26 year old Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach has been crowned Miss Universe in the well-known beauty pageant held last night. Unfortunately, the focus of the live show went to how the host Steve Harvey made a blunder on live television and announced Miss Columbia as the winner instead, before coming back on stage to correct himself.

The bewildered Miss Philippines was shocked beyond words when she was re-ananounced as the winner:

What Makes Pia So Beautiful?

Pia is stunningly beautiful – even when she was looking shocked! Of mixed Filipino and German descent, she has the best of both worlds of East and West: defined features, broad cheekbones, beautiful olive skin, to name a few.

Youthfulness

We associate youthfulness with vitality and beauty. There are some immediately recognisable “youthful” features we can identify we we look at someone: hydrated, plump skin, a V-shaped face, full cheeks, fresh-looking & large eyes, luscious lips, and full, thick hair, so name a few. So many aesthetic treatments, such as fillers, aim to turn back the time, to attain these coveted youthful features.

Facial Proportions and Features

All of us have an inbuilt ability to recognise certain facial features and proportions as being “attractive”. Look at all the celebrities we view as being beautiful – Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Halle Berry, etc.. and they all have some things in common: they are very proportionate, often in the proportion of the “golden ratio”, or 1: 1.618.

Lets look at Pia’s picture again, this time with some overlays:

Pia has what is known as a heart shaped face – a V-shape lower face and large eyes which frame the upper face to give an approximate heart-shape. A heart shaped face is highly sought after, especially in Asian cultures – it represents youthfulness. It is delicate, and gives a the lady a feminine, beautiful appearance.

The rectangles represent the Golden Ratio: 1:1.618. Whether we know it or not, we find things that conform to the golden ratio aesthetically beautiful. Strangely, many things in nature follow the golden ratio as well, such as flowers and sea shells – Organic objets which we find beautiful. for this reason, the golden ratio is also called the “divine proportion”. Similarly, we find faces which follow the Golden Ratio beautiful.

The proportion of the upper face to the lower face; the eyes to the sides of the face; the upper to lower lip; the mouth to chin; the philtrum to mouth, are just some of the golden ratios we find in an attractive face. Not surprisingly, these are also all found in Pia’s face – making her face aesthetically beautiful to many.