Human physical appearance refers to the outward phenotype or look of human beings. There are infinite variations in human phenotypes, though society reduces the variability to distinct categories. Physical appearance of humans, in particular those attributed which are regarded as important for physical attractiveness, are believed by anthropologists to significantly affect the development of personality and social relations. Humans are acutely sensitive to their physical appearance, some theorize for reasons of evolution. Some differences in human appearance are genetic, others are the result of age, lifestyle or disease, and many are the result of personal adornment.
Some people have traditionally linked some differences in personal appearance such as skeletal shape with ethnicity, such as prognathism or elongated stride. Different cultures place different degrees of emphasis on physical appearance and its importance to social status and other phenomena.
Famous quotes containing the words human, physical and/or appearance:
“Here is a golden Rule.... Write legibly. The average temper of the human race would be perceptibly sweetened, if everybody obeyed this Rule!”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“Unfortunately, moral beauty in art—like physical beauty in a person—is extremely perishable. It is nowhere so durable as artistic or intellectual beauty. Moral beauty has a tendency to decay very rapidly into sententiousness or untimeliness.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“When appearance and reality coincide, philosophy and literary criticism find themselves with nothing to say.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)