Is Beauty Inborn or Dependent on Culture?

In its examination of the sources of our conception of human beauty, the article turns to the evolutionary approach, according to which beauty is the product of the co-evolution of the ability to perceive beauty in tandem with the development of facial contours and bodily organs considered beautiful. The principal mechanism driving this co-evolution is gender selection, a process that provides reproductive advantages to those individuals displaying specific physical attributes as well as to the partners who prefer those attributes. This process, which explains the universal preference for certain facial contours, physical constitution and color, is explored in depth.