Nov 08, 2024
Is there a universal formula that helps to mathematically calculate the attractiveness of a person? It turns out there is. If it works, who the most beautiful man in the world is? And why?
To understand how the standards of male beauty developed, we will have to delve into the ocean of historical eras and emerge on the modern shores of media culture.
The Greeks in the 6th century BC glorified, judging by the surviving sculptures called kouros, male youth – for them, it was identical to male beauty. These kouros figures demonstrated a perfect version of young men without individual personalities – their slim bodies with a left foot forward and arms at their sides didn’t differ much and are mostly derived from ancient Egyptian art.
Later, Greek sculptors decided to follow their own path, abandoning Egyptian schematization. Statues of athletes and deities – precise depictions of the male nudity in ancient art – even nowadays represent an ideal of the muscular male body. With one important clarification: in those early days, people admired healthy athletic physique, the musculature was not to be overdone.
To tell the truth, even the penises of these male statues were not overdone in size, since long ones were a symbol of uncontrollable desires, while the ideal man was supposed to be a model of virtues.
For the first few centuries, the Romans were constantly at war with their neighbors and therefore valued valor, both military and civil, above all else. Their poets praised not the male beauty, but the exploits of heroes.
By the 1st century BC Rome occupied all of Italy, but most importantly, it fought much less and traded much more. If previously a brutal warrior, powerful and bearded, was considered an ideal, now the Romans came to a different understanding of male beauty.
They, like the Greeks, began to prefer slender youths and clean-shaven men with an athletic build, but with the rise of individuals with political power who were not perfect in face and body, many portraits from the Roman era became surprisingly realistic, depicting signs of old age, scars and other physical imperfections. Wealth and power were positioned as the new beauty.
However, Christianity, which came in the last years of the Roman Empire, taught people the idea that nudity was shameful. On the other side, the body of Jesus Christ was supposed to be perfect since he was the son of God. Therefore, an ideal man was not a muscular or intellectual man like he was during antiquity, but someone representing spiritual perfection.
The golden ratio was first mentioned in Euclid’s Elements, the Classical Greek work on mathematics and geometry. At that time, the term was not surrounded by a mystical aura. But in 1509, Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli published the book De divina proportione, which, alongside illustrations by Leonardo da Vinci, praised the ratio as the embodiment of divine beauty and orderliness. Since then, the golden ratio has captured the minds of mankind. And one day its idea was applied to human faces.
Nowadays, Dr. Stephen R. Marquardt, an American plastic surgeon, who specializes in correcting aesthetic defects acquired during adulthood or at birth, has created the ‘golden ratio mask’ – a special pattern that characterizes the appearance as pleasant or, conversely, repulsive.
Numerous studies and experiments have proven: the better a face fits into the Marquardt pattern, the more attractive a person is to others. Actually, this is how we found out that Regé-Jean Page, a British actor, is the most handsome man on the planet, when all elements of his face were measured for physical perfection.
What do we see? Among the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, the beauty of male statues was schematic, but based on geometry. And today we increasingly resort to mathematics and geometry again when talking about beauty. However, male beauty contests are not based on the golden ratio at all, and rely on the opinions of authoritative jury members and all kinds of voting.
At the same time, modern cultural and social phenomena allow men to be not only blondes with blue eyes like Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, or Alain Delon. Male beauty is constantly shifting. Even Generation Z is making its own adjustments. Androgynes are no longer perceived as something out of the ordinary and are approaching beauty standards. Body-positive male models are also not uncommon, and some of them are world-famous.
Guys even paint their nails now. Of course, if they really want it. And these are not only elegant dandies wandering from fashion shows to club parties. There are famous football players, boxers, and musicians who also do the same.
Isn’t the possibility of self-expression related to beauty?
