[TinyRedLeaf]

In a way, I think what Cipher wanted to ask is whether there's such a thing as "universal standard" of beauty.

And, in that case, I would agree with Ledgem: there is no such "standard". Like he said, much of what we perceive to be "beautiful" is influenced heavily by the mass media and our respective cultures.

Moreover, it's very easy to see how standards of beauty have changed over time. Just take a look, for example, at the crude sculptures left behind from the Ice Age, which grossly exaggerate the breasts and hips of the female body. To early human beings, it appears that physical traits that suggest reproductive fertility were considered "beautiful". To us, those sculptures would appear grotesque, almost pornographic.

Now, based on evolutionary assumptions, we do believe that men are wired to gravitate towards women who have features that suggest healthy and fecundity, and a recent study involving babies did suggest that there are indeed physical traits that we inherently find "beautiful".

Dr Alan Slater, a developmental psychologist at Exeter University, said newborn babies were capable of quickly learning to recognise not only facial features but whether they are attractive or unattractive.

"If you show infants a few months old two faces they will spend more time looking at the more attractive face," he said. "The notion was that this was some kind of prototype of the face, which was averaged from the various faces the infants have looked at over the first two or three months from birth.

"But, in fact, we find we get exactly the same effect with newborn infants, which is to say that newborn infants will look at the more attractive of two faces."

The problem is, however, that such preferences can be easily overridden. The same study concedes, for example, that babies are hardwired to be attracted to their mothers, whether or not she is "beautiful". In that case, it's easy to see how malleable our perceptions of beauty actually are.

Take, for another example, the recent craze over "Asian beauty" in American media. Hollywood has been recently enthralled by Asian celebrities such as Zhang Ziyi and Gong Li (paradoxically, I don't find them attractive, and I'm Chinese; more specifically, I dislike the northern Chinese look, and prefer the southern Chinese features more commonly found in celebrities from Hong Kong and Taiwan), thanks to recent blockbusters like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Memoirs of a Geisha.

But these celebrities have been around for a long time. The fact that Americans started only now to notice them is in itself a strong indication that this is just a media-driven fad. For one thing, I'm slightly amused that Zhang Ziyi is considered a hottie when many of my friends and I, here in East Asia, would consider Maggie Cheung far more attractive, despite her greater age.

And, finally, we need only to take a look at anime itself to see how perceptions of beauty can change. Quite a number of non-Japanese observers have noticed, by now, that anime characters assimilate both Western and Japanese physical features to produce an "idealised" form of beauty. One writer had even mused that this could be a sign of an emerging "monoculture".

I'd agree with that thesis to the extent that English-speaking societies are heavily influenced by an increasingly global pop culture, so it's no wonder that a "monoculture" seems to be emerging. However, there's a flipside to this argument: If such perceptions of beauty are pop-culture driven, then would it remain the same once the fads change? I wouldn't be so sure.

As for me, I'd have to say I'm naturally attracted to other East Asians, particularly southern Chinese and the Japanese. Unfortunately, I don't find Koreans attractive, because they look too similar to northern Chinese, that is, they have common features like narrow eyes, high foreheads and generally flat faces.

Curiously, I'm also attracted to northern Indians, that is, those with Aryan features. On the other hand, I find myself naturally repelled by southern Indians, because they tend to have endomorphic body shapes, flatter noses and thicker lips. By the same token, I generally find the physical features of most African people highly unattractive.

And, needless to say, because of Western media conditioning, I'm also attracted to American/European features, although that's not saying much, as the features vary tremendously over a wide range. For Europeans, for example, I find Scandinavian and Central/East European women attractive. British and German women, on the other hand, generally look bland to me.

All these are preferences that occur at an instinctual level, mind you. They have nothing to do with how I would actually treat all these different kinds of people in real life. As Nosauz said, just because I carry these stereotypes doesn't necessarily mean I'd act on them. In the end, a lot still depends on the person's personality, thoughts and behaviour. Physical looks alone do not determine whether I'd like him or her.