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Human physical appearance is the outward phenotype or look of human beings. Image of a European female (left) and an East Asian male (right) human body seen from front (upper) and back (lower). Adult human bodies photographed whose naturally-occurring pubic, body, facial, but not head hair have been deliberately removed to show anatomy.
A person's physical characteristics can signal cues to fertility and health, [14] [15] [16] with statistical modeling studies showing that the facial shape variables that reflect aspects of physiological health, including body fat and blood pressure, also influence observers' perceptions of health. [17]
The term visible difference is a more neutral, encompassing descriptor for any physical characteristic that sets an individual apart from what is generally considered the societal norm. [4] This could be due to congenital conditions, acquired conditions, diseases, or even personal choices like tattoos or piercings.
Examples of human phenotypic variability: people with different levels of skin colors, a normal distribution of IQ scores, the tallest recorded man in history - Robert Wadlow - with his father. Human variability, or human variation, is the range of possible values for any characteristic, physical or mental, of human beings.
Such content has raised concern about the normalization of pseudoscience and the idea that physical characteristics are inherently associated with one's actions and social status. Examples include the perception of leftists as being unattractive and women's femininity as dependent on their skull shape. [37] [38]
It is a common belief that targeted exercise reduces fat in specific parts of the body —for example, that exercising muscles around the belly reduces fat in the belly. This, however, is now proven to be a misconception; these exercises may change body shape by improving muscle tone but any fat reduction is not specific to the locale.
The physical attractiveness stereotype was first formally observed in a study done by Karen Dion, Ellen Berscheid, and Elaine Walster in 1972. [1] The goal of this study was to determine whether physical attractiveness affected how individuals were perceived, specifically whether they were perceived to have more socially desirable personality traits and quality of life.
A proposed definition for both terms as the "physical totality of all traits of an organism or of one of its subsystems" was put forth by Mahner and Kary in 1997, who argue that although scientists tend to intuitively use these and related terms in a manner that does not impede research, the terms are not well defined and usage of the terms is ...