18 Comments
User's avatar
Chuckie Pierce's avatar

Russia

Italy

Denmark

One caveat, the women are not all "mugshots". Performing the experiment produced results favoring a "soft openness" followed by other expressions. Then, the neutral "mugshots." Last was UK who looked hostile.

Though it does give credence to your position that individual preferences select for and express personal beauty standards within and between ranking levels.

Hair color can select one 10 as more beautiful than the other 10s in that particular set due to such preferences. Or, perceived availability. Or, "Cindy Crawford's Mole". Or, etc.

Expand full comment
The Kurgan's avatar

Exactly. The UK one was actually close for me but she had far too prominent a jaw.

Expand full comment
Chuckie Pierce's avatar

Agreed. Without the jawline, she'd be high-mugshot.

Expand full comment
Defier of Gravity's avatar

-Spain (child-bearing vibes)

-Australia (partner-in-crime vibes)

-and *inconclusive* (I may have said Ukraine, but this AI image does not indicate a perfect Ukrainian ‘10’; I’ve seen real Ukrainian/Russian women more attractive to me)

Overall I’m in agreement with your argument. I was the one Vox quoted in his follow-up post “Who gets to decide what beauty is, is it us?”

Expand full comment
Skúli Jakobsson's avatar

Ireland, Denmark and Ukraine a distant 3.rd.

Great post!

Expand full comment
The Kurgan's avatar

Given your own ethnicity, it makes sense.

Expand full comment
Skúli Jakobsson's avatar

Indeed, birds of feather, flock together.

Expand full comment
B. E. Gordon's avatar

It does appear that men tend to prefer women from their own or nearby ethnicities over less-related women, all else being equal.

(Well, unless they’re unhinged liberals who hate their own people and want to put blacks in all the TV ads and the like.)

Expand full comment
The Kurgan's avatar

That too is a trait that has been measured statistically, the exception is that every race seems to think on average white women are prettier and black women the lowest ranked. Hence the old saying that white women are a black man’s kryptonite.

Expand full comment
Cube Cubis's avatar

Like everything there is no absolute, which is what idiots like that french philosopher foucault used to then drag out to the nth degree that there is nothing... It´s all about statistics fellas.

Each race of people seem to focus on something different faces/body parts as being a beauty standard and then its just a bell curve from there. Why black guys love huge butts is beyond me, I think they´re hideous, but it´s all bell curves for different facets centered around a norm.

Most guys would find perky boobs to be far more attractive than big saggers, but there definitely are there at the extreme ends of the, in this case, pareto graph.

If you averaged out 1000 Icelandic guys you would get a different peak on the chart compared to a tribesman of the kalahari, but each peak would revolve around some kind of symmetry and be related to the golden ratio.

Expand full comment
front wheels's avatar

Your collection here reminds of the first attempts I saw of AI drawing portraits of beautiful people of various ethnicities (this was several years ago); they were uniformly on the level of very poor caricature. AI has come a long way in this regard.

And, while none of the images above are ugly, most don't appeal to me at all (although I can see where others might find some of them beautiful). The standouts for me were Spain, Italy, and Greece (in that order).

BTW: I'm not a subscriber to Vox's Sigma stack, so I'm not sure what his point was about the oriental woman pictured just before the paywall, but to me, she's ugly as a hedge fence.

Expand full comment
Trumpanagan's avatar

The Asian girls have western noses, so I'd classify all of them as plastic surgery recipients. As well the jaw lines between all those nationalities would be way more distinct. These pictures aren't even close to authentic.

Expand full comment
Trumpanagan's avatar

Also the cheek bones are off and generic too.

Expand full comment
Shefi1280's avatar

Thanks for the pics of beautiful women. Of course, I immediately got my measuring tape and checked… No, I didn’t. Thing is, while facial ratios are objective and can therefore be measured, the feeling of beauty - the awe, the rapture, the admiration, the attraction, even the desire - cannot be.

Expand full comment
Coffee Guy Chris's avatar

1. Denmark

2. North Korea

3. Australia

Interestingly, the choices you listed as your preferences I don’t prefer at all. And two of my choices you don’t prefer at all. Perhaps, if all else is equal, the subjective preferences like eye, hair, and skin color would make a man choose one 10 over another.

I don’t believe AI can perfectly capture the true beauty of a real woman, but it does a decent job of portraying what beauty is supposed to look like. Some of these AI women have different bone structures, yet they’re all supposed to be 10’s?

Expand full comment
The Rogue Roman's avatar

I scrolled quickly and paused at France. Those eyes were irresistible.

Expand full comment
Ken Gordon's avatar

My choices would be Ecuador, Spain, and Brazil, in that order. Ecuador looks very much like my Irish wife. However, of those shown, the only one in that list I would even consider, if they were real, getting to know is Mexico. Most of the others look too self-absorbed. Mexico looks, at least, open to discussion.

Expand full comment
The Kurgan's avatar

Yes. In my younger days I would probably still have gone for Morocco, even knowing I’d likely wake up one day with my bank account drained, missing my kidneys and the tequila bottle left empty.

Expand full comment