by Patrick Appel
Balko captions:
So this image purports to be a series of composites of the average woman from various countries and ethnicities. I was struck by how attractive they all are. This makes some sense when you think about it from an evolutionary perspective. But I think it’s also a little surprising because it’s not how we typically use the word average.
Paul Bloom's excellent recent book explains this phenomenon in more detail:
[W]hile average faces look good, they don't look terrific the most attractive faces are not the average ones. (When you do these morphs, you get a fine face, but not one with movie-star good looks.)