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Aesth Plast Surg (2010) 34:800801 DOI 10.1007/s00266-010-9606-7
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Attractive Composite Faces of Different Races
Seung Chul Rhee Soo Hyang Lee
Published online: 17 October 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC and International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery 2010
Existing evidence suggests that the standards of facial attractiveness are similar across genders and cultures [1]. Researchers have reported that the computer-generated, mathematical average of a series of faces was rated more favorably than the individual faces [2]. On the other hand, although some controversy exists regarding the signicance of the average and attractive faces, Perrett et al. [3] have insisted that highly attractive facial congurations are not an average. Many authors have reported that the average faces are different from attractive faces and that attractive faces differ considerably according to race [48]. I agree with the opinion that the average face is not an attractive face and that the most attractive face is the average of attractive faces.
Recently, although some scholars have attempted to unify facial beauty using the concept of the golden proportion, Holland [9, 10] proved that a phi mask, namely, the divine proportion or golden ratio, did not appear to describe the ideal face shape and showed the many limitations of traditional morphometrics in research on the
attractiveness of faces. Because I absolutely agree with him, I introduced examples of attractive composite faces from different races in the follow-up article that I submitted [11].
The composite faces in Fig. 1 that exemplify...