Saturday, March 01, 2003

The Way You Look Tonight...

I know I'm always asking these incredibly stupid questions. Here's another one: Does who you are and what you believe in and what you do change your face?

The reason I ask is that if you sat around and looked at people and thought about it you'd see that you can tell from people's faces (1) Who went to college (2) Who drinks too much (3) Who has a bad marriage (4) Who is a fundamentalist Christian (5) Who votes Republican (6) Who reads Noam Chomsky....etc.

That makes no sense, though. Why are people's faces so revealing? I'm assuming that the person who voted Republican could have grown up to be a person who reads Noam Chomsky and that face structure is genetic and the face they have at 30 is basically a face that could be either a face of someone that voted Republican or reads Noam Chomsky.

But it isn't--the face tells all. It's like 'gaydar.' Isn't it partly one of those 'face' things.

It might be explained by other cues that you pick up from people's body language or their clothes or hairstyle, etc. Think about the fundamentalist Christian thing--they all have this certain kind of face. Don't they? I think I could grow their hair out, put them in a tie-dyed t-shirt and send them to a Phish concert and they would still look like they should be driving an American car and reading USA today. Maybe I'm wrong.

Anyway, try it and see. Check out the faces only and then strike up a conversation (after you guess in advance)--see if I'm wrong.

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