In the legend, "Helen of Troy" was a natural redhead. As for beauty that "launched a thousand ships", that would depend largely upon word of mouth and through traveling fine artists and musicians. In lands ravaged by disease and servitude, those in positions of noble power were likely healthier and better dressed than the greater population. Couple those things with the faux airbrushing of being viewed by most of a population from a distance and presto: You now have a ready-made legend of divine beauty, much like the celebrity construction of stars today. All a clever individual has to do in such a position, is nurture an aura of intrigue and seduction and Helen of Troy launches a thousand ships and people are still talking about Cleopatra hundreds of years after her death (who, it must be said, became important and interesting not necessarily because she was, but because she knew how to create and cultivate her legend).
As for the significance of man-made beauty appeal, things that are created and sustain are important. If they weren't important, they wouldn't sustain. Most of the time, our task as a population is to understand why certain values are important, to define negative from positive and to look for alternatives to the negative.
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