An advice letter from Holly's boyfriend in Breakfast at Tiffany's

 Dear Prudence [I imagine him writing],

I've been dating a woman for a few months now. We prefer not to use labels. When it's great, it's great. Shoplifting together, shared interests (we're both poor and good looking) and lots of sexual tension. We're both sex workers so I don't need to hide that aspect of myself from her. But I'm beginning to have some little niggling doubts. 

For example, she wakes up in late afternoon and spends her days chain smoking in a sawn off bathtub. Sometimes she wears bedsheets in public and most of the time she doesn't even wear pants. And occasionally she breaks into my apartment through the window and watches me sleep. Should I be worried? I find myself embarrassed night after night when she wakes up the whole apartment building because she can't be bothered to keep up with a key. Am I crazy or is that kind of an a**hole move? And then there's the monologue-ing. She is... an interrupter, for sure. I feel very unheard. Her scattered conversations are nearly impossible to follow. I feel bad because she must have some undiagnosed attention disorder which she's obviously trying to self-medicate with alcohol, but it's the 1960s and we don't know about attention disorders yet. That could explain why she doesn't properly feed and care for the cat she keeps. She jokes that she doesn't feel responsible for it, but surely she would never actually harm or abandon it? She also has a side gig helping the mafia organize crimes, though she reassures me that that's nothing to worry about. 

But my question is mainly about the other men in her life. I found out she walked out on her husband and stepchildren, but that's understandable because she was like fourteen. And this one's a doozie: whenever the sexual tension mounts she tells me I remind her of... her little brother?! She even calls me by his name. And one more thing-- I just found out she's engaged to a Brazilian millionaire, but it's just for the money. It seems a little unfair, since I broke it off with my sugar-mamma to be with her. I simply assumed, without asking, that she wanted to take things to that level. Why doesn't she wordlessly understand that she belongs to me and we're dating now?

Do you think we can make this work? I sure hope so because she's gorgeous, super quirky, and she's a regular Mozart on the ukulele.

-Nervous in New York

 

Characters Paul Varjack and Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Wherein I measure Audrey Hepburn's eye sockets

This ever-popular post has been updated in 2017 to make my writing more clear and understandable, and to include a few extra examples from pop culture.

I often hear people gripe that ideal female beauty is based on teenaged girls, or that society puts pressure on grown women to look like teenagers. And I hear "scientific" minds back this up with explanations that men are naturally attracted to very young girls, citing the (theoretical) biological advantages of impregnating a virgin. I also hear people complaining that there is only one standard of female beauty, which is defined in accordance with what men find attractive. That "beautiful" = "ideal" = "sexy." Sounds pretty straightforward, right?

However, when I compare images of iconically beautiful women, I see something else: the idealization of pre-pubescent features-- of childhood, not adolescence. Second, I also see ideals split roughly along gender lines between "pretty" and "sexy"-- that is, the female ideal of female beauty is different from the male ideal of female beauty. Here I'll make these two case using images and facial proportions, then speculate about the social implications. Since beauty ideals are ever-changing and culturally specific, I'll stick to mainstream icons in post-1950s Western (mainly US) culture.

Some disclaimers: Since I'm talking about trends over large populations, of course I'm generalizing very broadly. I'm not discussing the many men and women who don't fit in with these trends, including gay people and people who aren't attracted to the Hollywood standard. I'm also limiting myself to what's commonly available in pop culture (straight, mostly white). Third, I'll be dissecting the appearance of several celebrities, but I'm not trying to tear them down. I think they're all gorgeous. 

First, I'd like to gently remind everyone of what adolescence actually looks like:

Stephanie from "Full House"

Tia and Tamera Mowry of "Sister Sister"

Anonymous girl from an internet meme (poor kid). Text reads, "Blurt out to guy, 'I love your long flowing hair' / Too Embarrassing to speak to him again."

