Thanks for being kind Tyler, and everyone else. I know we are hard on ourselves... but I feel better always changing and growing as a person all around, not just this one place. I've got a Phoenix mindset you know?
I forgot to mention in my post above that I wasn't referring to you or implying that your photos reinforced my constant judgement of people's faces. Not to be disingenuous, but you look pretty good despite the asymmetry and other things. Like, I see all of the issues that you've mentioned, but it's not disastrous. I was considering making a thread asking how women can have dystrophy and appear more harmonious than dystrophied men (smaller skulls? less reliance on needing a broad chin?), but the answer could probably be summed up in a single post.
I've been there too, heavy in the evaluation of others.
Actually, it's not easy to put into words how my outlook changed, but these past years, I have been striving to connect myself in conscious willingness to the creative, and striving to broaden my acceptance of other forms of beauty.
I have a somewhat longer face myself, and for a long time I was haunted by it because I could not accept its logic. I also used to see images of Sarah Jessica Parker, and let myself be influenced by the poison against her that's spread in the media, which in turn poisoned me against my own longer face type.
One day, though, I looked at her image from youth, and saw that she is actually highly beautiful, only the poor woman .. has likely been so run down through all of the vitriol spat in her direction, her once beautiful blue eyes have been turned dour and put off from their natural colour, and her face has become worn down. Yet in her youth, she was as beautiful as any queen, and everything looked prosperous in her face.
Around the time that I saw that, I looked to another image, of Liv Tyler the woman who played Arwen in the Lord of the Rings film, and it led me to the recognition that beauty is not a matter of a face being long or short or round or square, but rather very high proportional beauty and uniformity is in every face so long as the body is cultivated and purified. Both woman have a longer face, so it cannot be the length of the face that determines the beauty, but the health and cultivation and purity of the body that determines that. A favourite book of fairytales also taught me the same lesson, so then I deepened my recognition of the truth in reality.
It pains me badly (at the moment of writing) to see our Jessica in images still smiling through the poison vitriol that is spat her way through the ugly, dirty lies of the media. It just makes me so upset. But if it helps others to learn the truth, then there is at least a value in it, although I wish her a true and full recovery.
I looked up old photos of Sarah Jessica Parker, and she did used to be cute, but there's just as big of a chance that her appearance has gotten worse over time because of long faces having less support to them, so she could have ended up aging worse than ideally. Being the butt of infinite "horse face" jokes for years must be a factor, too, it's not like decades of being insulted wouldn't harm your psyche. A lot of SJP's newer photos have her wearing a ton of makeup around her eyes, so I can't judge any changes to her eyes too accurately. Going back to what I said to MeltedFace, I think women can "get away" with having lacking facial development, or rather, it requires severe damage for women's faces to truly begin to look "off" and Sarah in her earlier years is an example of that in action. Perhaps a better explanation or reasoning is women's neotenous appearance during their teens/twenties causes their lack of facial structure to not be as apparent (especially to people who don't obsess over maxillas 24/7), then as women get older, the divide between hot and not becomes extreme.
Liv Tyler is often used an example of an attractive long face, and I agree. She seems to have features that a typical long face doesn't, such as good eye support and full cheeks. IMO, she looks a lot like Danielle Haim from the band 'Haim'. They're a group of three sisters, all of whom have long faces and look kind of weird except for Danielle, though the other two seem to photograph better compared to being in motion.
Very relatable. Learning to study faces can be really disheartening. On an instinctual level there is a huge difference in the vibe I get from mathematically proportional / harmoniously grown face (even if the features themselves are ugly) than when looking at a face with a disharmonious structure.
It's cruel to say, I know, but a great face gives an appearance of a wholesome and real personality, while disharmonious face feels off in a way that is almost physically draining. Harmonious and proportional faces give off the impression of a coherent and distinct personality, while disharmonious faces are "nobodies", as if you couldn't get a clear feel of their personalities.
The reason for this, I believe, is that biologically the brain is hard-wired to be able to automatically analyze a person's many facial characteristics that the combination of bone & soft tissue translates to in a proportional face. When the bone structure is weak, recessed and not properly aligned with the soft tissue, the brain will have a hard time analyzing the face. The proportions and shapes of the improperly grown face are different than what the brain has evolved to handle, giving the brain less usable information from which to construct the mental prototype of that person's personality, or vibe. This is why proper facial growth almost always gives off a distinct sense of unique personality and improper facial growth feels like a lack of personality.
Yeah, I fully agree with you on that. It's kind of funny and ironic that I know how bad my own face is (and am never not aware of it) but when seeing somebody with significant, horrendous dystrophy, my judgement switches from less of an innocent "noticing" of flaws to a type of contempt or shock and awe. You may be onto something with personality correlating to facial development - I have thought that for a while, but I like your explanation. I've never felt like I've had a real personality, and though the cause for that goes well beyond just looks, I remember being 8 years old and thinking my reflection in the mirror made me look totally lifeless. For at least 15 years before knowing about facial structure, I always thought I was uniquely ugly ("there are ugly people in the world, but I am a special kind of ugly") and looked like a general non-entity. At least partially because of that, I have a disconnect between the fantasy personality I constantly daydream of having/using and the boring, nothing-there drivel that comes out. I've never even been able to talk to family members without several filters on, resulting in never acting how I want or saying what I want, smiling is forced and unnatural, and feeling like a "nothing" as a result. That's obviously a huge mental issue and I'm fully aware becoming attractive wouldn't solve it, but it's interesting how all of that is perfectly captured in my face as well. Comparing my own face to various celebrities, they all have a certain spark to their face that becomes immediately apparent when looking at them. I think Justin Bieber in particular is a good example of what you said about the brain constructing a vibe by looking at someone's face. Regardless of him being classified by many as somewhat of a D-bag, I find his face very "simple" to look at, as if there's no decoding of his features to be done and it's easy to see his personality in a glance.
Home
Search
Members
Login
Register
Show Posts
