An objective opinion is elusive. It relies on a set of pre-agreed standards; and to what extent something is beautiful- human, plant, animal or other- meets those standards. And yet, they do exist. The problem with objective beauty is not so much in the physicality of the subject as it is with the language we use to describe it. For any consensus to begin to be formed on what is and isn’t beautiful we have to communicate with each other. To communicate we can use words; pictures, music, sign language- anything. We have adjectives which are defined and understood. The problem then is that we can’t actually know if that definition means entirely the same thing to another person as it does to us. More than that: we can’t know if that other individual is seeing exactly the same thing as us. A great example of this would be colour blindness. In deuteranomaly a person can still distinguish between the colours red and green- the difference is that the green they do see looks more red. If you were to stand side by side and look at the same green apple you can be reasonably sure that the person beside you- although they would also call it green- would not be seeing the same colour as you. In reality you can never be entirely certain that someone isn’t colour blind. Ultimately an objective opinion is not elusive because it’s impossible to agree the qualifiers for beauty: it’s elusive because it’s impossible to know if those qualifiers mean the same to me as they do to you.

Hi Rosalyn! I like your statement and think that it might be one of those age-old sayings that has been around for as long as I can remember. As it is, I have to say that I believe that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and therefore, the person who is the observer has a choice in deciding what is beautiful. Why? Because if beauty is in the eye of the beholder then that means what the "beholder" considers to be beautiful might not be what you, me, he or she considers to be beautiful. And so, for me it is clear that beauty is what each individual considers to be beautiful. Hence the saying, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

**TL;DR: Beauty is subjective – our perception of beauty is caused by our individual experiences** Our perception of beauty is deeply personal and formed far more by our experiences as an individual than by our genes. This has been proven in a [recent study](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/why-beauty-eye-beholder#:~:text=They%20say%20beauty%20is%20in,been%20a%20question%20for%20scientists.&text=The%20researchers%20suspect%20that%20it's,guide%20our%20opinions%20of%20attractiveness.), where researchers tested the facial preference of 547 pairs of identical twins, 214 pairs of same-gender fraternal twins, and 660 nontwins. Each participant was shown 200 faces and had to rate their attractiveness out of 7. The researchers hypothesised that if genes are responsible for our perception of beauty and cause facial preference, identical twins would score the faces similarly, whereas if familial environment causes facial preference, fraternal twins would also score the faces similarly. The study found that most of the participants scored the faces differently from their twin, whether identical _or_ fraternal, suggesting that neither genes nor familial environment cause our perception of beauty. They also found that participants often disagreed over which faces they considered attractive and not, demonstrating that beauty is highly subjective. Scientists therefore speculate that our perception of beauty is formed by our individual experiences and [personal histories](https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-10-02/science-beauty-truly-eye-beholder). Everyone has different and personal concepts and standards which we use to judge beauty – therefore, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

**Tl;dr : Beauty is indeed subjective, but there are certain standards of beauty that influence our attraction**. Beauty is relative, which is why everyone experiences attraction differently. In philosophical studies, [aesthetic relativism] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetic_relativism) is the theory that views of beauty are relative to differences in perception and consideration, and intrinsically, have no absolute truth or validity. Therefore, by this definition, beauty _is_ indeed in the eye of the beholder, as there is no scientific or quantitative measurement of aesthetic attractiveness. However, although beauty can't be measured scientifically, I do believe that what we find attractive is influenced by our environment. In the 90's being extremely thin was seen as attractive, as the beauty standard was heavily influenced by supermodels who coined the term 'heroin chic'. Therefore, perhaps people who grew up during this era may find this aesthetic more attractive than beauty standards nowadays. In today's age, which is heavily influenced by figures such as the Kardashians, who have popularised certain attributes such as a small waist, full lips, and accentuated features are glamorised. I think that this has subconsciously influenced our perceptions of beauty more than we realise. So I do think beauty is in the eye of the beholder, to a certain extent. But that perception of beauty is influenced by the aesthetic attributes our society deems as acceptable and desirable.

Find me a person that finds excretions beautiful in a non-fetish way.

Look at any massive old church, hand engraved or ivory piece of anything, the paintings in the sistine chapel, etc. There are things that all cultures, races, and backgrounds consider beautiful. The only question is the level of beauty perceived.