Just Put On A Happy Face
That song from the almost ancient musical, Bye, Bye Birdie, (which starred a young and singing Ann Margaret, no less) was upbeat and a bold attempt to convey that "gray skies are going to clear up." And of course many cultures value the aspect of "saving" face, of not facing humiliation or embarrassment (or in other cultures, that of being "two-faced," that of showing an artificial side to the outside world while hiding your true self inside). As an older piece by author Alida Brill in Psychology Today wrote (this on the aspects of the effects of steroids changing the appearance of one's face): Even if you're feeling your real face has been "lost" to steroids,
celebrate your existence this holiday season. We are our stories.
Sometimes these stories are written on our faces and do tell tales of
bravery and resilience
even more than of suffering and sorrow. With enough determination, and
in unity, we save face by going forward because we are still ourselves. It all sounds great, doesn't it? But often this time of year as well as other times can bring different attitudes; and for those so affected, the added lights and gaiety do little to remove often sad memories or feelings of depression. But consider this...what if you had no face? Shocking as that thought may be, it became the feature story some months ago in National Geographic, a story which recorded the youngest person in the U.S. to successfully receive a full-face transplant (advance warning, the photo of the pre-operation face, as featured in the magazine, is quite graphic and thus pasted at the end of this piece...it may prove offensive to some so perhaps this is a good point to stop reading if you feel that viewing the image may bother you).
What was a bit surprising to me was discovering how many facial transplants have already been performed throughout the world (40, as of this writing). These thoughts may have come about after having dinner with my neighbors and the discussion somehow turning to joint replacements and how his telling us that his new knee from a few years ago was nearly flawless and has allowed him to return to skiing, biking and other physical adventures he thought might be coming to an end. Then they (she being a former emergency room nurse and now a retired surgical researcher) talked of the commonality and ease of surgeons replacing such joints, with hips likely being the most common (some people have had earlier artificial joints such as hips replaced yet again with another more updated version), then knees and shoulders (yes, even fingers). To me, in thinking of the movement involved in a shoulder, it was difficult to picture such an operation but they assured me that the recovery time from a complete shoulder joint replacement was far less time than that of simply repairing a torn or broken tendon on a shoulder (for a story to dazzle you on the complexity of such operations, listen to Dr. Kodi Azari's story on his successful transplant of an entire human hand as told on the Moth Radio Hour).
But the story in National Geographic asked this: Take a moment to look in a mirror. What do you see? Most of us would answer, "Myself." My. Self. Our faces are the outer image we attach to our inner sense of self, to who we are and where we fit in the world...Think about what you can do with that face. You can kiss the ones you love, bite into an apple, sing, and sigh. You can smell freshly cut grass. You can gaze at your newborn and touch your cheek to his...We smile, we wrinkle our noses, we wink, we grimace, we preform countless expressions as we converse, often without even realizing it. Now visualize what goes on beneath that astonishing face. We have 43 mimetic muscles to express emotion and articulate speech. We have four major muscles on each side of the face that move the jaws and complex lingual muscles that assist in swallowing and speech. The face is also made up of lawyers of blood vessels, sensory and motor nerves, cartilage, bone, and fat. Cranial nerves control the motor muscles and transmit sensory information to the brain, enabling us to see, smell, taste, hear, and feel sensation on the skin. Go back to the mirror one more time. Look at your incredible face. Imagine what it would mean to lose it.
I've been finishing a series of lectures on cultural customs and have found it a true eye-opener as to how cultures of the world are so naturally different in how they react just to simple facial gestures or actions; no news there perhaps --picture those cultures whose hand gestures are quite flamboyant when talking while other cultures hand movements are almost non-existent-- but often the culture or part of the world which we've experienced from our upbringing can lead us to stereotype other cultures as being "rude" or "indifferent," or at the very least, a bit puzzling. As but one example, with many of the Japanese and other Asian* cultures, it is considered not culturally acceptable to smile when having your picture taken but rather to stand and pose stoically. We (in the U.S. at least) may interpret this as being emotionless and somewhat cold, but viewed from their perspective it is we who are thought to be lacking respect or making fun of the custom or person when we so smile in a photo, especially one taken when in their country (a lesson for world leaders or top executives). Yet in nearby Thailand, there are 17 distinctive smiles which are recognized as what you are trying to express, whether it is to a shopkeeper or a close relative...and this is acknowledged throughout the country, according to Professor David Livermore who heads the Cultural Intelligence Center. The Nordic culture is vastly different from the Germanic culture which is vastly different from the Latin-European culture (much of this traces back to early empirical training, from Viking to Byzantine to Roma). Still not quite sure about that? Then consider Germany and how you might perceive the "typical" German citizen. Got it? Then consider this, a quick tidbit to perhaps throw you off...Germany is #4 in the world in rap & hip hop music production (and if you think that that particular country is all get-things-done oriented, be aware that the socially accepted requirement in German schools is to place 50% of the emphasis on arts and the humanities, something even U.S. education systems lack).
