Have we stopped to consider the cost of misreading another’s emotional state in the new world of masked encounters? To smile or not to smile? Can we even begin to read what’s really behind the mask?
To be sure a smile is the outward result of the inner emotion of happiness. And who of us doesn’t want to be met with good will?
I discovered that a genuine smile originates with the limbic system, but a fake one comes from the motor cortex (an agent of control and planning.) When analyzing a smile, sincerity can be measured by the presence of crinkled skin around the eyes, a result of the limbic which deals with emotion and memory.
How very odd. Another performance-driven activity to elevate stress.
There is a facial element; however, that does its own thing masked or unmasked. Try this on for size. Eyebrow watching. I’ve been an aficionado since I first saw Gregory Peck in Duel in the Sun. This movie was a stinker, but his eyebrows were fabulous. This catapulted my focus to a single measure of those who are looking good.
The eyebrows have it!
Yes, you got the drift of my youthful shallowness. Naturally my coach the mother-figure was always promoting a heavy brow as a symbol of beauty in both males and females. Our family was made self-satisfied as we each had a set.
Back when perceived beauty or the lack of it had intense consequences, I was experiencing the 1970’s. Those were the days when a female brow was plucked to an inch of its life into a sad single line-up….one meager hair after another.
Mother threatened my future after she gleaned my eyebrow goals which involved a high school transplant from exotic Florida. Susan Drake’s brow was highly arched and pencil thin. “If you do such a thing,’ she mothered, “your brows will never grow back.”
Ultimately that message became mantra when I found a heavily brow-laden dude to walk alongside hand in hand for the rest of my life. The Almighty rescued me as there was a keen intelligence supporting his Gregory Peck unibrow.
A face without the definition that eyebrows provide is challenging. To back up my premise I recently found an Elle article entitled: Eyebrows Are Your Most Important Facial Feature Says Science.
So all ye folk salivating for Blepharoplasty, hear ye this: “According to a recent study conducted at MIT, famous faces are rendered unrecognizable in the absence of eyebrows, whereas faces without eyes are still identifiable.”
This makes me think of a family member without eyebrows. As a child I acquired a muscle spasm studying the situation until she snapped – “What are you looking at?!”
And yes karma is a bitch because not only have I lost the heft of my luscious brows, but the outer parts have turned white. Pretty sure I don’t have to detail the outer-realm sort of look achieved when they drift into unattended-quarantine.
Such things elevate the visual like my daughter Mary Ann has always described in an overwrought person – “Their eyebrows were touching!”
You can imagine my regret when, though I have long since released the need to color my hair, I still hustle to meet up with my eyebrow master.
Obi-Wan Kenobi, Salvage the eyebrow particle of youth. God bless you.
I first met the master when I still had a semblance of carefree dignity. She held the natural line for me from the taming years to finally mixing complimentary colors of dye and making best of what I still sport. (Gratitude to beautiful Heather of The Skin Bar in Brentwood, Tennessee.)
Whether arched, furrowed, raised, or relaxed, we can be assured that our brows are not frivolous dust catchers. May we be ever mindful of the enchanted means of communication that they offer our countenance.
As an ancient doyen once said, “Eyebrows speak louder than words.” And since words have failed us, we need all the help we can get.