We live in a world where the average human being is just that: average. We are bombarded daily with the illusion of true beauty, a beauty without flaws. No oversized noses, no wrinkles, no zits, etc. So what happens when the way we look begins to govern the opportunities that we are given in life? Do we really care enough to change our outer form to satisfy our inner need to be noticed? Many have asked themselves this question and have responded with a clear, self-conscious “yes.”

It would seem that plastic surgery patients are so vain that they need to change their very appearance to be happy. What we fail to consider is that vanity has existed as long as there has been a way to see oneself through mirrored reflection. Perhaps millennia ago, a cave-woman saw her reflection in a puddle of water and thought that her likeness wasn’t so pleasing. Many cultures throughout the world have their own idea of beauty. These ideas are built upon the aesthetics that are used within the culture, and also the welcomed abnormalities that distinguish the beautiful from the average.

With this relative idea of beauty, we have a basis for general attraction. Society tells us that we should consider one individual to be more attractive than another, so now we begin to form a broad consensus. But here we have another problem: There isn’t a day that exists, when everyone gets together and decides what beauty is. The decision has already been made for us, whether we like it or not. So when we are watching television and notice a hot woman, we don’t think twice as to where our opinion is coming from.

This unconscious judgment of beauty comes from classic social conditioning of our biological systems. Our brain has been imprinted with a code that helps us to instantly identify what it is that pleases us visually and chemically. A hormone called oxytocin has been shown to create these sorts of reactions. It helps to regulate recognition, social bonding, and the like. Recent studies have revealed that this neurotransmitter aids in making a template in our mind of what we find attractive, so when the imagery is brought up again we automatically know how to feel about a given individual.Oxytocin is most often released by both partners during orgasm and is thought to create an intimate attachment.

The attachment, however, sooner or later becomes more of an addiction. Scientists from Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Rutgers University have found that the chemical activity that occurs in the brain during lovemaking is very similar to the activity that takes place in the scans of those who use nicotine and cocaine. But the problem with love and drug abuse is that as the relationship with either continues, the effect that they have on our system begins to dwindle. This is where oxytocin’s presence is needed the most to keep the relationship going and the attachment stable.

Do you ever wonder why your ex-boyfriend is dating a new girl who looks just like you? It’s because he’s programmed himself to believe that his partner is attractive. So when he moves on to another partner, he’ll carry with him that same pattern for recognition. Oxytocin is released when he sees someone similar to you, and then the feelings start. But on the other hand researchers at University of California, San Francisco have found that the release of oxytocin into your system is relative to the successfulness of your relationship with your previous partner. So, if you had terrible experience with your last girlfriend and were to see someone who looks similar to her, your levels of oxytocin would drop.

There exists general ideas of beauty that have been pre-programmed within us. As we develop from a tiny zygote to a fetus, we go through a process where cellular division and regeneration creates a human that is generally symmetrical, left and right. So the more symmetrical you are, the more perfectly developed you are as a human. Disease and infections during development are what cause a person to be born with asymmetrical physical traits. Anatomical proportion is something that affects our judgment of attractiveness. Many tests have been done with both men and women on their preference on facial symmetry, and the results of which have supported the claim that people within a symmetrical ratio to be more attractive than their counterparts. Research done by the University of Aberdeen in Scotland also shows that symmetry preferences differ between the sexes as men were ten percent more likely to prefer a partner with a symmetrical face than a woman. Inquiries are also being made into the attractiveness of asymmetrical faces, but so far most people believe that this bilateral evenness is our basis of judgment.

The face also carries with it clues as to the fertility of our potential partners. Estrogen helps to shape the face of a woman, allowing for the eyes to seem more prominent and the chin and jaw line short and small. The testosterone in men helps to make a larger more prominent jaw and brow ridge. It is comparatively imprinted that these traits are seen as attractive because they represent a reproductively healthy person.

So again we are brought back to the argument, why would we change our outer appearance? Maybe we just want to challenge the theories that Darwin proposed hundreds of years ago, to rebel against the idea that the most fit and well-adapted organisms will survive. We may simply be adapting to an environment where the bold and the beautiful are heard louder than the average lot. Plastic Surgery seems to be a game of biological deception, allowing for the less fit to have a chance at genetic superiority.