The concept of pre-forming impressions of groups of people may be the same when we see a disfigured face, one severely burned or scarred or cut. And on the other side of the spectrum we can find people not happy with their appearance, even if they are perhaps the only one who might feel that way. Noses, foreheads, eyelids, tummys and more are tucked, filled, and reshaped in order to re-create a certain image. Yet as author Malcolm Godwin wrote in his book (unabashedly one of the few books I keep in my collection) Who Are You?: If we are to believe the findings of Western research then few of us feel we are attractive, or even approach the physical ideals of the time. Yet what actually dictates who is thought beautiful? Is there some universal criterion spanning all races and cultures that we feel we fall short of, or is it simply the programming of our particular culture and epoch? Among the results of studies he notes: The total area of the nose is less that 1/20 the total area of the face...The length of the chin is 1/5 the overall length of the face...The width of the mouth is 1/2 the width of the face at mouth level...The width of the eye is 3/10 the width of the face at eye level. And of course, our faces are anything but symmetrical (if you want to test this out yourself you can manipulate an identical half of your facial image via Photoshop or other such applications then reverse overlay it onto the cutout image as demonstrated in this tutorial; once done you'll discover that our faces --even yours-- are not symmetrically identical).
Beauty comes in many forms but appearance seems to be limited to only a few species, that is recognizing one's appearance in a mirror or how one appears (in addition to humans there are elephants, dolphins [and in the same family, orca whales], some species of magpies and even ants). And a quick glimpse around the world will reveal the many ways cultures view beauty differently, from decorating and painting faces and other parts of the body to inserting or elongating nose and ear openings, or making cuts and other scarring features on the face. But that is all based on what we can see...so imagine the world of beauty if you were blind. Could you picture something such as going on a wildlife safari as a blind person? That is exactly the story Ryan Knighton wrote in AFAR: As our land cruiser nosed through the brush, cicadas buzzed above us like power lines. My wife and I had been in Zimbabwe only a few hours. So far, our guide on our first safari drive, Alan, had already spotted several species of fleet antelope, and I was already concerned that for me --as a blind man-- yes, this was going to kind of suck. I might as well be at a drive-in movie. Here, you try: Close your eyes. Over there is a kudu, whatever a kudu is. Welcome to a blind safari...A safari, by cliché and assumption, is overwhelmingly driven by photography. Tourists survey a living museum of wild animals and, as their primary experience, merely look at Africa through cameras and screens. But with Alan at the helm, here I was, ready not only to experience what a safari might reveal to the full spectrum of sensory input, but also to try to deepen my own understanding of what it means, or can mean, to be guided. Being blind, I’m a bit of a connoisseur. Daily, I’m dragged and steered and told where and how to move, perpetually hitched like a wagon to the elbows of strangers. You could say I live in a chronic state of guidance. But getting around without getting killed isn’t anything like having a sense of place. Perhaps a professional guide could impart some of that. When Alan, the guide, hands him a ball of almost odor-free rhino poop, Knighton's reaction isn't anger but this: Imagine the potential offense of taking advantage of my blindness for a joke. So many people treat me like a child, or a fragile soul. Yet Alan had already figured me out. At least well enough to know I wouldn’t get upset when handed a ball of rhino poo. In addition to interpreting nature, a good safari guide must also interpret the other people in the Land Cruiser.
Although there's no real proof that it's easier to smile than it is to frown, a phrase which has survived countless variations, the implication is clear or, as another phrase says, "Smile and the world smiles with you." We have many senses and many ways of seeing and perhaps even more ways of interpreting...and often with no guide. But as the article described, the difficulty of simply removing a face and its functions took five surgeons over ten hours to perform the operation (and nearly twice that for attaching the face to the new recipient). There is beauty all around us and in many forms, and sometimes it can be quite camouflaged by our minds. The hectic events of the world and the holidays and the overload can prove to be blurring or can prove to be clarifying. Our generosity and compassion jumps up a notch, as does our tolerance and sometimes even our patience. Think of yourself at the end of your rope, stuck in traffic or so exhausted that you feel that one more thing will cause you to have a nervous breakdown...and then you see someone smile. And then you return that smile, perhaps hesitantly but still, a small grin that steadily grows on your face. Your. Face. At this time of year, appreciate those who give you a smile. And appreciate the fact that you can act as a guide and choose to smile, to be the first to smile. And in some sense, perhaps you may come to further understand just how fortunate you are to even be able to smile...and to possess something as simple and as complicated as a face.
