I personally believe that lightening of skin and eyes in parts of those populations came along for the ride, then got amplified by sexual selection because youth is attractive.

But Darwin I ain't.

The other link I was going to mention was actually directly above Marc's "beauty" link. It was a CBC story titled, "Ugly Meter app worries cyber bullying activists"

A smartphone app allows users to assess their own symmetry based on some unknown standards. It's like "Hot or Not", but without the subjectivity of human feedback.

According to uglymeter.net:

"How ugly are you? For over 3 million users, Ugly Meter has been the go-to iPhone App that won’t lie when it comes to determining how attractive or ugly you are. Just snap a picture of yourself (or someone else) in the app and hit the scan button. The Ugly Meter will scan your face and determine just how ugly you are and dispense advice accordingly. Ugly Meter then allows you to post the results to Facebook or Twitter."

I wonder about the ethnic standards of beauty behind this, too. Although my own northern Euro ancestry doesn't seem to have helped much:

I blame the lighting.

I tried a few more times, and found that the insults got pretty creative.

To test the baseline, I tried scanning a screenshot of Miss Colgate:

Clearly, the creators of this app and the people behind the British talent search read the same books. Or something.

But then what happens when I scan a head-on glamour pic of Iman, a woman so ethereally beautiful, she got David Bowie to settle down:

I must have held the camera funny. I'll try again:

Ummm...

But hey, there was nothing scientific about this (mostly because I don't have all day to fart around with my iPhone). If you don't mind giving them your 99¢, you can find out for yourself what "beautiful" really means.

(I'll update this post with more scans, as I get a chance.)

Adriana Lima

Grace Park

George Clooney (a reader request by Rachel)

Barbie

Sometimes, it just seems random. Watch what happens when I scanned the face of late-'70s David Bowie, two different times.

Was it the misplaced cursor that made all the difference? (Good thing I didn't shoot him in full Aladdin Sane makeup.)

Miss USA contestants discuss evolution

See how much of it you can stand to watch...

"Oh, dear God! Or whatever..."

Via Buzzfeed.

Two good comix about the environment

These ones I saw this morning in my browsing reminded me that I really need to convince one of my cause marketing clients to do web comix. If honest and fearless, they can express complex ideas in a much more stand-out and memorable way.

This first one, posted on 9GAG and Buzzfeed, makes a very important point about all our romantic notions about the love of "Mother Earth" — a planet that has withstood at least five major extinction events prior to our evolution:

Seriously. Let's stop all our hippie mooning about what we're doing to nature, and start looking at environmental stewardship as a question of self-interest.

The second is a political editorial comic seen on The Uniblog that explains why we haven't figure this out yet — because our priorities are fatally screwed:

Yeah... we're boned.

The French screw up evolution. Again.

Yes, this ad is grotesque. Posted on the  I Believe in Advertising blog, it  is by DraftFCB Paris, for the CHRONIC'ART web magazine:

“What impact will new technologies have on human evolution?”
Click to enlarge. If you dare.

It also shows the difference between art and science. Or, at least, between art and bad science.

Evolution is one of the most misunderstood sciences of all, and you can blame it all on France as well. Specifically one Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a biologist who predated Charles Darwin, and who believed in something called "soft inheritance" — that organisms could pass on acquired traits to their offspring. The classic example of this is the (seemingly-logical) theory that giraffes grew such long necks because they kept reaching up for higher leaves.

Evolution, however, does not work that way. It happens through millions of random genetic mutations, most of which get weeded out by natural and sexual selection. Those that make it through typically (but not always) seem, in hindsight, to be designed for their environmental niche. In reality, their mutant ancestors just happened to do a little better there.

The Lamarkian fallacy seems to come naturally to human beings. Evolved, ourselves, to guess the motives of other self-aware humans, we mistakenly infer intelligence and will in things and processes that have none.