Jennifer Aniston headed to Prom

Anonymous woman from BadYearbookPhotos.com

The signs of adolescence are commonly associated with males being able to see that females are becoming fertile. They're usually discussed in pop culture as things like thinness, smooth poreless skin, full lips. But if we pause and appeal to common experience (and the photos above), we'll notice that some common demarcations of adolescence are in fact:

• a face with an adult skeletal structure that is slimmer than in childhood with the exception of fat deposits surrounding the mouth and chin ("baby fat"); 
• intense facial expressions, breathlessness and exaggerated movements; 
• greasy blotchy skin, large pores and zits; 
• hunching shoulders; 
• baby fat and/or gangliness; 
• snaggle-toothedness; 
• large meandering eyebrows; 
• fully-formed defined nose; 
• bushy arm pits and thick dark leg hair; 
• and being very loud in groups.

If a adolescent does not have these features (or childhood features), we tend to think they're older-- that is, not newly fertile.

In contrast, children also have signs that they haven't yet reached puberty. Obviously, they're short; but also,

• the early development of their large brains and skulls gives them heart-shaped faces with very large eyes, forehead and crown of head in relation to their nose, mouth, chin and jaw; 
• they have big bobble heads in relation to their small necks, shoulders and bodies; 
• they have squishy cheeks; 
• small straight teeth, many of which may be missing; 
• all of their body hair is downy and not noticeable; 
• their skin appears poreless, even, matte, and untroubled (except for their mouths and nostrils which always seem to look like they've just eaten jam that they're allergic to); 
• their noses tend to be small and ski-sloped because their cartilage hasn't yet developed into bone; 
• they tend to have small rosebud shaped mouths with especially full upper lips, which will morph as their jaws grow larger in puberty;
• they have squeaky voices.

To get more of an idea of what I mean when I say, "childlike proportions," take a look at some of these actresses as children, adolescents and adults:

Candace Cameron (DJ from Full House) as a child and as an adult. Notice how her adult face appears longer, her eyes closer together, her nose longer and pointier, her mouth wider, her forehead less prominent, her cheekbones wider in relation to the top of her skull, her head smaller in proportion to her shoulders, and her cheeks slimmer. Coincidentally she has puffed the top of her hair which mimics a large childlike cranium.

Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen as children. Heart shaped faces with wide foreheads, small ski sloped noses with soft squishy nostrils, large heads in relation to shoulders and bodies, wider set eyes, up to no good.

Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen as adults. Notice the distance between their eyes, the tips of their defined noses, and the corners of their mouths-- much longer than as children. Also notice the smaller size of the head in relation to the shoulders. Their necks are longer, thicker and more muscular than in childhood. These women have not styled themselves to appear childlike in proportion, perhaps because these former child stars have a vested interest in appearing adult. Though both women have made their eyes appear larger and evened out their skin-tone and texture with makeup, the dark smudging of the lower lid gives a sunken, narrow and elongated appearance rather than a perky or innocent wide-eyed look. I'm guessing they've also contoured their faces (i.e. adding faux shadows with lighter and darker skin makeup) to emphasize their adult-looking narrow temples and hollow cheeks. No volume is added to the hair at the crown of the head (where children's heads are larger). 

Jodie Sweetin (Stephanie from Full House) as a child.

Jodie Sweetin as a very young teenager. Though she still looks childlike you can see that her adult bone structure is basically in place by puberty. Her face is now longer and slimmer, but she has the hallmark adolescent fat deposits around her mouth and chin. Her neck is longer and thicker than in childhood and her shoulders wider.

Jodie Sweetin as an adult.

 You can see childlike proportions taken to exaggerated extremes in anything designed to be "cute:"

Anything kawaii is going to involve wide set eyes, large foreheads, big bobble heads and small noses. These are a bunch of Sanrio characters.

To be cuter, lapdogs are bred to have big heads, small short muzzles like button noses, and big wide eyes.

***

The theoretical male desiring to impregnate a newly fertile female should seek the adolescent physical attributes listed, no?