*It should be noted that the category of Asian also includes countries such as India, Pakistan, Nepal and many similar areas as well, including Thailand; in much the same way many Central and South Americans will rightly consider themselves "American" and say as much, which confuses some people from the U.S...But they are correct (historically, more so than those in the U.S.) since "America" encompasses North, South and Central America.
What was a bit surprising to me was discovering how many facial transplants have already been performed throughout the world (40, as of this writing). These thoughts may have come about after having dinner with my neighbors and the discussion somehow turning to joint replacements and how his telling us that his new knee from a few years ago was nearly flawless and has allowed him to return to skiing, biking and other physical adventures he thought might be coming to an end. Then they (she being a former emergency room nurse and now a retired surgical researcher) talked of the commonality and ease of surgeons replacing such joints, with hips likely being the most common (some people have had earlier artificial joints such as hips replaced yet again with another more updated version), then knees and shoulders (yes, even fingers). To me, in thinking of the movement involved in a shoulder, it was difficult to picture such an operation but they assured me that the recovery time from a complete shoulder joint replacement was far less time than that of simply repairing a torn or broken tendon on a shoulder (for a story to dazzle you on the complexity of such operations, listen to Dr. Kodi Azari's story on his successful transplant of an entire human hand as told on the Moth Radio Hour).
But the story in National Geographic asked this: Take a moment to look in a mirror. What do you see? Most of us would answer, "Myself." My. Self. Our faces are the outer image we attach to our inner sense of self, to who we are and where we fit in the world...Think about what you can do with that face. You can kiss the ones you love, bite into an apple, sing, and sigh. You can smell freshly cut grass. You can gaze at your newborn and touch your cheek to his...We smile, we wrinkle our noses, we wink, we grimace, we preform countless expressions as we converse, often without even realizing it. Now visualize what goes on beneath that astonishing face. We have 43 mimetic muscles to express emotion and articulate speech. We have four major muscles on each side of the face that move the jaws and complex lingual muscles that assist in swallowing and speech. The face is also made up of lawyers of blood vessels, sensory and motor nerves, cartilage, bone, and fat. Cranial nerves control the motor muscles and transmit sensory information to the brain, enabling us to see, smell, taste, hear, and feel sensation on the skin. Go back to the mirror one more time. Look at your incredible face. Imagine what it would mean to lose it.
I've been finishing a series of lectures on cultural customs and have found it a true eye-opener as to how cultures of the world are so naturally different in how they react just to simple facial gestures or actions; no news there perhaps --picture those cultures whose hand gestures are quite flamboyant when talking while other cultures hand movements are almost non-existent-- but often the culture or part of the world which we've experienced from our upbringing can lead us to stereotype other cultures as being "rude" or "indifferent," or at the very least, a bit puzzling. As but one example, with many of the Japanese and other Asian* cultures, it is considered not culturally acceptable to smile when having your picture taken but rather to stand and pose stoically. We (in the U.S. at least) may interpret this as being emotionless and somewhat cold, but viewed from their perspective it is we who are thought to be lacking respect or making fun of the custom or person when we so smile in a photo, especially one taken when in their country (a lesson for world leaders or top executives). Yet in nearby Thailand, there are 17 distinctive smiles which are recognized as what you are trying to express, whether it is to a shopkeeper or a close relative...and this is acknowledged throughout the country, according to Professor David Livermore who heads the Cultural Intelligence Center. The Nordic culture is vastly different from the Germanic culture which is vastly different from the Latin-European culture (much of this traces back to early empirical training, from Viking to Byzantine to Roma). Still not quite sure about that? Then consider Germany and how you might perceive the "typical" German citizen. Got it? Then consider this, a quick tidbit to perhaps throw you off...Germany is #4 in the world in rap & hip hop music production (and if you think that that particular country is all get-things-done oriented, be aware that the socially accepted requirement in German schools is to place 50% of the emphasis on arts and the humanities, something even U.S. education systems lack).
