Math & Myth of Beauty

The Math and Myth of Beauty

My teen boys refuse to take pictures these days. Not even a selfie that stays in the phone.

“I look like I walked out of a Gaza attack,” one says.
“I look homeless,” the other mutters.

While none of them will change their (stylist set) Alpaca looks 🤷‍♀️

To my eyes, they are the most handsome humans I know. But then again, I’m their mother—biased by design, I suppose.

Out of curiosity, I checked their Instagram accounts (that is not private 😉) the same ones they scroll through endlessly. Not a single post. Just placeholders for silent comparisons. Lurking, doom-scrolling, and wondering why they don’t look “that good.”

That took me down the rabbit hole of beauty itself.

Turns out, there’s a mathematics to it. The Golden Ratio (1.618) shows up in “ideal” facial proportions—length to width, eye-to-nose distance, symmetry across vertical thirds and horizontal fifths. Harmony, they say, signals health and genetic fitness.

I even ran facial metrics on my own LinkedIn profile. Math says I’m close to “beautiful” in two areas—not so much in others 🤪.

Then I asked AI to generate x-rays of the most beautiful people of my life. Stripped of all features, just symmetry and spacing. You couldn’t even tell who they were.

That’s when it hit me.

We’ve reduced beauty to measurements, filters, and fleeting dopamine hits. But real beauty? It’s not in the geometry of faces. How about the geometry of our being?

Are we happy? Are we healthy? Are we kind and compassionate?
An algorithm can’t define it or capture it. But people around can feel it.

I’ve met people who light up rooms despite their scars, and others who look perfect online but are deeply disconnected inside.

So here’s my take:
Beauty isn’t symmetry.
Beauty is alignment—with who you are, how you live, and what you give.

With that definition - I am Ms. Milky Way + Andromeda put together 😃
How do you see yourself?