Hollywood beauty Angelina Jolie has topped the list of the world's 100 most beautiful women.

Supermodel Christy Turlington came second followed by Queen Rania of Jordan and film director Sophia Coppola. Indian beauty Aishwarya Rai also figured in the top 25.

As Harpers & Queen list Angelina Jolie as the No1 most beautiful woman in the world, the Times asks: “What is beauty?”

Well, clearly it’s a leggy brunette with a dingy-lipped pout that turns a large percentage of men into quivering wrecks.

“But the truth is that beauty is a deeply tangled problem — and debating its definition can raise some pretty ugly arguments,” the paper drones.

Beauty has been debated for centuries and the ‘ideal’ of what it is to be beautiful has shifted as people grow vainer and society becomes increasingly self-obsessed.

As Brad Pitt once pointed out, “I'm one of those people you hate because of genetics. It is the truth”.

That’s why, despite Jolie’s denial that she and Pitt aren’t dating, you have to admit they’d make a ‘beautiful couple’.

“There is no one ideal. Images range from the cheetah-limbed litheness of Christie Turlington to the wrinkling dignity of Charlotte Rampling, from the polished oriental smoothness of Ziyi Zhang to the dark voluptuous curves of Nigella Lawson, and at the top of the Harpers & Queen list, the actress Angelina Jolie.”

Apparently, what they actually share isn’t great genes and lots of money to keep them in tip-top shape, but “success”.

“They are touting that most lucrative of commodities: unsatisfied desire. They are selling an impossible perfection that, even if we could reach it, would slip away with the onset of the next style.”

Tut, jealously is such an ugly trait.

Aishwarya Rai is ranked #9 in the list