Since the Brow speaks often true, since Eyes and Noses have Tongues, and the countenance proclaims the heart and inclinations; let observation so far instruct thee in Physiognomical lines ... we often observe that Men do most act those Creatures, whose constitution, parts, and complexion do most predominate in their mixtures. This is a corner-stone in Physiognomy ... there are therefore Provincial Faces, National Lips and Noses, which testify not only the Natures of those Countries, but of those which have them elsewhere.
For a modern example of physiognomy as a science, Wikipedia points to "Kim Jong-Un: The Face Tells All" (preserved in the Wayback Machine)("So as soon as Kim Jong-un's photo was revealed, South Korean physiognomists got right down to business analyzing every feature to gauge his personality and character").
I'm reading about physiognomy because the word came up in the WaPo column, "Someone gave our daughter a White doll. How do we, um, ‘disappear’ it?" by Damon Young:
We’ve... been intentional with buying [our daughter] dolls and toys of color. Black is always the preference, but we’ve made exceptions. (Her Moana blanket is still a favorite.) White dolls, though? We haven’t officially banned them. There is no sign on our stoop saying “No Dogs or Malibu Barbies.” But if we’re at a store, and the only dolls for sale are White, we’ll just be leaving doll-less that night. Our rationale is simple. The physiognomy of a baby doll represents what the person buying it considers to be precious. And a decision to gift a White doll to our daughter — who’s already aware of the ceaseless cultural proselytization of Eurocentric beauty — could communicate to her that we value those features more than hers.
Why would you ever say "physiognomy" instead of "face"?
The study of the features of the face, or of the form of the body generally, as being supposedly indicative of character; the art of judging character from such study.... The supposed art of predicting the future from the features of the face; a fortune told in this way.... A person's facial features or expression (originally frequently considered as indicative of the mind and character); the face, the countenance.
So you can use "physiognomy" simply to mean face and without seeming to believe in a pseudoscience, but it does connote a belief that mind and character are visible in the face. What does a child see in the face of doll?
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32 comments:
"a decision to gift a White doll to our daughter — who’s already aware of the ceaseless cultural proselytization of Eurocentric beauty — could communicate to her that we value those features more than hers."
Yes, because your child can never, never be given any doll that is not of color. It could destroy her life, at least the part about her lifelong struggle against ceaseless cultural proselytization of Eurocentric beauty. Of which she's already aware, just so we all know what a good parent he is.
FFS, these people are sick in the head.
so, diversity in All forms... Except for honkies, No honky dolls here!
We don't have a sign, we just don't allow them.
And now that one has somehow shown up.. We want to uh 'disappear it'
It's NOT that we hate honkies... We just don't want them to exist
if you switch the words white and black on this wa-po article..
You have The MOST Racist article in the history of the world. Don't believe me? Try it?
And make sure to use the word "physiognomy" when describing the black doll's face.
These parents won't allow One Single white doll in their house. ALL dolls MUST BE colored
The nose! that hair! we can NOT allow our daughter to even see, let alone Play with a white doll
What does a child see in the face of doll?
Someone who needs the child’s help to get what it wants.
This source muddles a lot of stuff. On one hand reading faces is superstitious and akin to astrology or palm reading. On the other hand, faces are solid indicators of (1) biological sex, (2) age, (3) broad tribal affiliation or popular notions of race, and (4) moderate indicators of health. People WANT to read the character and soul from the face, but that's not measurably possible.
Take a look at the attractive face of the serial killer Ted Bundy:
https://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/serial-killers/ted-bundy/
The science-driven debunker James Randi showed Bundy's face to professional face readers circa 1993, and they got it entirely wrong:
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-1993-10-19-9310180189-story.html
Later sample James Randi video from a TED presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0Z7KeNCi7g&list=PL6ewBUdsp8rRP3cHQrIz5rgjYp4pe01px&index=641
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There's a second independent topic in this story, as following research on how black children prefer white faces. Yes, when that's what they see on TV and in movies that's what they like. This is why media today often includes a variety of races/skin colors. However, it's pretty fuzzy science because aesthetic choices are in part personal and random (see Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who identifies as black). There are also inherent differences in appearance based on skin color, as tattoos can be created using almost any color on fair skin but work best with either red or black on dark skin.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211994/Even-babies-discriminate-Shock-new-study-shows-infants-young-months-distinguish-black-white-faces.html
It's a set of complicated topics, so follow the nuances and don't jump to conclusions.
"physiognomy is real"
For dark enlightenment aficionados like myself, this has always been the case. The above quote was actually created by Heartiste, of the blog Chateau-Heartiste which got canned by WordPress not terribly long ago.
It encapsulates entirely the truth about the link between physical form and political or philosophical affinities among different groups of people. For instance, most aware people could probably look at trigglypuff, of someone with purple hair, or a nose ring, or 'gay face' and have a high probability of guessing their political and sociological affiliations...probably immediately and without a tremendous amount of other input.
The phrase was often used especially in the context of an affirmation. As in a statement would be made by some dysgenic acolyte of the left, and then a photo, mugshot, or video would be released later to the overwhelming response of the commentaries that, "Yep. Figured. Physiognomy is real" (sometimes shortened to "the phys").
To this day, it is stunning how well this works. The accuracy of the predictive model. I, and many others, can with almost 80-90% certainty either predict a person's internal politics based on what they look like or conversely predict some dysgenic physiological oddity or weirdness will be apparent by just listening to or reading what a person says. Ugliness and beauty, proportion and asymmetry are very much manifested in thought as well as form. They are linked.
