Among all the socially created privileges, physical beauty — typically among women in a male-dominant world — has always ranked high. Hence, our conventional wisdom naturally connects beauty to special blessings that few women get. John Keats even said, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”

But what is beauty? The dictionary says whatever pleases our senses as beautiful is what beautiful is. (The non-sensory “beauty” we feel from emotional experiences, such as with artworks, is another subject). Then, what pleases our senses as the object of our adoration?

To answer the question and unlock the secrets of beauty, let’s visit Aphrodite (Venus for Romans), history’s “most beautiful goddess.” As we study her statues and every aspect of her body in detail — her eyes, nose, mouth, breasts, abdomen, waist, hips, thighs, legs and everything else about her — however, we realize something startling: The woman rhapsodized as the essence of feminine beauty is about the most “average” woman there is, as nothing about her is special.

In fact, she is perfectly average. Aphrodite (Venus) is just a lucky woman whose celebration consists of the coincidence that gave her all the average parts in one body.

Let’s continue our discovery closer to home with the Miss America pageant — America’s most well-recognized beauty making spectacle that officially crowns a hitherto unknown woman as America’s reigning beauty of the year.

As we watch “typical” Miss America pageants, we are always struck by the fact that all 50 contestants in a typical Miss America contest inevitably end up looking alike: No contestant with a nose too big or the distance between the eyes too small or hips too prominent, enough to offend our sight-senses long accustomed to “averageness.”

All contestants in the pageant, in fact, are considered beautiful because none of them deviates from the rules of sensory expectations. Indeed, the very concept of “Miss America” rejects “special-ness:” They are all cut — height, weight, features — by the same cookie cutter. The visual process of producing such identical beauties (no written exams) would not allow deviations. If their body parts were randomly distributed among them, most of them would fit perfectly.

Inevitably, then, the winner, Miss America for the year, is an utterly ordinary, average and typical figure — the “perfect average” persona — nothing to be memorable or remembered about her. In fact, any typical Miss America’s face is completely forgettable, like all other years’ winners. America’s “most beautiful goddess” is the most average woman we can find. Striking features get our attention, but our consensus on beauty eventually goes to averageness.

It’s the very nature of our senses that dictate that beauty must be average, nothing else. By necessity, we make our daily, otherwise chaotic, sensory life livable by avoiding extremes in all things we encounter by striving for the middle. People we interact with are certainly not Miss America material; nor do they look like Quasimodo of Notre Dame. Between Quasimodos and Miss Americas, we accept our choice of available in-the-middle partners — as people with perfect averageness are hard to meet — by compromising on one perfectly average feature we can find in them: “I love your eyes (or nose, mouth, ears, hair, whatever),” we tell them, “they are so beautiful.”

It’s a win-win strategy as everyone has at least one redeemable feature to compliment.

By the sheer logic of probability in nature, it’s not easy to be born with a “collection” of commonness — with a common nose, common eyes, common hips, and so on, all spaced out exactly where they are supposed to be, in one lucky body like Venus’ or Miss America’s. “Beauty Queen” is a hard title achieved by lucky averageness, which is 99% predetermined by natural selection.

Hence, wanting to be beautiful and wanting to be average produce the same result. Under our present criteria for beauty, as your chances of being average increase, so do your chances of your being considered “beautiful.” Most visitors to plastic surgery emerge more average-looking — with special features now moderated — than before the visit.

The reason the Miss America winner gets all excited when selected is because, given the “same” averageness of all 50 contestants, she knows anybody could have won. Unless rigged for some reason, every Miss America is a lottery win.

In essence, Miss America — a poor imitation for Venus — is but a glorified victim of the sensory trap that America annually sets for her, who must beat off all her competitors just to become the “Most Average Woman of the Year.” Likewise, if you were lucky enough to date a dreamlike woman, you should describe her to your friends (with all the appropriate excitement), “I’ve met the most average woman today!”

By replacing “beautiful” with “average,” you would be less analytically confusing. Historically and aesthetically, especially in America, we settle on average as beauty, and quit on pursuing true beauty in life. If we were all blind, the partners we select for our lifetime companionship would be quite different.

Ultimately, life lived by the senses is a sad one. Contrary to Keats, a thing of beauty has a short shelf life. The senses give us beauty but the senses also take it away. Cursed is the man who marries a woman for her beauty, for his eyes, like the envied owner of a waterfront property, can only produce diminishing returns: Each time his eyes see her they see less of her beauty, eventually to a point where his eyes stop seeing her perfect average. Desperate to reawaken his inevitably dying senses, she might seek help in plastic surgery, Botox or Victoria’s Secret — but only for temporary effects.

Yet, blessed is the man who rediscovers his companion’s “beauty” years into their relationship. There, he “sees” her true, special beauty with his mind that is inexhaustible by the senses.

Jon Huer, columnist for the Recorder and retired professor, lives in Greenfield.

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