Sophie Fontanel Meets Florence Colgate |

Sophie Fontanel Meets Florence Colgate |

Last year, a modeling contest claimed to have found the most beautiful woman in Britain: Florence Colgate, an 18-year-old who worked at a chip shop in Kent. As the Daily Mail later pointed out, Colgate’s face is nearly exactly symmetrical, with measurements matching ratios scientists have identified in the faces of exceptionally beautiful people: the distance between the pupils just less than half the distance between the ears, the distance from eyes to mouth just more than one-third the distance from hairline to chin.

Plastic Surgery Means Many Beauty Queens, But Only One Kind of Face

Plastic Surgery Means Many Beauty Queens, But Only One Kind of Face

At first glance, the images of the contestants in the 2013 Miss Korea pageant seem like a trick of the eye:  

Wait, are some of these the same person with different hair? At second glance, it's clear that there are different women in each photo, but they have very similar features. 

The pictures of the Miss Korea contestants have gone viral over the past 48 hours, showing up on a Japanese blog, then Reddit, and now major international papers. It's obvious that people are stunned, mesmerized, intrigued and incredulous by just how much the contestants look alike. ShenTheWise who originally posted images of the women on Reddit wrote: "Korea’s plastic surgery mayhem is finally converging on the same face." 

As previously discussed, South Korea is the country with the highest per capita rate of plastic surgery in the world. One in five women in Seoul have undergone some kind of procedure. In January, when the Korean Plastic Surgery Tumblr went viral, studying the "after" images lead to the conclusion that the "best" face, the optimal look, is one with wide eyes, a pointed chin and a narrow nose.

As one young lady from Singapore who flew to Korea for a nose job (she's already had her eyes done) writes:

“I didn’t do surgery becox people say i look ugly… I didn’t do surgery becox anyone told me i am ugly. I mean, sometimes people (especially people online *stares*) do tell me i am ugly lol. But that’s not why i did surgery.
I did the surgery for myself. Becox i want to have a nicer nose…
I just wanna say that i don’t think i look ugly before lah! I look decent, and especially with makeup and all, everyone can look pretty. Okay, not everyone, most people, with makeup, can look good. But i still choose to do surgery becox i wanna be even better-looking. That’s all.
Let’s say i am a 65/100 before surgery. That’s not BAD-BAD. But there’s absolutely nothing wrong if i want to do something to make me a 75/100. This is also a form of self-improvement and i am sure everyone is up for that.”

We can only assume that attempts at self-improvement is why the 2013 Miss Korea contestants look so similar: All of the ladies are slender, all of the chins are pointy, all of the noses are narrow, almost all of the eyes are flat on the bottom and round on top, like a half-circle. Cosmetic surgery template? 

While this incredibly narrow definition of beauty is unnerving, it's not something Koreans have cornered the market on: Take Victoria's Secret 2012 What Is Sexy? list. Most of the women named were skinny, blonde, with big eyes, narrow noses and wide smiles. And it's not just VS: Over the past few years, the covergals on American ladymags have been a homogenous bunch, and the high fashion runways in New York are not very diverse. Even though we're a nation populated by folks from different countries and of various ethnicities, the women elevated to fame and fortune — the ones chosen to market fashion and beauty products, the ones we, collectively, as a nation, have deemed beautiful — have a very definite, uniform and similar look. 

 

What makes us gravitate toward such limited notions of beauty? Why do we reject one chin or nose shape and embrace another? And when it comes to the Miss Korea pageant, what does the winner have that the other women don't? Do the losers head back to the drawing board — on the operating table? And even more important: Why is being beautiful — not compassionate, smart, strong, creative, funny, trustworthy or kind — the best thing a woman can be? 

Has Plastic Surgery Made These 20 Korean Beauty Pageant Contestants Look the Same? [Daily Mail]

Miss Korea 2013 Contestants Spark Plastic Surgery Debate [IBT]

Earlier: I Can't Stop Looking at These South Korean Women Who've Had Plastic Surgery

1.618 Phi, The Golden Ratio, God Creator of Heaven and Earth - YouTube

Uploaded on 27 Sep 2009

1.618 is a mathematical formula that is found in many things, thus proving the universe was created by Intelligent Design, that is, God.

Some images and text courtesy of
http://www.goldennumber.net
Gary B. Meisner, Copyright 2006.

The golden ratio in the human face - YouTube

 

Uploaded on 10 May 2010

What is The Golden Ratio? Click to learn:

http://harunyahyablog.blogspot.com/20...

The human face - Beauty (1 - 6)

Victoria's Secret Model: Looks aren't everything

By NICKY CHAMP

“Saying that you want to be a model when you grow up is akin to saying that you want to win the Powerball when you grow up. It’s out of your control and it’s awesome — and it’s not a career path.”

