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(09-11-2015, 08:27 AM)LadyRochester Wrote: Isn't beauty subjective?
...In essence, is the beauty of the character truly judged by the player themselves or the audience? If someone makes a character everyone considers ugly, except themselves, should they really lazily describe themselves as "beautiful"? Should they get upset when other characters don't act with praise towards their appearance?
There are actually multiple schools of thought pertaining to this topic.
"Classical" beauty is actually objective; it is defined by mathematical proportions that were established in Greco-Roman art and revived multiple times by Western European cultures. There are specific ratios for the face as well as the body as a whole (which one could break down further). I won't get list the details here, unless someone asks for it, but good example of a person with a classically beautiful face is Scarlett Johansson; her face has a high degree of symmetry, and the ratios between:
hairline/forehead/brow/eye/nose/mouth/chin (vertical)
eye/nose/eye (horizontal)
are all quite close to the "ideal".
This is not to say that value only derives from numbers; rather, in this context, "beauty" is an objective concept, whereas "attractiveness" encompasses the subjective part. We might find the color of someone's eyes to be particularly alluring or compelling - that attribute just isn't a component of the classical formula.
*It should also be noted that "classical" beauty also applies to architecture and artistic composition (the term "the golden ratio" originated within architectural theory.
As far as RP goes, I consider a description of a character as "beautiful" to be more along the lines of "unhelpful" than anything else. If someone asked you to use the CC to create a "beautiful" Elezen alongside a "normal" Elezen, what differences would you make? Aside from shying away from some of the more obviously strange faces, I doubt most of us have any idea.
In Eorzea, we are provided with little to no information as to what the different races and cultures perceive as (physically) beautiful. Aside from that sorta creepy "bodice assessor" Hyur in Limsa Lominsa. For all we know, Every Miqo'te without the fluffy tail may be considered super homely XD