The concept of pre-forming impressions of groups of people may be the same when we see a disfigured face, one severely burned or scarred or cut. And on the other side of the spectrum we can find people not happy with their appearance, even if they are perhaps the only one who might feel that way. Noses, foreheads, eyelids, tummys and more are tucked, filled, and reshaped in order to re-create a certain image. Yet as author Malcolm Godwin wrote in his book (unabashedly one of the few books I keep in my collection) Who Are You?: If we are to believe the findings of Western research then few of us feel we are attractive, or even approach the physical ideals of the time. Yet what actually dictates who is thought beautiful? Is there some universal criterion spanning all races and cultures that we feel we fall short of, or is it simply the programming of our particular culture and epoch? Among the results of studies he notes: The total area of the nose is less that 1/20 the total area of the face...The length of the chin is 1/5 the overall length of the face...The width of the mouth is 1/2 the width of the face at mouth level...The width of the eye is 3/10 the width of the face at eye level. And of course, our faces are anything but symmetrical (if you want to test this out yourself you can manipulate an identical half of your facial image via Photoshop or other such applications then reverse overlay it onto the cutout image as demonstrated in this tutorial; once done you'll discover that our faces --even yours-- are not symmetrically identical).
Beauty comes in many forms but appearance seems to be limited to only a few species, that is recognizing one's appearance in a mirror or how one appears (in addition to humans there are elephants, dolphins [and in the same family, orca whales], some species of magpies and even ants). And a quick glimpse around the world will reveal the many ways cultures view beauty differently, from decorating and painting faces and other parts of the body to inserting or elongating nose and ear openings, or making cuts and other scarring features on the face. But that is all based on what we can see...so imagine the world of beauty if you were blind. Could you picture something such as going on a wildlife safari as a blind person? That is exactly the story Ryan Knighton wrote in AFAR: As our land cruiser nosed through the brush, cicadas buzzed above us like power lines. My wife and I had been in Zimbabwe only a few hours. So far, our guide on our first safari drive, Alan, had already spotted several species of fleet antelope, and I was already concerned that for me --as a blind man-- yes, this was going to kind of suck. I might as well be at a drive-in movie. Here, you try: Close your eyes. Over there is a kudu, whatever a kudu is. Welcome to a blind safari...A safari, by cliché and assumption, is overwhelmingly driven by photography. Tourists survey a living museum of wild animals and, as their primary experience, merely look at Africa through cameras and screens. But with Alan at the helm, here I was, ready not only to experience what a safari might reveal to the full spectrum of sensory input, but also to try to deepen my own understanding of what it means, or can mean, to be guided. Being blind, I’m a bit of a connoisseur. Daily, I’m dragged and steered and told where and how to move, perpetually hitched like a wagon to the elbows of strangers. You could say I live in a chronic state of guidance. But getting around without getting killed isn’t anything like having a sense of place. Perhaps a professional guide could impart some of that. When Alan, the guide, hands him a ball of almost odor-free rhino poop, Knighton's reaction isn't anger but this: Imagine the potential offense of taking advantage of my blindness for a joke. So many people treat me like a child, or a fragile soul. Yet Alan had already figured me out. At least well enough to know I wouldn’t get upset when handed a ball of rhino poo. In addition to interpreting nature, a good safari guide must also interpret the other people in the Land Cruiser.
Although there's no real proof that it's easier to smile than it is to frown, a phrase which has survived countless variations, the implication is clear or, as another phrase says, "Smile and the world smiles with you." We have many senses and many ways of seeing and perhaps even more ways of interpreting...and often with no guide. But as the article described, the difficulty of simply removing a face and its functions took five surgeons over ten hours to perform the operation (and nearly twice that for attaching the face to the new recipient). There is beauty all around us and in many forms, and sometimes it can be quite camouflaged by our minds. The hectic events of the world and the holidays and the overload can prove to be blurring or can prove to be clarifying. Our generosity and compassion jumps up a notch, as does our tolerance and sometimes even our patience. Think of yourself at the end of your rope, stuck in traffic or so exhausted that you feel that one more thing will cause you to have a nervous breakdown...and then you see someone smile. And then you return that smile, perhaps hesitantly but still, a small grin that steadily grows on your face. Your. Face. At this time of year, appreciate those who give you a smile. And appreciate the fact that you can act as a guide and choose to smile, to be the first to smile. And in some sense, perhaps you may come to further understand just how fortunate you are to even be able to smile...and to possess something as simple and as complicated as a face.
 |
| Photo: Lynn Johnson for National Geographic |
*It should be noted that the category of Asian also includes countries such as India, Pakistan, Nepal and many similar areas as well, including Thailand; in much the same way many Central and South Americans will rightly consider themselves "American" and say as much, which confuses some people from the U.S...But they are correct (historically, more so than those in the U.S.) since "America" encompasses North, South and Central America.
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