Relative Beauty

This response submitted by Chris (ChrisM@muohio.edu) at 5:12 pm on 2/21/01. Additions were last made on Thursday, May 16, 2002. Section: .

Interesting topic and a tight focus. In dealing with multiple ideas of beauty, one option may be to give what you think may be "beautiful," "plain," and "unattractive" pictures, but have your subjects rate them 1-10 on physical attractiveness and use their ratings rather than your own.

Also, watch the many other factors that creep into photographs--indications of wealth, status, and popularity often accompany "beauty" photos, and it's difficult to seperate which trait observers value. You may even decide to take photos (I have a digital camera that would work well for this) of the same person, and simply dress them differently, or add blemishes or other "unattractive" features on the computer. This would be a good way to carefully control different aspects of "beauty," (at least as defined in 2-dimensional photos--make sure to keep your observations of friends in social settings). We have a great color printer that would make all the pics look pretty much like original photos.


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