Events & Issues

New Delhi, 14 February 2011

Beauty Booms

LOOK GOOD, GO PLACES

By Suraj Saraf

The Indian beauty industry has already touched over Rs. 1800 crores and is growing fast, very fast. At a scorching pace of 25 per cent annually. Indeed, India’s famed beauty provider Shahnaz Hussain succinctly hit the nail on the head. Asserted she, “More and more people are realizing that looking beautiful is not just a matter of make-up, hair style and trendy clothes. Fitness and natural beauty play an important role. They are now ready to spend both time and money on looking good,” Hussain added for good measure.

Importantly, research suggests that good looking people do better in competitions in life than those who look plain or downright ugly. Given that humans are born with a biologically ingrained preference for beauty.

Arguably, what is beauty? Is it the emerging research which underpins that beauty is much more than skin deep? These questions have been debated for years among sociologists and economists. It all started when the 1992 Nobel Laureate in economics Gary Becker suggested that queries about the beauty quotient and research took roots because of discrimination over physical characteristics, be it looks, height or races.

This is not all. According to the latest research even where there is blind testing good looking people perform better. One reason for this, suggest researchers, is that attractive children get more attention from their parents. Even more important is that good looks lead to higher self-confidence. Attractive people are more confident and work harder.

“Physical appearance has a significant and economically meaningful effect on the performance of the students,” asserted Associate Professor of Economies Gian Pietre Cipriani, the author of a study at Italy’s famed University of Verona. Added he, “First of all, being handsome increases the probability that a student sits for and passes the exams. Second and more important, better looking students have better performances than other students”.

In fact, this is corroborated by previous researches which also underscore that good looking people had more success at job interviews and in finding a spouse. After all, a confident person, as good looking people generally are, is more likely to be trusted with important work than a person who has to struggle for attention.  

For the some inexplicable reason even taller persons are said to take greater risks than those short because they too exude more self-confidence than others. A study by the Bonn University and another by the Berlin-based German Institute for Economic Research and Study of Labour also highlighted that tall people were more prepared to take risks than their shorter counter-parts. Researchers said that the willingness to take risks depends on body height: for every centimeter the amount invested rose by 200.

There is a good reason for assuming a certain fundamental tendency whereby different people around the world recognize and accept a common ideal of beauty. Thus one can safely say that to a certain extent beauty should have an objectively aesthetic basis. However, there is no gainsaying that the human aesthetic ideal is modified. More. It is not only variously modified in different countries but also personalized in the same country at different periods, by the influence of national or racial type.

Significantly, in the first notable six scientific studies about “Psychology of Sex” by Henry Havelock Ellis in England in 1859-1939 accentuated the influence of a race or nation when one undertook an assessment of beauty.

Also, it is no secret that beauty bewitches even infants. Experiments have proved that the attraction for good looks and beauty is ingrained among humans from the very start of their lives. Babies are born with an eye for beauty and hours old infants choose to stare at attractive faces rather than plain ones. Leading a Developmental Psychologist Alan Slater at England’s University of Exeter to surmise that humans are biologically drawn towards beautiful people.

In an experiment, Slater presented a photographic choice to almost 100 new-borns, on an average only two-and-a-half years old. The two sets of photographs were composites created by computers from a number of faces. They followed a psychological consensus that faces with features that were close to the human average in size and shapes were perceived to be attractive.

It was noted that shown two sets of faces, babies spent more time looking at the attractive faces. As a result, the experiment suggested that humans build up their concept of attractiveness based on an average of all the faces they saw.

Essentially even though the visual ability to detect fine detail was not perfect, the babies were able to make sense of the visual world right from the word go. Asserted a senior Indian psychologist, “You can show pair after pair of faces where they are matched for every thing apart from attractiveness, and the infants will look at the more attractive one….. Leading to the conclusion that babies are born with a fairly detailed representation of the human face that allows them to detect and recognize the faces.”

Any wonder then that this ingrained tendency for attractiveness or “beauty factor” makes a profound difference between good looking persons, even if they are not ramp models, and the plain or ugly ones, in all walks of life.

Shockingly, nearly 20 per cent Americans undergo cosmetic surgery which they believe will not only make them look and feel better but also consequently lead to their increased performance. Even in China, image conscious citizens had to be warned against using the “rack” to strengthen and lengthen their legs after several such operations went wrong. These operations had become popular among young professionals who were “desperate to climb up the ladder in the country’s height conscious society.”

Sums up Shahnaz Hussain, “Improving the appearance boosts self-confidence and this is a necessary factor in the increasingly competitive career world of today. There is an increase in the number of people, fresh graduates and professionals undergoing laser treatments for skin, hair and body care,” she adds. Clearly, looking good is a natural urge and cosmetic surgery helps in fulfilling this urge. Let’s toast beauty! ---- INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)