Human physical appearance is the outward phenotype or look of human beings.
There are functionally infinite variations in human phenotypes, though society reduces the variability to distinct categories. The physical appearance of humans, in particular those attributes which are regarded as important for physical attractiveness, are believed by anthropologists to affect the development of personality significantly and social relations. Many humans are acutely sensitive to their physical appearance.[1] Some differences in human appearance are genetic, others are the result of age, lifestyle or disease, and many are the result of personal adornment.
Some people have linked some differences with ethnicity, such as skeletal shape, prognathism or elongated stride. Different cultures place different degrees of emphasis on physical appearance and its importance to social status and other phenomena.
[Cases] of immigration have repeatedly shown that if a person who is obese believes that their body is beyond individual control but is placed into a medical system that assumes individual rational actors in its treatments, adherence is likely to be low and those treatments are ineffective...[Young] ethnic Fijian women associated the thin body ideal with a particular lifestyle that they found desirable