The Economics of Beauty?

Tyler Cowen postulates a theory about where women will be the most attractive:

My simple theory of where the women are attractive has two variables: income inequality, and the willingness of wealthier men to marry beautiful women from the lower income and social classes. Women then compete for lucrative marriage prizes. That puts Cuba (the wealthy men are the tourists) and Brazil near the top of the list, where they belong. New York City isn't bad, and this mechanism won't hurt China either.

Tim Worstall comments:

Now I think that he's talking about the primping and preening here, not the simple genetic inheritance. But is there any way, other than the entirely subjective one of staring at a few photos and then making a choice, that we could test this idea?

How about the incidence of (or desire for or acceptance of) cosmetic surgery? If greater income inequality also maps over those places with a greater acceptance, then we've shown that while we may not have causation, we do indeed at least have correlation.

Reuters:

One in five global consumers said they would consider having cosmetic surgery and Russians are most receptive to the idea, a survey by market researcher ACNielsen shows.
...
However, 94 percent of Hong Kongers were against having surgery to enhance their looks as were 92 percent of Indonesians and 91 percent of Japanese and Malaysians.

Is this something to do simply with cultural attitudes in the Far East or more to do with Russia's vastly greater income inequality?

Interesting question. If makes me wonder what the Chinese attitudes are about cosmetic surgery? If Cowen is right, shouldn't they be more receptive to it than the Japanese? On the other hand, what about the impact of the shortage of women in China? It seems this would decrease the incentive to undergo cosmetic surgery compared to these other areas.

Economically speaking, Cowen's theory makes sense. Where the expected benefits of beauty are the greatest, you'd expect to see more women willing to bear higher costs to obtain it. While I can believe this is an effect, I am curious what the magnitude of it is?