Are beautiful people preferred and why? What is beauty? Is it in the eye of the beholder, or are there characteristics that we all perceive as beautiful? Psychologists are just as interested in these big questions as we are in our everyday lives. Evolutionary psychological research on attractiveness provides a simple answer: Beautiful people are preferred because they possess better genes. This thesis has gained significant traction in recent years, not only within psychology but also in popular media. Although the results of evolutionary psychological attractiveness research are often presented in popular discourse as indisputable facts, they are not without controversy within the scientific community. These disagreements must be taken seriously if one wants to truly understand the psychology of beauty.