# Beauty standards > In many cases, humans subconsciously attribute positive characteristics, such as intelligence and honesty, to physically attractive people, a psychological phenomenon called the Halo effect.[^1] --- ## Beauty standards – Feminine ### Western #### Prettiness - [You Don’t Have to be Pretty](https://dressaday.com/2006/10/20/you-dont-have-to-be-pretty/) #### Thinness [[2025-0221. Sabina Strings presents a case for the racial origins of fatphobia; she 'maps the development of the fetish for thinness on the rise of the transatlantic slave trade and the spread of Protestantism.'|’Sabrina Strings in *Fearing the Black Body* presents a case for the subtitle of her book: the racial origins of fatphobia. This recognition of anti-Blackness as the crux of anti-fatness serves as a crucial starting point for contemplating how anti-Blackness functions as a crux for Western Euro-American systems of (un)desirability. Strings maps the development of the fetish for thinness on the “rise of the transatlantic slave trade and the spread of Protestantism.”’]][^2] --- ## Beauty standards – Masculine ### Asia #### China [[Young men aged 18–30 were the main group of Chinese men buying skin care products in 2019; male make-up was most popular in coastal areas; such products were frequently bought online.|Young men aged 18–30 were the main group of Chinese men buying skin care products in 2019; male make-up was most popular in coastal areas; such products were frequently bought online.]][^3] [^1]: ‘Physical attractiveness’, *Wikipedia*, 3 March 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness. [^2]: Ev Delafose, ’[[Delafose. ‘(Trans)Feminine History’, 2022.|(Trans)Feminine History: A History of Feminine (De)Normalization]]’, *Fashion Studies*, vol. 4, no. 1, 2022, p. 3. [^3]: YueLin Wang, ‘[[Wang. ‘The Current Situation and Trend of Chinese Male Beauty’, 2019.|The Current Situation and Trend of Chinese Male Beauty]], *The Frontiers of Society, Science and Technology* 1, no. 07 (2019), p. 167.