The article is about a series of experiments which were conducted to determine if the animal kingdom’s male-female process of selecting prospective progenitors for their future offspring has any similarity in the humans’ side of the animal world. It has been observed that “when it comes to choosing a mate, a female emperor penguin doesn’t fall for the first suitor who pulls up and honks. She holds out for one chubby enough to spend weeks incubating a newly laid egg without starving to death.” Similar actions of “choosing who’s attractive from the group” as the possible mating partner- for example, choosing the most brightly-colored male or the one with symmetrical wings, etc. – is widely prevalent among animals. So the questions follow: Do human beings practice it? Do they have a natural pattern of determining who or what is attractive?

It seems that researchers have shown that people, regardless of their differences, have a common ideal of what’s attractive. But what’s more amazing is that infants, too, share this sense of what is attractive. “In a series of experiments, psychologist Judith Langlois showed pairs of photographs to three- and six-month old babies. Each pair had one face considered attractive by adults and one considered unattractive. Infants gazed significantly longer at the attractive faces. (In a later demonstration, infants showed a preference for model Amber Valletta’s face.)” “These kids don’t read Vogue or watch TV,” says Langlois, “yet they make the same judgments as adults.”

Most of the quoted pieces above are extracts from the article ‘What Makes Us Attractive’ by Geoffrey Cowley. The said article can be found in the February 1997 issue of Reader’s Digest magazine.

Humans may also have this basic instinct of preference for the attractive but as the article’s author says, “While the biology of beauty may be fascinating- even revelatory- it is important to remember that most of us manage to find jobs, attract mates and bear offspring despite our physical imperfections. The human weakness for body quality, moreover, causes no end of pain and injustice. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it any less real.”