Trigglypuff is ugly on the outside, leading to ugliness on the inside. Sometimes this works I reverse. Matt Gaetz mentions yesterday about the unattractiveness of pro-choicen women, and people freak out, not because he's wrong but because he's more than a little bit right.
Physiognomy is real.
Mr. Young must not have been watching any tv for the past couple of years. When he writes, "...how White beauty is considered the standard here in America — a status reinforced when she notices monochromatic magazine covers at a bookstore or watches advertisements during her favorite cartoons." he is not being truthful about the tv commercials of today. I'd go so far as to say that people of color or some non white ethnicity are in the majority.
When I was a child in the 1950s, I had a black baby doll. I didn't understand who in the real world the doll was supposed to represent, but it was bought for me because I saw it in a store and thought it was excitingly special.
'Why would you ever say "physiognomy" instead of "face"?' That's an easy one, right? I may not be able to tell someone's character from their face, but I can tell a lot from how they pretend to know big words.
Swing, pendulum, swing!
Physiognomy, was also the art of discovering character and personality traits through facial features. Phrenology, the 19th century pseudoscience of analyzing the shape of the head to determine character and personality traits seems like a branch or child of physiognomy. Phrenology is been criticized as racist nowadays. Physiognomy, too, but was there anything in the 19th century that wasn't racist?
Say "face" and you've humanized someone or something and brought it closer to you. Say "physiognomy" and you create a clinical distance from something alien. Tell the writer to buy her child an Asian doll and a Native American doll to go with the Black ones and the White one and teach the child the meaning of human brotherhood, or whatever it is that we are calling it now.
“Why would you ever say "physiognomy" instead of "face"?”
Physiognomy is deeper than skin.
Children have imagination. They don’t have to take things at face value…
Why do girls get dolls and boys get ... things? Baseball glove. Fire truck. Erector (now Meccano) Set.
Why does any gender play with dolls?
My Grandpa's generation would use the word "phiz" for someone's face. Like my dad would sometimes talk about someone's "mug".
The thing about a doll, it's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a shark's eyes.
When it comes at you it doesn't seem to be livin'... until it bites you, and those black eyes roll over white.
Mister ride space Mountain is exactly correct. Faceology is scientific certain. The Trumper is easily spotted in the wild usually by the amount of chins they have dangling and jiggling from their cheeks and jowls. The collective Trumper countenance exhibits a look of constipation and fear. The younger ones who are just beginning to fill out give off a proto Pillsbury doughboy vibe. Constipation hasn't quite set in. They're growing insecurities are visible in their beady little darting eyes.
“Why does any gender play with dolls?“
My understanding is the model motherhood.
They have innate maternal instincts.
“Why would you ever say "physiognomy" instead of "face"?”
Because you're a Mr. Smartypants.
@Howard
It's ok Howard. Your comment is one of those anecdotal stereotypes I can dismiss because my response won't do anything to confirm your biases. Well done.
P.S. If logic were a tree, you'd be a bush. Love your avatar btw.
You can garner a lot of information by utilizing physiognomy.
“Why would you ever say "physiognomy" instead of "face"?”
Even Cliff Claven didn't go that far.
"I am a racist asshole. I will not get my daughter a white doll because I hate white people; they engage in 'a ceaseless cultural proselytization of Eurocentric beauty'."
Franz Josef Gall, the founder of phrenology, was the preeminent neurologist of his day. He pioneered some of the techniques for the dissection of tissue that are still in use today. He was a legitimate scientist, and he was wrong....Follow the science, except when it's wrong......Symmetrical features are a blessing in any culture. Lookism is a basic hard wired prejudice. Blonde hair adds top spin to good looks. What with modern advances in hair dyes, blonde hair is available to everyone so it's no longer racist to prefer blonde hair.....Does the kid involved suffer any ill effects from having parents who go out of their way to discriminate against white dolls?
Show us please, using the dolls, how the racists hurt your daughter.
“Phiz,” from physiognomy, was slang for face in countless classic English mysteries, and I think Bertie Wooster may have used it too. (Jeeves would not approve.)
There’s a good Korean movie called The Face Reader, set in the sixteenth century, about a practitioner of that art, and the palace intrigues that bedevil him.
Here’s phiz, n., in the OED:
colloquial. Now somewhat archaic.
A face or facial expression; countenance.
The earliest citation is 1687, Henry Higden translating Juvenal:
“Oh had you then his Figure seen, With what a rueful Phis and meine.”
Et cetera and so forth, down through the centuries, notably W.S. Gilbert (Bab Ballads, 1869) and J.C. Powys (novel Maiden Castle, 1936), until the most recent, Entertainment Weekly (!) in 1997: “He endures some surgical magic to have his face temporarily removed, replaced with the phiz of his supposedly brain-dead nemesis.”
No mention of Wodehouse, but that last one would have tickled S.J. Perelman.
And here’s the trailer for The Face Reader:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9YoyvBAMWI
Be interesting to have South Korean, or any, physiognomists unknowingly study your photo of 40 years ago, physiognomisize you in detail, and see if your character of 40 years later lived up to your earlier facial characteristics.
His face was ajar, like a Mason's.
Four Temperaments, anyone?
I am frequently mistaken for a liberal lady because of my appearance. I do believe Orwell's statement that at 50 everyone has the face they deserve.
Howard's remarks about Trumpers seem to describe the women Gaetz was commenting on recently.
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