>But I think that aesthetic beauty is multi-dimensional and temporal. A fine wine or a brandy; a sublime cheese and not a fresh glass of milk. There is a very specific kind of electric, youthful beauty which is ephemeral and fleeting. But there are other kinds of beauty which can be subdued and hard to miss, which can appreciate over time. I don't even mean that in a subjective "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" but rather, that beauty objectively can come in more than one form.

I think the opposite. I think the higher level ideal is the illusion. What our base instincts tell us is beauty is the actuality and it's embedded in our biology.

For much of humanity woman have always been valued for their youthful beauty. Pregnancy is costly health-wise and men value youth and beauty because natural beauty conveys better physical genes and youthfulness conveys higher success to conceive a child.

Women are objectified for their beauty by men beauty for real biological reasons. And as a result women who obsess over their own physical beauty also end up being more successful in the mating game. Most of this behavior is the result of evolutionary psychology. This definition of beauty is cold, but it is reality and it is delusional to call it a "misunderstanding" of beauty.

The author writes this article and is drawing upon millions of years of evolutionary instinct and behavior.

>I wish society would accept and circulate this truth rather than the other simpler, convenient, and yet so very wrong lie reflected by this article.

Society doesn't need to circulate anything. Any person with a brain recognizes physical beauty and they know the meaning of the quote "Don't judge a book by it's cover". What's going on is just people are continuously lying to themselves when convenient.

You're saying it here as if someone let's me know of the "truth" and suddenly my instinctual definition of beauty will completely do a 180 and change? No. Unfortunately the cold hard truth is this: You have minimal choice in what you find beautiful. Culture and biological instincts shape your preferences far more than individual choice and you have little control over it.

It's like choosing to find the female form beautiful or the male form beautiful. If I had that choice I can be gay at will. It's convenient to define beauty on your terms when you encounter a woman lamenting the fact she's not beautiful, but your definition of beauty completely flips when talking about sending homosexual people to training camps to train them to be straight... yeah as if they or anyone has a choice. Like I said, your definition is a lie we tell ourselves unconsciously when the situation is convenient.

Sorry to be a downer. But hacker news is a level up above other sites. I think we can handle the truth. In fact I think we prefer it. I prefer to talk about the actual science behind why she feels the way she does and how evolution and biology has shaped this behavior.

Keep in mind it's not one sided. Women objectify men as objects of success and this no doubt shapes mens behavior as much as mens preferences shape women. I have more interest in the interplay of behaviors between men and women then I do idealistic re-definitions of beauty.

Beauty IS in the eye of the beholder, but that eye is built by DNA by which ALL humans share 99.9%.