Face of Tomorrow
I followed a link to this guys work, and I'm really impressed. So much so that I spent a lot of my idle (driving, etc) time thinking of ways to use those cheap, free morphing programs to do this with different faces. However, it would be very time intensive, but I might eventually blend all Alison's and my immediate relatives into composite male and female faces.

Though arguably I think people would say that Miss Composite Bondi Beach Sydney or Miss Composite Pamplona Spain would be the most beautiful, my brain is most attracted to Miss Composite Amsterdam Holland. She just seems to have more personality.

I've always been fascinated with the faces that come from averaging. It removes the symmetry errors and any unfortunate facial features which some people may have. I know there have been tests on people's perception of averaged faces and the concept of beauty. Unfortunately, until Mike Mike (the artist) that was the only source of any of these interesting images. Well, besides that composite Betty Crocker they made a few years ago.

Hips and Boobies
My boss and I had a discussion about female bodies recently. It started with him railing against the provocative, and frankly near pornographic, advertisements that Victoria's Secret has on the TV. Actually, there is a Fruit of the Loom ad which has the apple using a metal detector on a underwear clad gal out now that makes my male brain go ouch too.

I've waxed philosophical here at work about the concept of the curse word recently. Many cultures don't have them. But in western culture, we feel a hierarchy of inappropriateness is needed in our symbology. While feces and bowel movements are considered clinical terms, crap is an extremely low level curse (only to be corrected when kids use it, and to be avoided in formal situations), where the S-word is one of the big seven curses.

But reaction to the image of the female body is different. There is hard wiring designed into our male brains that make us like the look of some good hips or breasts. (As I sometimes joke, I'm a torso man, myself.) Many men lust after the hot bods they see, usually on TV or in advertising, but it doesn't occur to them the root of this desire.

It's about having your babies taken care of. Hips must be wide enough, not just to allow the lil scamp out of it's gestation chamber and into the real world, but they're also handy for propping a kid up on while they're carried around. And while every male should know that breasts are, in fact, mammary glands, designed for the specific purpose of feeding little baby people, this fact is lost on the majority of them while they leer at a woman's chest as they talk to her.

Butterface and Britney
"Oh, oh," you say as you raise your hand. "Mr. Postagulous, how do you explain the butter face phenomenon, or why I can't stand Britney Spears even though she is a hottie?" One thing at a time, young padawan.

Butter face (meaning "everything is good looking but her face") phenomenon, and a man's disqualification as a mate of a woman with an amazing body but with a unfortunate set of facial characteristics, all goes back to the reproductive drive. Fugly doesn't happen in one generation. Those who fall well outside the definition of beauty usually have been separated from the mainstream genetic pool for a while, due to low IQ, antisocial behavior such as insanity, or sometimes just slim pickins as far as mates go.

Finding Britney Spears unattractive, which is much more common than Ms. Spears would like to believe, is due to the compositing of her personality and looks into one entity. She is a person, not just something to look at, and not just a disembodied personality. The package is undesirable, and thus we perceive her as being unattractive, which frankly is a difficult feat, considering she seems very capable of delivering and amply feeding many a happy baby. Meow.

I once worked with a contractor who, when you first met her, people thought she was drop dead gorgeous. However, once you got to know her, you could care less, or would actively avoid her due to her personality. The same is true for one of the industry contact alternates we have. She is a militant man hater without an ounce of tact. She should be considered beautiful, and both me and Labman felt she was strikingly beautiful the first time we saw her. But really, she's just a mean old biddy who hasn't gotten old yet.

Watch Your Face Change
Whey you're kid, and you make faces, meaning sticking out your tongue or whatever, your mom might have said "Someday your face will freeze that way" or some other phrasing of the same thought. It's true, in a way.

If you know someone who frowns constantly, and I do, it changes their face over time. You'll see someone who looks genuinely unpleasant in their 40's and if you see their high school photo, they'll be quite attractive. The same is true for people who look downtrodden, or as I sometimes say "like they were left out in the rain for a few years."

I know that I'm not all smiles, but I do try to have a pleasant expression, though I do tend to focus on sorrowful things in life (history is just full of bad stuff, and I like history). I think that Alison looks much prettier now what Nina is around. I think it's because she smiles more. I know I laugh more.

Sometimes I worry, when Nina is grunt-griping or being fussy, that she'll mess up the beautiful face she's been given with a default bad attitude.

Sometimes I'll joke, when Nina is doing something risky, "Be careful. You need to maintain facial symmetry until after you're married."



Spell Cheky
Blogger's spell check wants to change Postagulous to Postcolonial.
- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 10:51 AM