To what extent is beauty quantifiable? Does a supposedly scientific definition merely reflect the ideal of the moment, built from the images of pop culture and the news media?
“How can they prove it?” said Lois W. Banner, a historian who has studied changing beauty standards, referring to scientific efforts to define attractiveness. “They are never going to locate it on a gene. They are never going to get away from the cultural influence.”
Tommer Leyvand, who developed the “beautification” software with three others at Tel Aviv University and who works in development for Microsoft in Redmond, Wash., said the goal was not to argue that the altered faces are more beautiful than the originals. Instead, he said, it was to tackle the challenge of altering a face according to agreed-upon standards of attractiveness, while producing a result that left the face completely recognizable, rather than the product of cosmetic surgery or digital retouching.
“This tool shows in the most simple fashion how easy it is to manipulate photographs and make people more attractive,” Mr. Leyvand said. “But the difference is so subtle that it just shows how insignificant it is. We’re talking about a few inches maybe and a slightly changed perception.”
For most faces, the software made subtle changes, with the person’s essence and character largely intact. In the case of the woman pictured on the front page of this section, the changes were more striking, probably because her features, Mr. Leyvand said, do appear more ethnic than many of the other women and men he photographed. (The researchers have not yet created a program that would be designed with what they call a beauty estimator for nonwhite racial and ethnic groups.)