What makes women weak at the knees and what bowls blokes over?
Well, beauty has always been firmly in the eye of the beholder but now it seems the internet can give us a newperception of the reflection through the looking glass.
A study by scientists at the University of St Andrews has found that the web can influence what people find attractive in others.
Researchers compared the facial preferences of people with and without internet access and the findings suggest that the world wide web, and most likely media portrayals of certain types, is changing people’s view of “beauty”.
The research, published this week in the journal PLOS ONE, was carried out by psychologists Carlota Batres and Professor David Perrett of the Perception Laboratory at St Andrews.
Carlota, who led the study, said one possibility for the difference was the level of media exposure which promotes the beauty ideals of muscular men and thin, feminine women.
The research was carried out in person in El Salvador, where nearly three quarters of the population are offline. Participants were shown images of people of different weights and levels of masculinity and femininity.
The researchers found that those with access to the internet preferred the faces that the internet might suggest are more attractive.
However, non-internet users found feminine men and masculine, heavier women more attractive.