This is just one of the honest, surprising and incredibly insightful thoughts shared by Victoria’s Secret model, Cameron Russell in her recent TED talk that has quickly gone viral.

During the nine minute speech (take the time if you possibly can), Russell tackles the issue of body image, challenges our society’s perception of beauty and talks about how, at age 16, the fashion industry “constructed” a highly sexualised and unrealistic image of her.

Russell also advises little girls who aspire to be models to consider careers as “ninja cardio-thoracic poets” instead.

If you can’t watch the video because you’re still hanging out for that national broadband network to be connected (congrats to the 27 people who are hooked up) or you’re at work and your boss expects you to you know, work (outrageous) – then we’ve broken down Russell’s message below.

She tells the assembled crowd that: “For the past few centuries we have defined beauty not just as health and youth and symmetry that we’re biologically programmed to admire, but also as tall, slender figures and femininity and white skin and this is a legacy that was built for me and this is a legacy I’ve cashed out on.”

Russell goes on to demonstrate the reality behind six of her fashion editorial images for Vogue, V and Allure magazines. She effortlessly dispels the common belief that life would be better or easier if only we were slimmer or more beautiful.

“If you ever think, ‘If I had thinner thighs and shinier hair, wouldn’t I be happier,” you just need to meet a group of models. They have the thinnest thighs and the shiniest hair and the coolest clothes and they are the most physically insecure women, probably, on the planet,” Rusell says.

Russell (in her 10 years of experience in the industry) confirms that most of the fashion images we see are not only retouched but manipulated by teams of people in order to portray unattainable levels of perfection/beauty/sex appeal.



The photo on the above left is Russell’s first ever fashion editorial as a model. Shot for Allure magazine in 2003 when she was 16 years old, Russell says of the fashion shoot, “this is also the first very time that I wore a bikini, and I didn’t even had my period yet… I was a young girl, this is what I looked [on the right] with my grandma just a few months earlier.”



“In this picture [above] I had actually never had a boyfriend in real life, I was totally uncomfortable and the photographer was telling me to arch my back and put my hand in that guy’s hair,” Russell says.



It’s pretty hard to believe that both of these images were shot on the same day. On the right Russell appears to be a carefree teenager, on the left a seductive goddess well beyond her adolescence.



This is a photo of Russell for French Vogue, the photo on the right was taken a few days prior to the fashion shoot at a friend’s slumber party.



Russell in V magazine epitomising every bit the vampy seductress – a stark contrast to the the reality on the right of a teenager gearing up for soccer practice.



Of the cover for German Vogue Russell says: “In December I was shooting in the Bahamas, and on the way back I was in a boat with other people staying on the same island. One woman was going on and on about the model she’d seen on the beach who was ‘so gorgeous.’ Of course, that model had been me in hair, makeup and a neon bikini. The whole 30-minute boat ride she didn’t recognise me. I was sitting directly across from her wearing sweatpants, a windbreaker, no makeup and hair up in a bun.”

Moral of this story? The images we see – and perhaps unconsciously aspire to – are not real.

“They are constructions by a group of professionals: by hair stylists, make-up artists and photographers and stylists and all of their assistants and pre-production and post production and they build this, that’s not me,” says Russell.

Spinning Dancer - Wikipedia

Spinning Dancer - Wikipedia

 

Bistable perception

Depending on the perception of the observer, the apparent direction of spin may change any number of times, a typical feature of so-called bistable percepts such as the Necker cube which may be perceived from time to time as seen from above or below. These alternations are spontaneous and may randomly occur without any change in the stimulus or intention by the observer. However some observers may have difficulty perceiving a change in motion at all.

One way of changing the direction perceived is to use averted vision and mentally look for an arm going behind instead of in front, then carefully move the eyes back. Some may perceive a change in direction more easily by narrowing visual focus to a specific region of the image, such as the spinning foot or the shadow below the dancer and gradually looking upwards. One can also try to tilt one's head to perceive a change in direction.

Another way is to watch the base shadow foot, and perceive it as the toes always pointing away from you and it can help with direction change. You can also close your eyes and try and envision the dancer going in a direction then reopen them and the dancer should change directions. Still another way is to wait for the dancer's legs to cross in the projection and then try to perceive a change in the direction in what follows.

You could also try using your peripheral vision to distract the dominant part of the brain, slowly look away from the ballerina and you may begin to see it spin in the other direction. Perhaps the easiest method is to blink rapidly (slightly varying the rate if necessary) until consecutive images are going in the 'new' direction. Then open your eyes and the new rotational direction is maintained. It is even possible to see the illusion in a way that the dancer is not spinning at all, but simply rotating back and forth 180 degrees.

Slightly altered versions of the image exist in which an additional visual cue facilitates the perception of counterclockwise spin and clockwise spin. Looking at one of these can then make the original dancer image above spin in the corresponding direction.