This is the average age of the world's most beautiful women

And it’s good news

From the editors of InStyle US Words by Alexandra Whittaker

People's annual list of the World's Most Beautiful Women has been published consistently for almost three decades now.

Julia Roberts was deemed 2017's Most Beautiful Woman, with Reese Witherspoon, Selena Gomez, and Viola Davis making the final list. After years of being published though, a research journal has decided to dissect the rankings further, and what they've found is pretty interesting.

The JAMA Dermatology journal released a new study analysing the annual ‘Most Beautiful’ list, and they discovered fascinating discrepancies between the early and modern lists. For starters, the average age of those who made the list in 2017 is 38.9. While this may not seem significant at first, it is, in fact, younger than the average age of previous years. In 1990, for example, the average age is 33.2.

What exactly might this mean? One interpretation is that the average age of people we consider ‘beautiful’ is older than it was in the past. The study itself addresses this finding.

‘The increase in mean age of the people featured in the WMB issue of People, with a significant increase in percentage of those 35 years and older, is significant in the present ageing society,’ the study discussion stated.

With that being said, some would still argue that beauty is in the eye of the beholder - but that doesn't mean we can't get math involved.

‘The classic notion of beauty is a matter of mathematical conceptions and instantiating definite proportions. However, with the advent of the highly connected world that has exposed individuals to many forms of beauty, we still strive to understand what beauty entails,’ the study said.

‘The mass media platform has for years introduced certain criteria for what constitutes beauty. Through an examination of the WMB issue of People, we found that these beauty standards are evolving as people learn how to integrate the effects of media with exposure to new cultures and different norms.’

Pretty cool if you ask us! We wonder what data next year's list will bring.