I can't find an online copy of the original study, but it is experimental fact that everyone rates a face composed of 128 overlaid images as much more beautiful that a composite from only 16. That is thought to reflect an inborn image of an "average" human face that infants use to recognize members of their own species.
The problem is that with plastic surgery being so common, ever smaller deviations from the statistical mean get stigmatized. Few would regard repairng major damage after an accident of some sort to be vanity. But how far do you have to deviate from average before you are expected to "do something about it" or face public persecution? Nadia's experience unfortunately suggests "not very far."
http://lynaynle.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/koinophilia/
Koinophilia
Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder;
it’s in the eyes of a hundred beholders.
Helen’s face did not launch a thousand ships,
but the thousand faces of Helen can launch any ship.
Beauty is a regression to the mean,
the line that cuts a bell curve into symmetrical halves.
Koinophilia,
the true answer given by the magic mirror
when it was asked, “Who is the fairest of them all?”
To behold Helen, to dream of Snow White,
use your mouse.
Drag a thousand noses, eyes, chins, and cheeks
across the computer screen,
and stack them in virtual layers,
then click on the merge icon.
There before you is the statistical average,
a face of uncommon beauty.
Beauty is the algorithm of the mundane.
If beauty is truth, then truth is as common
as the collective mother smiling down
lovingly at her collective infant’s face.
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