Is beauty truly in the eye of the beholder?

I may not be a beautician with a scalpel but thre is no question that I am in the beauty business. As such, I spend a lot of time thinking about beauty. There are even academic books on the history of beauty, and when you put it all together it becomes obvious that superficial beauty is meaningless without inner beauty. When we think about beauty being in the eye of the beholder (an idea first put forth in classical Greece but written in its modern form in the 1878 book Molly Bawn by an author going by the pseudonym "The Dutchess"), it would seem that it is up to others to decide. Some find this a liberating idea, assuming that all that matters is how we feel about ourselves, but like so many aspects of human nature it is more complicated than that.
What it comes down to is that how others perceive us matters whether we like it or not. When we express a positive attitude, others will respond in kind, and that in itself is a beautiful thing. But that isn't to discount physical appearance completely. How we take care of ourselves, our own sense of confidence, is manifest in appearance, and that has tangible benefits too.