Model Bella Hadid has been scientifically declared as the world's most beautiful woman. Is there any value for Christian women to engage with these kind of beauty standards?

According to science, Bella Hadid is the epitome of beauty. The 28-year-old model was found to be 94.35% ‘accurate’ to the Golden Ratio of Beauty Phi - a measure of physical perfection, with Beyoncé coming a close second.

The Golden Ratio of Beauty Phi originates from the European Renaissance. Several artists used the equation as an aid to create their masterpieces. Bella Hadid’s facial symmetry, eye spacing and jawline proportions are near perfect, giving her the extraordinary (and fleeting) crown of most beautiful woman in the world.

In our world, beauty has power. Last week I listened to TV presenter, Cherry Healey being interviewed by Emily Dean on her Walking the Dog podcast.

I am not a great beauty, but I’m alright. I can look bangin’, given a spray tan and a couple of hours to get ready

Cherry said, “I am not a great beauty, but I’m alright. I can look bangin’, given a spray tan and a couple of hours to get ready, but my identity is definitely not in how I look….I’ve got a friend, and she is so beautiful, she looks like Natalie Portman….I remember one day when we were at a party and all these boys were surrounding her, and she never really made an effort with them. She was never effusive or chatty or charming, but always a bit quiet and weird and grumpy. I remember us saying, ‘You need to be a bit nicer to those boys.’ She said, ‘Do you know what, I’ve just never had to make an effort. Boys will always talk to me first. Boys will always come, and I can be as mean as I like, I can not talk to them, I can look at my feet, and I will always be surrounded by boys.’”

Actor Dustin Hoffman played a woman in the 1982 movie, Tootsie. While screen-testing his drag makeup, he asked producers to make him more beautiful. He said, “I thought, if I was going to be a woman, I should be beautiful.”

When the makeup artists told him that was as good as it gets, he had a sudden understanding of the power of beauty

When the makeup artists told him that was as good as it gets, he had a sudden epiphany of the power of beauty. He said he wouldn’t hit on himself at a party. “I think I’m an interesting woman, when I look at myself on screen. I know if I met myself at a party I would never talk to that character because she doesn’t fulfil, physically, the demands we’re brought up to think women have to have in order for us to ask them out.”

So is beauty something we should strive for? The world says yes, with it’s filters, potions, lotions and tweakments, but Proverbs 31: 30, which incidentally I found a really helpful verse in my teenage years, says: ‘Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.’

I came to the conclusion I was not beautiful in my teenage years – perhaps it was something to do with growing tall fast, and having my father’s ‘characterful nose’. I was always friends with pretty girls, and I saw the attention they got, and how I was subsequently ignored by the boys.  Thankfully I knew Jesus, and my identity was in him, but it was sometimes a struggle to understand how this was fair!

As ridiculous as this may sound, I would sometimes pray for God to shrink my nose, thinking that might help my cause, and having complete faith that he could.

And then one day, in 2013, I was bicycling to work over Battersea Bridge in London and my bag got caught in the front wheel of the bike. I flew into the air, over my handlebars and onto the tarmac, flat onto my nose, which on impact, broke.

Nothing else was harmed or broken, and long story short, I got a free nose job on the NHS. But when all the swelling went down, and I had a look at my now straight nose, I suddenly had an epiphany myself. Beauty is an inside job. It was not about the size of my nose, but if I believed I was beautiful or not.

Outside beauty does not last, it fades, however perfect and symmetrical it is. What is inside is what counts. That gives hope to all of us, Bella Hadid included, because one day she will be usurped by a younger, more perfect model.

Jesus, when he walked on this earth did not use his looks as power to manipulate or draw people to him. Isaiah 53:2 speaks about the physical qualities of Jesus:

“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”

God’s plan for your life is not dependent on your good looks. So don’t get depressed if you don’t look like a model and if the boys don’t swarm around you like bees to pollen. Focus on what counts, putting God first, loving those around you, and I believe your true beauty will shine out.