Lily Diaz wrote:
> What I imagine is more difficult is to derive expression from
> constantly changing parameters, such as would be the case if the
> problem space were to include the diversity of human cultures.
That was my initial reaction but when I read the short published paper
behind this
here: http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~tommer/beautification/
and here: http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~tommer/beautification/dfb_sketch.pdf
I saw that, as well as sampling 300 people they were citing sources
(Perrett et al. 1994; Jones 1996) which claimed to establish that
acceptable facial norms are very consistent across races ands cultures.
I could see how that could interact with racial differences.
So I guess we have to go back and check the sources. They may be
hopelessly naive - eg did they find a way to tune out the possible
effect of norms converging because of mass media? or they may reveal
durable truths about human tastes.
Incidentally if you look at the second pair of photographs in the first
link above you will see that the "before" image shows a young woman with
a dour expression rather like the picture of Steerpike illustrated in
Mervin Peake's Ghormenghast
(foreground here:
http://www.todayinliterature.com/assets/essays/peake_1/1-gormenghast-428x347.jpg)
and the "after" image shows her with her mouth raised up and a smiling
expression. All the rest of her feaures are unchanged.
I think we could all have predicted that she needed to "lighten up".
More importantly, Mervyn Peake, who was a master at capturing the
grotesque in the everyday had the ability to draw not just
acceptability, but an enormous range of facial characters, each one
distinct and human.
And, I believe, there is a lot of truth in the assertion that, up to the
age of 25 we wear the face we were given, but after that we make our own
face. Trying to fight that can lead to horrible results - I saw Barry
Manilow on TV the other day (No I didn't seek him out, he caught me
unawares). He wears a shocking mask, no longer a real person's face.
best regards
Chris
JONES, D. 1996. Physical Attractiveness and the Theory of Sexual
Selection: Results
from Five Populations. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
PERRETT, D. I., MAY, K. A., AND YOSHIKAWA, S. 1994. Facial shape and
judgements
of female attractiveness. Nature 368, 239–242.
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