Nobody is immune. How often do you hear phrases like "my computer hates me" or "my car just won't cooperate"? We may be half-joking when we say these things, but superstition is current and real, even among otherwise skeptical people.

That's why most people misunderstand evolution. A friend of mine recently posted, jokingly, on Facebook a comment about whether current grooming preferences against pubic hair would eventually lead to hairless humans. This ad says essentially the same thing — that whatever changes technology is introducing into our lifestyle now will change our physical being.

Don't worry. It won't. Although a few technologies have changed us. The invention of shoes, between 26,000 and 40,000 years ago, changed the shape of our feet. Domesticating and milking cows lead to lactose tolerance, independently, in two different Eurasian and African populations.

But these were artificial changes to the human environment that were long-term and consistent, allowing blind old evolution to eventually stumble its way into the niches they created. At today's pace of technological change, how could we possibly adapt — over scores of generations — to something as fleeting as an iPad or a 3D TV?

Stick with the art, CHRONIC'ART. There are enough people talking shit about science already. You are not helping.

Disclaimer: I am not a scientist, but I play one on social media.

Survival of the hippest

I don't want to sound like I'm bashing anyone's faith, but I really feel bad for people who won't accept the theory of evolution. Not only is it the best tool we have for understanding human nature; you can also apply Darwin, Wallace & Co.'s thinking to almost any human endeavour.

My four-year-old son already understands the basic idea of evolving. That's because we're both huge fans of BBC's "Walking with..." series of shows on prehistoric life: Walking With Dinosaurs, Walking With Prehistoric Beasts, Walking With Monsters, and Walking With Cavemen. Cool shows, and even the 10-year-old CG animation holds up pretty well on high def TVs.

My son's love of these shows is part of his love affair with all things natural. But I'm also happy about what it's instilling in him for his adult life in any kind of business venture. It is helping him understand what "survival of the fittest" really means.

To many people, "the fittest" conjures up visions of the schoolyard bully, an unthinking brute who pushes aside all the girly men to impress the female folk. But that's not what it means at all. Evolution is all about flexibility, adaptation, and exploiting the opportunities of chance disaster.

There are two examples from the BBC series that give a more accurate object lesson in dealing with change:


Rise of the Mammals — Mammals have been dominating the world for more than 50,000,000 years, but it has not always been so. Prior to the great extinction event of 65,000,000 years ago, they were tiny creatures living at the fringes of the dinosaurs' world. The dinos in general were bigger, meaner, and way more successful at exploiting the relatively stable climates of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. But when the world was hurled into a nuclear winter by a cosmic collision, they didn't survive. Nothing big did. Only the smallest, most adaptable species survived. Among them were our furry ancestors, opportunistic living fossils like crocodiles, and the tiny, warm-blooded, feathered dinosaurs we now call birds.

Might did not make right, and the mammals outpaced even the remaining dinosaurs by adapting to, and dominating, almost every ecosystem in the planet. The mammals' penchant for adapting to change in novel ways is what lead to us. But there's another stop along the way.

Hominidmania — Over two million years ago, our ancestors were not the only hominids (humanoid apes) on the planet. Several different species rose and fell as the climate continued to change. Among them was Australopithecus boisei, a gorillalike brute that ate roots and lived in harems. They had a pretty easy life, browsing the available vegetation, but they were overspecialized. When the vegetation changed, they were outcompeted by other apemen with more curious natures and omnivorous appetites, such as our forebears.

In the current economy, large and traditional businesses can seem like dinosaurs, while the agile upstarts and shrewd early adopters may yet get through the fallout to grow into a new generation of leaders. Overspecialized and inflexible companies may find their food source dries up, while those with imagination and courage might just find new ways to survive.

The "fittest" are those most suited to adapt through, and take advantage of, change. Evolution may happen through random chance, but "intelligently designed" organizations can still learn from nature's lessons in hindsight.

My advice of the day? Executives should spend more time watching dinosaur movies.