The Muscular Argument for Judging Someone('s face)

If someone is said to be judgmental (without modifier, or piggybacking a review of a social commentator or standup comic) it isn’t intended to be complimentary. Voluminous proverbs and aphorisms condemn, either explicitly or in spirit, making harsh or hasty decisions based on appearances, for instance: looking at a person’s face and thinking, “I don’t like that person. We couldn’t be friends.” It’s bad to judge based on looks. Unfair. Unacceptable. So say the adages.

Common experience, on the other hand, tells us something else entirely, that everybody judges everybody else all the time. Initial judgments are frequently proven wrong and replaced (appearances can be deceiving) but that doesn’t stop us from judging early and often, all of the time no matter what.

Not that our colloquialisms and cautionary tales aren’t useful. For teaching children and reminding adults that pretty people aren’t always nice, ugly people aren’t always mean and regardless everyone should be treated with respect, phrases like: “never judge a book by its cover” are wonderful. And, taken literally, not judging a book by its cover is sage practice. A great graphic artist can do a brilliant cover for a flimsy novel, or vice versa. In the publishing biz, the cover designer and the author of a book aren’t even required to meet – but a human being is not a book and a face is not a jacket.

A human face and the human person wearing it are part of the same sentient organism, as in: inseparable, unified networks of cells and chemicals, signals and tissues. You’d never tell an endocrinologist looking at your toxicology report, “don’t judge me by my liver!” The same level of cohesion unites the face and confluent cells comprising the rest of the body (human person).

           

Faces are important. We study faces for vital information about the individuals we share space with. Faces, not elbows or clavicles. Looking at the face, we see a lot: bone structure is prominent (and genetic) but musculature, among other things, also influences the structural appearance of the face, and muscles augment or atrophy with use or disuse.

           

If you use your body to sit on the couch eating Fritos and ice cream sundaes (maybe together) it will, unfortunately, reflect that. Conversely, if you use your body to run stadiums and pump iron, that exercise manifests in muscle mass and definition.

The face is a muscle rich area of the body. Muscles under the surface of the skin are in near constant use making one facial expression after another. We’re rarely expressionless in our waking lives. This ceaseless subcutaneous action has visible physical consequences, of a sort. The affirmation that, over a period of time, the expressions we make tone our faces in the same way that working out (or not) structures and defines our bodies, is a logical but un-peer-reviewed assertion.

If, for example, the regular act of genuinely smiling shapes the face the same way a regimen of bicep curls affects the arms, there would be evidence of an individual’s character in his or her face – evidence grounded in willful physical action through a process and with results that science can measure.

Currently, there seems to be a dearth of research defending the right to judge a person’s face on these grounds but maybe the scientific community will get wise. Hey, SCIENTISTS! Look here! We need this, to lighten up, to trust ourselves, to be more mindful of how we live our lives, what we enjoy and what we don’t, marked in smiles and furrowed brows.

Statements like “he has a kind face,” “I have worry lines” or “I didn’t like the looks of him” are easily dismissed as silly or simplistic. Maybe they shouldn’t be. Even if Grandmas are the only ones to voice these blunt-sounding epithets, implying that a person’s character is revealed in his or her face, they’re certainly not alone in thinking them. We do this everyday, in direct proportion to the number of new faces we encounter. The: everybody does it all the time contention isn’t a justification, but one isn’t required, judgment is biochemical, not a bad habit.

Every body judges. The body judges a situation before the mind. Say you walk into a deli, a gas station, the tailor’s – someplace unfamiliar. You push the door open and it swings closed behind you. Ding. You look up for a human face and find one. It’s a face you’ve never seen before. You judge the face.

You do.

As soon as the light bouncing off this new face hits your retinas your body begins reacting to the image. Chemical reactions with the variation of a 4^th of July display occur across distinct and related brain and body systems. The body’s response produces adrenaline, if needed, increases or decreases heart rate, puts a rose in your cheeks (maybe the tailor is cute) or potentially lowers blood pressure enough to induce fainting. This somatic reaction is involuntary, occurring before the conscious mind can make heads or tails of the information flooding the visual cortex.

There’s also research that shows that judgment is an evolutionary, biological imperative. Run from the angry rival clansman! Smile back at the potential mate who is clearly pleased at the sight of you. Like the superficial judgments we make willingly, these reactions may be erroneous or inappropriate – could be that clansman wasn’t so threatening after all, but our bodies continue to react and our conscious minds continue to judge. Perhaps we can afford our willful judgment the same consideration we allow our autonomic responses. Your body is a judger. You can be too – thoughtfully, mutably, and mindful of biases (don’t be a Nazi or a phrenologist).

It may be possible to tell a “_____” person by his face. Adults who judge faces skillfully and rapidly may be picking up on the subtleties of facial muscle tone. They may be hard to beat in an alley fight, quick to spot potential shoplifters or have more success finding suitable partners in bars.

If you’ve known a stroke survivor, or watched a fake one on TV, you’ve seen how altered a face is when nerve damage leaves facial muscles out of communication with intentional and automatic action commands. Actors (continuing the TV/film motif) have buff faces, conditioned by above average exercise of their facial muscles; perhaps when that model turns actress and looks (undeniably beautiful, but) flat on screen, it’s because his/her primary job is to be expressionless.

The bulk of the behavior-and-face-related cross-cultural science that’s out there correlates facial symmetry with attractiveness and points to the universality of various facial expressions (spurring two primetime FOX dramas). Maybe you disagree, but if this muscle argument has weight for you, write your local university bio department.

 
Our outward, physical form is instrumental in the construction of the matrices of perception and opinion-forming we use to decipher the world around us and define ourselves to our ourselves. The external reaches within, shaping us. It seems highly unlikely that the internal would not do the same, say, by displaying the results of persistent, intentional muscle action on the face. Very poetical indeed.