The Meaning of Beauty

There are times when I lose myself in deep thoughts, and recently a comment on one of the blogs got me thinking about one of these subjects.
Beauty, we all know it's about physical symmetry and absence of flaws that defines beauty. There are many different types of beauty and the stereotype of the big breasted blond is merely cliche.
I am talking about beauty as it applies to women of course.
I won't get bogged down in definitions of what constitutes beauty because that is not really what I want to contemplate.

My fascination is with the purpose of beauty if it has any purpose at all.

Before anyone jumps in and tells me it's about procreation or natural selection or some other scientific bent, just stop and think for a moment about the animal kingdom. Amongst the animal species where beauty serves any purpose, it is the male of the species that carries the plumage, the color or the magnificent display to attract the female.
In the animal kingdom, the female chooses the most attractive male and beauty does serve a particular function.

Within human beings, the roles are reversed and beauty is possessed by the female of the species to attract the male. Now here is a limited purpose to this in that the female chooses the male who will impregnate her. There is a vague resemblance to the natural selection process occurring here but wait, hasn't human society been patriarchal rather than matriarchal?
In other words, it is the males who are in control. It has always been that the man, as the provider has the right to choose his female partner.
In this regard, we might begin to understand female beauty as being a byproduct of natural selection by the male of the species to reproduce with the most attractive woman they can get.
But, and this is a bit but, if this was indeed the case, then by now we would have selectively filtered out all ugly people within the human race. We know that this isn't the case.

So, a beautiful women is something to desire, to want to possess but in the end it doesn't matter.
So what is the purpose?
Is beauty just another anomaly like the human appendix, for example, it's there but doesn't have any real purpose?

Or did beauty evolve for the specific purpose of advertising? Maybe God could see into the future and thought there would eventually be a need for beautiful women to help advertisers sell merchandise by standing in a bikini next to a brand new automobile and contorting their bodies in some sort of simulated orgasm?

Or maybe beautiful women are there to reward those lucky enough to become fabulously wealthy and have the need to demonstrate their affluence by having a trophy wife clinging to their arm?

Where would the porn industry be without beautiful women?

What would Hollywood market without the endless supply of photogenic faces to fill it's movies with?

Is it in fact that we have been lucky enough to live in a time when photography and beauty have come together to celebrate the pointlessness of beauty. Beauty as an end in itself?
Beauty as something to covet, to desire but as empty and as unfulfillable as a Chinese meal?