One problem I see with your insect alien example, which also, in a much greater way, influences human attractiveness, is that there are not just four, or five, or a dozen of physical attractiveness factors, but hundreds of them. And each of these factors influences other factors in different ways, for example:
height on a man is considered attractive
low body fat on a man is considered attractive, but;
a combination of too much height and too little body fat would be unattractive.
My take is there are hundreds, even thousands of traits that fall under “Flawlessness” but they play very weirdly against each other, and thus Appeal is born; a personal subconscious opinion on what sets of traits one likes most.
What is also missing from your analysis, is Beauty-Appeal Vs Sex-Appeal. Some traits trigger our aesthetic appreciation, and some trigger our raw sexual appetite, and not only are these not the same traits, but sometimes opposite ones.
I would define Sex-Appeal as a set of traits, physical and behavioral, that make the person seem:
relatively easy to seduce (for me), also known as DTF (down to fuck)
suggesting they would be good at sex
suggesting their body would feel nice to touch
vaguely related to strong Secondary Sexual Characteristics
Meanwhile, Beauty-Appeal are sets of purely aesthetic Flawlessness traits, that do not correspond to the above points at all, but show symmetry, golden ratio, aesthetically striking color palette etc. The make a person a perfect model, someone you would love to take pictures of, paint or draw, rather than get raunchy with.
I would even take it further, many of the Beauty-Appeal traits take away from Sex-Appeal, because some of them are signifiers of innocence, youth, or vaguely stand-offish perfection, that make the person seem like they would not be DTF. We subconsciously disengage from thoughts about having sex with such a person, regardless whether or not these traits truly signify their DTF. Some examples:
One problem I see with your insect alien example, which also, in a much greater way, influences human attractiveness, is that there are not just four, or five, or a dozen of physical attractiveness factors, but hundreds of them.
Absolutely. Some are simple, legible, and included in our morphometric models explicitly as measurements (height, skin color). Some are highly compound, perceived on a subconscious level and can only be modeled via data science (“aggressiveness”).
height on a man is considered attractive
low body fat on a man is considered attractive, but;
a combination of too much height and too little body fat would be unattractive.
Yes, for each flawlessness model there’s a maximum point with no flaws, and deviating from this point would lower your score in this model. You can imagine your example as a two-dimensional graph with a maximum value at some combination of (height, body fat), and deviating from that combination would lower the score.
My take is there are hundreds, even thousands of traits that fall under “Flawlessness” but they play very weirdly against each other, and thus Appeal is born; a personal subconscious opinion on what sets of traits one likes most.
How many traits are there in the best-performing flawlessness model nowadays? I’d describe sequence of events in another order: Appeal is born first, Desirability is an approximation of Appeal, and Flawlessness is a proxy of Desirability. Each one is more usable but also more detached from reality than the last.
One problem I see with your insect alien example, which also, in a much greater way, influences human attractiveness, is that there are not just four, or five, or a dozen of physical attractiveness factors, but hundreds of them. And each of these factors influences other factors in different ways, for example:
height on a man is considered attractive
low body fat on a man is considered attractive, but;
a combination of too much height and too little body fat would be unattractive.
My take is there are hundreds, even thousands of traits that fall under “Flawlessness” but they play very weirdly against each other, and thus Appeal is born; a personal subconscious opinion on what sets of traits one likes most.
What is also missing from your analysis, is Beauty-Appeal Vs Sex-Appeal. Some traits trigger our aesthetic appreciation, and some trigger our raw sexual appetite, and not only are these not the same traits, but sometimes opposite ones.
I would define Sex-Appeal as a set of traits, physical and behavioral, that make the person seem:
relatively easy to seduce (for me), also known as DTF (down to fuck)
suggesting they would be good at sex
suggesting their body would feel nice to touch
vaguely related to strong Secondary Sexual Characteristics
Meanwhile, Beauty-Appeal are sets of purely aesthetic Flawlessness traits, that do not correspond to the above points at all, but show symmetry, golden ratio, aesthetically striking color palette etc. The make a person a perfect model, someone you would love to take pictures of, paint or draw, rather than get raunchy with.
I would even take it further, many of the Beauty-Appeal traits take away from Sex-Appeal, because some of them are signifiers of innocence, youth, or vaguely stand-offish perfection, that make the person seem like they would not be DTF. We subconsciously disengage from thoughts about having sex with such a person, regardless whether or not these traits truly signify their DTF.
Some examples:
Melodic, high female voice: beauty
raspy, low pitched female voice: sexy
Flawless skin: beauty
Tattoos and “cool” scars: sexy
hairless male chest: beauty
hirsute male chest: sexy
perfectly sized medium breasts: beauty
oversized breast: sexy
Absolutely. Some are simple, legible, and included in our morphometric models explicitly as measurements (height, skin color). Some are highly compound, perceived on a subconscious level and can only be modeled via data science (“aggressiveness”).
Yes, for each flawlessness model there’s a maximum point with no flaws, and deviating from this point would lower your score in this model. You can imagine your example as a two-dimensional graph with a maximum value at some combination of (height, body fat), and deviating from that combination would lower the score.
How many traits are there in the best-performing flawlessness model nowadays?
I’d describe sequence of events in another order: Appeal is born first, Desirability is an approximation of Appeal, and Flawlessness is a proxy of Desirability. Each one is more usable but also more detached from reality than the last.