Does This Woman Have the Perfect Face?

Meet Florence Colgate, student and mathematical ideal

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So much for leaving beauty up to the eye of the beholder. Basing its results on a series of studies published in 2009 on the mathematical formula for faces deemed most attractive, British firm Lorraine Cosmetics announced the winner of its search for “Britain’s Perfect Face.” Meet 18-year-old Florence Colgate, a student from Kent, England, whose features were determined to almost completely fit the mathematical standard.

The perfect face, according to the study, has a distance between the pupils of 46% of the entire face; the distance between the eyes and the mouth should be just over a third of the distance from the hairline to the chin.

Colgate’s ratios were 44% and 32.8%, respectively. In addition, her features are symmetrical, which, according to a 1998 study by Gillian Rhodes, is generally considered more attractive. She’s also possessed of some of the more traditional traits of beauty: large eyes, full lips and high cheekbones.

But the cosmetics company might have been on to something when it called its contest a search for the “perfect face” rather than the “most beautiful face.” The two are by no means synonymous. And the company might want keep in mind next time that nothing manages to objectify women quite like breaking down their features to a blueprint.

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