6. There’s More to Life Than Facial Symmetry

Olga Khazan, a staff writer covering health of The Atlantic wrote an article about facial symmetry. Studies show that despite beauty trends coming and going, people with symmetrical faces are considered more attractive. The theory explaining why that happened suggests that people use symmetry as an indicator of good health and genes. However, a new study says that facial symmetry and good health do not necessarily go hand in hand. Nicholas Pound, a psychologist at Brunel University London used health data from 4,732 teenagers and correlated their histories of rashes, acne, and infections with how symmetrical their faces are. Through that experiment he discovered that the more facially symmetrical teenagers were not always the healthy ones. The author then says most people still do not know why facial symmetry is considered beautiful, and tells people to stop obsessing over it. There are many makeup and hairstyle tutorials showing how to make a person’s face look more “balanced,” but in fact humans don’t notice small asymmetries. People process faces as a whole, not examining each half separately. She says tiny differences are what distinguish people. Nautilus, a science magazine, posted an article about facial symmetry and had pictures of celebrities attached with sliders to make each side of the face identical to the other; she goes on to say it makes them look weird rather than improving their appearance. Claus-Christian Carbon, a psychology professor at the University of Bamberg said people with very symmetric faces aren’t remembered as well as people with slight asymmetries. Then she tells of a project called Echoism where people can upload pictures of themselves and make one side of the face an exact mirror of the other; again, she says the pictures are actually disturbing and abnormal. A study in 1996 showed children and young adults who had slight facial asymmetry when making emotive expressions were considered more attractive. She ends by saying that regarding attractiveness “what is good is beautiful,” not the other way around.

Khazan’s article is very powerful. The word choice is both complex, using words such as “proxy” and “schadenfreude,” and common when she expresses her opinions. It is not only an informative article, to explain more about facial symmetry and its impact on society as a whole, but it is also a criticism of how people see each other. Khazan clearly states her opinion and thinks people should stop caring so much about the symmetry or asymmetry of other people’s faces. She says a face in which one side completely mirrors the other is disturbing, and links to a website where people can see it for themselves and agree (or disagree) with her opinion. It is a very well thought out article and Khazan is very successful in expressing her opinion about the topic.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/08/theres-more-to-life-than-facial-symmetry/378807/