Nigel Barker - Nigel Barkers Beauty Equation

My life, as well as this book, is dedicated to my beautiful wife, Crissy,
and our wondrous children, Jack and Jasmine.
Through my wife I found inner peace,
and through my children I discovered the future.

WHAT IS BEAUTY, where does it stem from, and how do we obtain it? These are eternal questions, long pondered by queens and princesses, mothers and daughters, and experts and scholars alike.

I have been in the beauty business for the best part of twenty years, both in front of and behind the lens. But it was only when I became a dedicated photographer, charged with capturing the essence of beauty in everything I train my lens on, that it truly dawned on me what the secret to real beauty is. Until then, I, like most people, had been suckered into upholding modern societys notion of beauty. But the truth is that what most of us call beautiful is merely the current cultural definition of pretty: strong cheekbones, a slender body type, vibrant hair color. These are all without a doubt outer measurements of certain levels of attractiveness. But we all know people who are pretty but who are not beautiful. And we also know people who are not what would be described as classically pretty but who are undeniably beautiful. Youve heard it said a million times before: Beauty comes from within. So what does that mean? How can you harness your own beauty? How can you exude it in a photograph and, even more importantly, in your everyday life?

The Beauty Equation sets out to slam shut Pandoras makeup box by unleashing ten of the essential qualities that add up to inner beauty. Unveil these and I guarantee you will find yourself uncovering your outer beauty as well.

Crissy Barkers great-great-grandmother, Mrs. Chin

Defining beauty has been a holy grail for countless cultures throughout time, each putting their own spin on the notion of beauty, often with dreadful and even life-threatening consequences.

In ancient China (and continuing up until the past century), there was something in vogue called the lotus foot, achieved by breaking a young womans toes and binding them under her feet to make the feet look as small as possible. Small feet, it was widely thought, looked attractive, demure, and modest. Well, it certainly was humblingbut for all the wrong reasons. My wifes great-great-grandmother had her feet bound and it caused her excruciating pain throughout her life.

Ancient Egyptians, Romans, and Persians loved big, sparkling eyes, and to achieve the look, applied black makeup laced with a heavy metal that caused eye injury and facial deformations.

In England during the time of Queen Elizabeth, big foreheads were all the rage (or should I say rash?). Women would actually pluck the hair out of the front of their head to create the look. And as if that wasnt bad enough, the Elizabethan ladies liked to cover their skin in an early form of foundation that was heavily lead based, often resulting in disfiguring scars and a lack of bowel control. How attractive!

Americas Next Top Model (ANTM) contestant Rebecca Epley

Today, of course, not only do we retouch our exteriors with a cacophony of makeup routines, but we go under the knife and actually cut away parts we dont like and add bits we do. Thats not to say reconstructive surgery cant be very beneficialIm sure many of those Elizabethan chicks would have loved a face-lift after the makeup routine they were using.

While these shenanigans in the name of vanity have provoked women, regardless of era, to self-doubt and self-mutilate, they have also, ironically, stimulated philosophers and other great minds to ponder: What is beauty and how can it be acquired? The ancient Chinese were simultaneously binding feet, literally crippling their daughters, and putting out philosophy that said true beauty came from a good reputation, good behavior, talent, and longevity. The great Socrates, who pondered all realms of the universe, also delved into the beauty debate, suggesting in his accounts that a person who might appear attractive on the outside is not truly so if he has evil intentionsbefore going on to dismiss all expressions of physical beauty as untrustworthy.

The Pythagoreans had a theorystill in discussion today, believe it or notcalled the golden section, that essentially says you can measure beauty by a set of mathematical proportions. Demonstrated by famous artworks like Leonardos Mona Lisa and Vitruvian Man and Michelangelos David, its a rigid formula for attractiveness that suggests that certain measurable elementssay, the distance between your cheekbones, or the length and breadth of your nose, or the size of your eyes compared with the depth of your browcan make you more physically attractive. But doesnt that point to an averageness that is boring and uninspiring? After all, we are not frozen statueswe are living, breathing people! Sure, you can find symmetry on someones face when its static, but get them to smile, frown, or just plain move and that symmetry changes in accordance with, for example, how confident they are at smiling. What someone looks like in motiontheir body languageplays a big role in whether we find that someone attractive.

Beauty is not based on just our bone structure. It is something that comes from within; it is something that we embody.

ANTM winner Jaslene Gonzalez,
masked by the dimensions of the golden section

True beauty comes from the way you smile and sound and shimmy. We are made to be unique; our imperfections make us special. Even in sunlight, surely the perfect example of spontaneity, power, energy, and life, there is asymmetrybursts, movement, waves.

Modern beauty conceptsglorifying superyoung, unhealthily skinny models with Photoshopped, unobtainably flawless skinare not only misguiding, but they are no more a measure of true beauty, in my opinion, than plucked foreheads and tiny clubfeet. Real beautyand this comes from years of searching for it and trying to photograph itexists in everyone.

Id argue that the true measure of beauty is, in fact, the measure of the emotion it stimulates. In other words, maybe you cant help but judge yourself against the current model physiquesome girl five feet ten inches tall, weighing in at 115 pounds, with perfect teeth, who can glide down a runway as if she first learned to walk with six-inch heels on. Maybe, in your initial awe, you find yourself wishing you were slimmer or taller or more curvaceous than you are. But however outwardly attractive she may be, I promise you that what has attracted you to her is directly connected to whether she is confident, compassionate, honest, charming, or energetic. A model might have the looks to strut her stuff down a catwalk, but only when outer beauty is paired with other attributes of inner beauty does a woman resonate as truly gorgeous.