What is Beauty?

I've nicked this straight out of Jared Diamond (The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee).

He asked some of his friends from the Fore tribe in New Guinea about their taste in women.

'Women of other New Guinea tribes are less attractive, and white women are unspeakably hideous. Just compare your white women with our women to see why - white skin like a sick albino's, straight hair like strings, sometimes even hair coloured yellow like dead grass or red like a poisonous snail, thin lips and narrow noses like axe blades, big eyes like a cow's, a repulsive smell when they sweat, and breasts and nipples of the wrong shape. When you get ready to buy a wife, find a Fore if you want someone beautiful'.

The whole chapter on how we are attracted to others is really very interesting.

So if they've never seen anything like her before, I doubt they'll be struck by her beauty.

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You euthanised your companion cube faster than any test subject on record. Congratulations!

Generally the novelty may be seen as a good thing. I know blondes get a lot of attention in places where blonde isn't common like Japan. Redheads similarly. They may see the skin colour as 'too different' to be comfortable with - and something like the height might put some of them off. But humans aren't terribly restricted by just upbringing, get to know someone and they can start to be attractive to you. I would imagine that someone meeting a person the likes of which they'd never seen before would also start to see familiar things in their features. Red hair like the flames - or more amber like the earth - or even light like a sunset. Even flowers, or the sky, that sort of thing. Even just the forms - without the colours - might be appealing to some (probably not all of them). Also what about the girl? Does she see beauty in the features of those around her too?

I have nothing witty or insightful to put here yet.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I think it is posibly that anyone, anywhere, can find anyone beautiful even if no one else finds that person beautiful.

Sometimes if you see someone who looks totally differant from you, your first responce is revulsion and other times it is beauty you see. It all depends on the individual person, how they were brought up, what their parants taught, how their parants treat "differant" folks, how others in their age group treat others, what religion they were raised in, and that persons our personal tastes.

If you have a village with 100 natives, each of those 100 natives is going to view the newcomer in a differant way.

Another thing you may want to consider is that in many native tribes, religion plays a major role in everything they do, from what they wear, to what they eat, to who they speak to at what time of day. It is highly likely that a native tribe will see a pale skined, blue eyed, redhead as being a demon sent to cast a plauge on thier crops. They are likely to than be required (by their relgious convictions and traditions) to kill her, bury her heart and eat her brain (as the Jale` tribe of PNG believes even today) in order to destroy the bad "vibes" she put on their yam harvest.

Remember, it's your story, they are your characters, you can write them to act and respond any way you want them too.

A lot of it depends on what connotations the culture has about appearance. For instance, it used to be more fashionable for women to have fair skin in many western societies because wealthy, privileged women were able to spend their days in the shade, while poorer women were sometimes required to do work outdoors or run errands. Today, it's reversed in a lot of places, at least in many places in America. People tend to associate spending time out in the sun with leisure and health, and see women with a slight tan as being healthier and prettier than very pale women.

At the same time, sometimes people who such features as different hair color than the norm can be viewed as exotic or interesting.

Does your culture have any reason, aside from it being the norm, to view their appearance as being superior? Maybe they value shortness in women because they consider it dainty, or because they view it as more practical for the dominate industry in their society, for example?

All sociology and psychology aside: Beauty is not solely determined by the physical.

Mystery can be alluring. Power can be sexy. Patience, warmth of spirit, grace, knowledge, kindness - these are all beautiful.

Subtle things - the eloquence of how one moves their body, the shape of the shadow they cast in the sunlight, neatly trimmed fingernails, a scar one doesn't go to great lengths to hide - can be as beautiful as a perfectly proportionate face, lots of make-up, and good child-bearing hips.

Of course, that could just be my take on it.

The Midnight Passenger - Substrate for Obscurity.

Beauty is order, design, and symmetries. Beauty is proportions.

A different culture might center their perceptions around certain aspects of the design but generally, symmetry and balance is an ideal.

It is not necessarily a concious thing either. We may not be able to put our fingers on why a certain woman is beautiful but maybe it is something as simple as the curves of the cheekbones mirroring the curve and proportion of that person's breasts and the brest proportions exactly matchign the size of buttocks. The relationship likewise between breast shape and hip shape is critical. Does the curve of the back have some clear relationship with the line of the belly? Does the whole composition of the figure generate ongoing movement of the eye as it appreciates the form or do the lines of the form naturalyy force the eye downward and out of the picture, so to speak.

