Comic Strips

Bi guy here:

lol wtf, Pete Davidson is like, the most average looking dude ever.

He's probably just popular because people write 'funny' things for him to say, and people enjoy laughing, and he's basically nice / goofy / safe.

Now Adrian Brody?

Ok, so, he actually has a chisled, yet slender face. He also has a ... fairly uncommon kind of nose, for someone with such a chiseled yet slender face.

That makes him, imo, a kind of ... very distinctive, 'controversial' kind of beautiful.

And what I mean by controversial is that... basically, there are facial proportions that are just generally seen as attractive, by most people.

But there are also people who more or less follow thoae typical 'beautiful to everyone' proportions, but, have some elements that wildly diverge from the 'generally beautiful to everyone' proportions.

This has been studied, and such people tend to be rated extremely beautiful by some people, and extremely unnatractive by other people.

Thus 'controversially beautiful'; you either really find such a face very appealing, or you really don't, very few people rate them as middling or average.

So, for what you describe as basically someone being drunk in the proverbial character creator menu?

Well, yeah, see, thats the kind of thing that can result in a face that some people are really into, and others are really not. You're clearly in the 'not into it' camp, but a lot of women are in the 'into it' camp.

To attempt a similar kind of comparison with what I'd think is a controversially beautiful female face:

Look up Dichen Lachmann.

Heritage? Australian and Tibetan.

Yeah hows that for 'drunk in the character creator menu'?

She has very striking and unique facial proportions, personally, I'm a big fan of them, but also, as I think she is 'controversially beautiful', I would expect a fair number of people to basically describe her as very strange looking, the way you describe Brody.

But beyond all that: Brody is actually just a very good actor, pretty talented, so... it makes sense to me that people would generally appreciate that and also find that beautiful.

Anyway, yeah, there is actual 'science', or at least exhaustive data analysis, that can give you an idea of how percieved beauty 'works', going by actual measurements of facial proportions.

Some people, some combinations of ranges of facial proportions... are just generally agreed to be unattractive, average, attractive...

... while others are 'controversial' with basically the opposite of a bell curve distribution, a two peak with a valley in the middle...

...other kinds of people, sets of facial proportion ranges, are generally more or less beautiful to certain identifiable subsets of people... you've got the whole oval/circle/triangle/diamond/heart/square rough face types, long used to help people pick out haircuts and glasses that look good on them... for artists to mockup chatacter designs with...

There are infact statistically identifiable and defineable 'types' of faces that certain people find more or less attractive, this kind of thing can be substantiated and defined with math. Its just that humans typically do that 'math' in their heads subconsciously, heuristically, and use a widely varying array of often just nonsensical adjectives to try and actually describe this... because that underlying math is actually very complicated.

That and most people also have varying exposure to different kinds of faces, depending on a whole lot of other variables, and that will to some degree also shape their perception of what is and is not beautiful.

And finally beyond that, sometimes there's just no accounting for some kinds of personal tastes and preferences.