Skewed
By Stu Hutson

Try this simple test. Take a photo of your face, dead on.

The plastic surgeons say that you should be able to take a pen and divvy up your mug shot into three equal horizontal sections: forehead, brow to nose, nose to chin.

The plastic surgeons say that if you draw a line straight down the middle of your face, you should have two sides that mirror, exactly, one another.

If any of this doesn’t balance out just right, the plastic surgeons say that they can help you fix it—for just a stitch over four thousand dollars.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The problem is that the eye in question is usually lodged in a human skull, next to a human brain. A brain that tells us symmetrical is beautiful. What is balanced is best fit.

Evolution meant that the best built beasties were the ones that survived and flourished. The offsets, the mutants with eyes in weird places and uneven legs, were devoured by the justified of the natural world. The animals that learned to appreciate the proportionality as attractive were the ones that were best at setting up genetic franchises. Even subtle flaws in symmetry were subconscious hints that Mr. Skewed wasn’t Mr. Right.

Now, our biology makes us unwitting connoisseurs of balance in structure. Studies have shown that even babies prefer to look at images of symmetrical faces rather than images of their own mother. Slews of studies featuring twins, computer-generated caricatures, and supermodels have shown that almost every culture and ethnic background holds these same standards for beauty and lust.

Maybe for good reason.