Beauty doesn't necessarily have to be physical attraction. In a story I read, a blind man describes to the girl he likes how he "sees" her.

“Now you...silk-soft skin, completely natural and not marred by foundation and powder. Your scent comes from the nature-scented soaps you like with a little bit of sweat from a good workout and a touch of leather to round it off and give you a nice, exotic feel. Then your voice, strong and confident, letting everyone know that you’ll get what you want and bow to nobody. Coupled with that squeak you make when you laugh…god, if you’re not beautiful then no one is worthy of the title.”

Sapere Aude ^_~

I think they'd be interested in her points of difference but not necessarily because they perceive her as beautiful. She'd be more different to them in a freakish kind of way. Depending on the time you're setting the story in, and the cultural beliefs of the society, they may even think that she's "cursed" etc, or endowed with special powers...

I've also had conversations with Chinese friends who've told me that Asian people often can't really tell the difference between us whiteys. Our faces all look the same to them.

Good luck!

OR, this native tribe might have a great goddess that she resembles, and therefore, may welcome her happily and have a great big party in her favor. Unless she's this goddess isn't the type that they like (like the goddess of great fire, or goddess of the underworld) and if it is, they might chase her with burning branches, or water, or something unpleasant...

If they have never ever seen anything like her before, they're unlikely to think she's a stunner. If they had seen people like her before, but such people didn't exist in their own society, she could be exotic but if they've never seen any of her people before they'd probably just think she's a freak (ungainly, eyes that may seem to them to be blind, clashing hair, sickly skin blah blah)

Having said that, everyone perceives differently. It's going to sound silly to a lot of readers if she walks in and a whole bunch of people go "phwoar", though. Even those who find her striking would probably be hesitant to express it, and would more likely have an initial shock response and then find her beautiful only after the initial shock.

I think beauty depends on the personality more than the person themselves. I've known beautiful girls everyone hates, and ugly chicks that everyone loves.

"One does not simply walk into Mordor."
"In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth! All shall love me and despair!"- LotR

Well, I guess you could try to imagine someone taller than anyone you've ever seen before, with eyes that are not blue, green, or brown, maybe orange. This person also has a hair color you've never seen before--how about green or blue? My guess is that they wouldn't find her beautiful (physically--and at least until they get used to her different looks), but bizarre. They might even think her hair color and stuff isn't real, it's caused by dye or something. My guess is that she couldn't go anywhere without getting stares, mostly out of curiosity and did I really just see that?

Really depends. In general, people tend to see "other" as less attractive until they can recognize in it some commonality. Look at the modelling industry - for decades they only wanted to use white models, and when they did introduce black models, they selected black women with more "white" characteristics, like Tyra Banks, who has green eyes, fairly light skin and a relatively small nose.

I think in cultures where "lighter" skin is seen as more attractive, this is often because in the past, that culture has interacted with a European culture in a way (usually through imperialism) that the white people were considered the highest class (usually because the British or whoever settled the town and basically forced the locals to be their servants). Through generations, the two cultures begin breeding together, and so a native who has lighter skin is considered more "high class" than someone with darker skin - because they look more like the people in power. India is a perfect example of this, where the Brahmins (the highest caste) are often the lightest. Also, light skin traditionally was seen as a sign of wealth (even in mainly-white countries like the U.S.) because if you had a tan it meant you were out working the field and if you were pale it meant you could sit inside all day and be fanned by someone else. So this logic applied to countries like India as well. (Of course today that is beginning to be reversed a bit - because if you're really rich you go tanning all the time and can fly to St Tropez whenever you like).

So it would help if your villagers had some experience with light-skinned people. Since they haven't met anyone like her, perhaps a way around this would be that they have some folk tale or story about a god they worship, so they are all raised to believe that if they ever meet a person paler than the moon and with hair like fire that this person will possess magical powers --- something along those lines. That way when they meet her, they may not think she is beautiful based on cultural norms, but they have some legend that tells them that she is stunning in some magical way.

Other things that make people beautiful: the golden ratio suggests that beauty has to do with the proportions in our face, etc. Other studies suggest that beauty is the most average of things (eg if you take the photos of 2 individuals and make an "average" of all of their dimensions on the computer, people will almost always find the "average" photo more attractive than either of the individuals). It might help if, aside from her skin/eye/hair color and height, your character meets other standards of beauty of this culture (body weight, curves, etc). Or not.