What It Means to Be Beautiful

At the trial of Phryne in 350 BC, the courtesan, who was acknowledged to be one of the most beautiful women in Athens, had been accused of defaming the gods and was losing the case, and was about to be sentenced to die.

- Clinton Palanca

At the trial of Phryne in 350 BC, the courtesan, who was acknowledged to be one of the most beautiful women in Athens, had been accused of defaming the gods and was losing the case, and was about to be sentenced to die. Standing before the jury, she shed her clothing and stood before them naked. Would the gods, she asked, have created something so beautiful and allow her to do anything that would merit its destruction? The jury acquitted her, and the term “Phryne’s trial” went down the centuries and came to mean equating beauty with truth or goodness. The Athenian courts also went on to ban “defense by nudity.”

Although it goes by different names these days (psychologists call this cognitive bias the physical attractiveness stereotype or the “halo effect”), we still tend to believe beautiful people are not just smarter or more successful, but also more honest, trustworthy, and virtuous, while those on the other end of the scale are “ugly as sin.” This isn’t true, of course: good-looking people can be as good or as mendacious and mean-spirited as anyone, and are often narcissistic and manipulative; it’s just that they can get away with it more because we let them. What has changed, though, is the idea of beauty as a divine gift: if not from the Greek gods, then from a creator who makes good and beautiful people on one hand and wretched and ugly people on the other. A consequence of the theory of natural selection is the secularization of beauty: it’s not a gift from God, but simply good genes.