Beauty and the baby

I found, in a friend's blog, the link to a youtube video which shows the transformation of a normal-looking slightly obese lady into an eye-catching beautiful face beckoning you out of a large poster on the road. Yes, you and I have a fair idea of the powers of make-up and photo-editing in today's digital make-believe age. But what I found more interesting was the comment by someone on the you-tube site, below this video, quoting a study which concluded that going by the statistics collected, even babies stare longer at beautiful faces than normal ones. So the quoted study concluded that perhaps traditional notions of physical beauty may not be just a result of environment and upbringing.

Now this is something that is very interesting. I have always thought that the only thing that held a baby's attention is a pair of spectacles on someone else's nose. I have seen umpteen babies, boys and girls, and in recent times, different races, but all of them are enchanted by that invention of which Ben Franklin should be most proud of. They dont rest until they have managed to grab the object of their attention and yanked it off the hapless person, gurgling with joy and twisting and turning their conquest, dangling and shaking it until the owner can take it no more and decides not to indulge the baby any further.

I have also strongly believed that most of our perceptions are developed and not innate. So, as with most other 'studies' I take this one too with a pinch of salt. Their methodology of isolating other possible causes of the end effects is rather suspect in most cases and the correlation that they establish is most daring.

But anyway folks, the next time you are walking down the road and pass a really sexy bombshell and hear a loud catcall & whistle, dont look around - it may just be the infant you are cuddling in your arm !