[bporterfield]

I remember a Discover magazine article on something similar from when I was just a little kid. I can't recall the exact thesis, but the basics was that researchers were using an algorithm to combine pictures of people into a single face.

The interesting thing was that the more pictures they combined into a face, the more attractive the face became! Of course, once they added enough faces, and the male and female pictures became almost the same androgynous face - still attractive but too average to be appealing in my (3rd grader at the time) opinion.

Beauty as an average seems like a strange concept at first, but I suppose it's true that people aren't usually attracted to sharp or surprising facial characteristics.

[iamwil]

I would expect certain features of beauty to remain constant over time, like symmetric features--which is suppose to be indicative of normal development and hormone levels.

However, other features--what's considered attractive--I expect to change over time, especially if it's a secondary sexual characteristic used in preening. It'd be interesting to see it change over time.

[spc476]

Given enough faces to average, and you end up with a nearly iconic human image (http://boston.conman.org/2007/08/28.1). And I shudder to think of what Hollywood would do with this technology.