Beauty is a characteristic of a person, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction. Beauty is studied as part of aesthetics, sociology, social psychology, and culture. As a cultural creation, beauty has been extremely commercialized. An "ideal beauty" is an entity which is admired, or possesses features widely attributed to beauty in a particular culture.

The experience of "beauty" often involves the interpretation of some entity as being in balance and harmony with nature, which may lead to feelings of attraction and emotional well-being. Because this is a subjective experience, it is often said that "beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder." In its most profound sense, beauty may engender a salient experience of positive reflection about the meaning of one's own existence. A subject of beauty is anything that resonates with personal meaning. Beauty can be of historical monument or physical beauty, and both have its own significance.

The earliest Western theory of beauty can be found in the works of early Greek philosophers from the pre-Socratic period, such as Pythagoras. Large eyes and a clear complexion, for example, are considered beautiful in both men and women in all cultures. Neonatal features are inherently attractive and youthfulness in general is associated with beauty. There is evidence that a preference for beautiful faces emerges early in child development, and that the standards of attractiveness are similar across different genders and cultures.

The foundations laid by Greek and Roman artists have also supplied the standard for male beauty in western civilization. The ideal Roman was defined as tall, muscular, long-legged, with a full head of thick hair, a high and wide forehead – a sign of intelligence – wide-set eyes, a strong brow line, a strong perfect nose and profile, a smaller mouth, and a strong jaw line. This combination of factors would, as it does today, produce an impressive "grand" look of handsome masculinity.

The characterization of a person as "beautiful", whether on an individual basis or by community consensus, is often based on some combination of inner beauty, which includes psychological factors such as personality, intelligence, grace, congeniality, charm, integrity, congruity and elegance, and outer beauty, which includes physical factors, such as health, youthfulness, sexiness, symmetry, averageness, and complexion.

Inner beauty, however, is more difficult to quantify, though beauty pageants often claim to take this into consideration as well.

A strong indicator of physical beauty is "averageness", or "koinophilia". When images of human faces are averaged together to form a composite image, they become progressively closer to the "ideal" image and are perceived as more attractive. Evolutionarily it makes logical sense that sexual creatures should be attracted to mates who possess predominantly common or average features. Another feature of beautiful women that has been explored by researchers is a waist-to-hip ratio of approximately 0.70 for women. Physiologists have shown that this ratio accurately indicates most women's fertility. Beauty is not solely limited to the female gender. This is distinct from the idea of being metro sexual, which focuses mainly on the behavior of men in traditionally feminine ways.

Thus, beauty products can also do the half done work for adorning your physical appearance.