Unfortunately today’s cultural standards of beauty have diminished. With media bestowing glorification upon, well, just about anything these days, glory can fall upon even a would-be porn star and her warped family—The Kardashians. Silicone enhanced breasts and collagen pumped lips, both paired with chlorinated blonde hair can make even the least desirables garner hundreds of thousands of social-media followers, all for sleeping with Ashton Kutcher.

Public perception of attractiveness flows to any pseudo-celebrity that fills the stereotypical traits required for the part; so being photogenic enough to look like a celebrity fools most into substantiating their status as one without much more reason than a cover spot on US Weekly.

But what makes someone actually beautiful? What is there other than a designer clad façade that verifies a glorified stature; discerning this scarce quality is more complex than what the media decides and what you might think.

Ideal Beauty is Real

You may cross millions of faces in your life and yet only remember an impressionable handful. Some you admire, some you forget at the turn of your head, but then there exists a level of beauty that stops you in your tracks: it spurs genuflection, having you question what you did wrong that she is not in your life already.

The ideal face is actually contingent upon two crucial universal measurements: the vertical span between the eyes and mouth, and the lateral span between the eyes. According to researchers at the University of Toronto, the perfect female face has a distance between the pupils of 46 percent of the entire face, and a distance between the eyes and the mouth that is 36 percent of the distance from the hairline to the chin.

The left side is always your good side

Preparing for a trip to next year’s Cannes Film Festival? That sea of paparazzi is enough to overwhelm even the world’s Elite; so if you are calculating which angle is best for your ¾ pose, make sure it’s your left side. Researchers who asked college students to rate photographs of 10 male and 10 female faces found portraits that showcased a face’s left side were more aesthetically pleasing to the participants.

Yes, she makes more than you…for being beautiful

Ever wonder why the annual salary of that gorgeous blonde Swede in the next cubicle is higher than yours? It is simply because she is beautiful. Being surrounded by beautiful people is a luxury, the likes of which a boss must pay for. Beautiful people make about 5% more an hour than average-looking colleagues. A 2005 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that slim, tall and good-looking women tended to earn higher wages than their plain-Jane co-workers.

This is so, in part, because certain physical characteristics are shown to inflate other’s perceptions, causing them to perceive confidence and communication from their beautiful coworkers that boosts productivity at the office. Researchers note that discrimination, or a “plainness penalty,” may also be at play.

Beautiful people are happier

The confidence that derives from the social and financial successes from being beautiful naturally motivates a happier human being. Of course, this does not imply that only beautiful people are happy—they may just have more reasons to feel so.

According to Economists at the University of Texas, beauty’s correlation to happiness is due in part to economic benefits. Better-looking people generally earn more money and marry better-looking, higher-earning spouses than their less attractive counterparts.

The downside of being too damn beautiful

Immensely attractive individuals usually arouse a sense of envy from the self-conscious. We all know how great of a distraction working amongst beautiful women can be, we spend more time staring at her than the computer screen. But beauty is a gift and a curse; being too attractive can hurt job and scholarship opportunities.

Psychologist Maria Agthe found that good-looking applicants for a graduate scholarship received less favorable reviews from raters of the same sex. Perhaps envy gets in the way of fair considerations, or beauty is often biases us into believing beautiful persons possess vain, ignorant complexes. Either way, we judge the beautiful as much as we admire their genetic composition.

Attractive men and women have higher IQ’s

By monitoring the academic intelligence and physical appearance of more than 17,000 people from childhood up to early adulthood, researchers at the London School of Economics found that in Britain, good-looking women and men have about IQs 11.4 and 13.6 points above the average IQ respectively.

Give her the James Dean

Women find men less attractive when they smile; the opposite is true for women. As much as we know everyone loves to smile, researchers from the University of British Colombia found that women viewed men as less attractive when they appeared happy because happiness is not associated with their idea of masculinity.

Strength In Numbers

Surround yourself with other women, because women are more attracted to men who are desired by other women. Perhaps it catalyzes an interest to be with the most desired of men: the apparent alpha-male.

An experiment led by British psychologist Benedict Jones of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland found that women are drawn to men who are smiled at by other women. This suggests that women rely upon the approval of other women to substantiate their attractions.

Grown women with baby faces

According to research by Professor Victor Johnstone of the University of New Mexico, when selecting the features of an attractive woman men choose proportions characteristic to that of young girls: a shorter distance from the eyes to the chin and fuller lips.

Love is blinding

The psychological determination to attract beautiful women is relentless. We are more likely pick up on the personality traits of attractive people than unattractive people.

Scientists believe that because we pay closer attention to beautiful people — either out of curiosity, romantic interest or the desire for friendship — we also perceive their personalities better.

Elite.