Yet few women pursue these attributes when they get dressed or do makeup-- the beauty industry pushes anything but. And few grown men seem particularly drawn to these. Most women and girls probably aspire to the appearance of a poised film star, a toned pop singer, a sultry sex symbol or a lithe dewy-faced model-- some of whom are teens, but who tend not to look very "teenaged." The ones who escaped actually looking adolescent.

I'd venture that the #1 sexual fans of actual adolescent girls, are other adolescents.

Now that I've pointed out the complications of claiming adolescence as the visual ideal in modern Western society, I'll illustrate which iconic beauties have large female fanbases, and which have large male fanbases (some of them have both).

***

Women tend to be fans of these ladies, whose adult features mimic pre-pubescent proportions:
Audrey Hepburn.

Audrey Hepburn's head and neck viewed from front and back.

Audrey Hepburn, probably practicing ballet, with her hands on her hips viewed from the side.

Audrey Hepburn may have her legions of male admirers, but it is women who have really carried the torch of fandom. She has been described as androgynous, fairy- and elf-like, elegant and timeless. She was famously thin, petite and small-chested with a long skinny neck. I'll break this down:

-While she was quite thin and petite, her oversized head (as compared with an average head) drew attention to her small body, giving her a doll-like look (in contrast with typical fashion models who are also quite thin but look more like mythical Amazons in comparison). She shared this in common with children up to around age 8 who have enormous heads in relation to their bodies.

-If you drew lines from her jaw to her temples-- up the sides of her face-- they would angle out slightly. Hepburn also shared this in common with pre-pubescent children.

-Her eyes were wide-set and disproportionately large, like a child's.

-Her mouth was small in proportion to her eyes. Her upper lip was also prominent, which was exaggerated with makeup in the 1950s nearly to the point where she had a lipstick moustache.

-The crown of her head was wide.

Noses

Opening credits on Ugly Betty.

In the past week, a woman between the ages of 40-ish and 60-ish whom I talked to while doing portraits, confided that she'd had a nose job when she was very young and that she didn't like the result. So I shouldn't draw her face. Then another woman between the ages of 40-ish and 60-ish told me, while I was doing portraits another day, that she'd had a nose job when she was very young and didn't like the results because she felt like the nose was someone else's, and was concerned about how some young women she knew felt about their own noses. Another woman asked me not to do her profile--she hated her nose. These were all within a week.

I can certainly identify to an extent: my nose is large, bent at the top, trapezoidal at the bottom, very shiny, and bumps up and down when I talk. I really, really wanted a different nose when I was younger because I thought it would make me prettier. I'm white, though, so I guess I got off easy with no pointed racial messages about my nose. People just said, "it gives you character," which doesn't mean much when you're a teenager and you're fed a bunch of hype about female beauty but none about female character. Strangers also frequently ask (!!) if I'm of Middle-Eastern/Greek descent. "No, why?" I ask. "Uhhh.... your eyelashes." Right.

Now I still think a straighter nose would make me prettier, but that would be a problem because my nose goes with my personality really well. Looking like a round-faced cute-nosed brown-haired girl would be misleading (see Sarah Vowell's story about wanting to appear more menacing and getting a goth makeover). All the same, I have no problem with cosmetic surgery in general. But it's such a shame people do it so young. I've heard lots of people in their forties say they're just starting to be comfortable with the way they look and are starting to understand the role (if any) that beauty plays in their lives. I guess it's not the nose you grow into, it's the idea that you're really, seriously not an object (and that can take a while).

So, since this week is apparently about nose-shame, instead of contributing something constructive about Patriarchy, I'll just post a "top ten" of my favorite noses, noses I simply appreciate. I have no idea if any of these people has had cosmetic surgery; either way, I like what they've got.

Comedian/actor Lily Tomlin

Actor Sandra Oh.

Snoop Dogg. And here's his nose in action:



Actor Sally Field, whose adorable looks never stopped her from throwing some of film's most memorable meltdowns.

Spanish actor Rossy de Palma.

Actor Julia Roberts, whose entire face fascinates me endlessly.

Actor/musician/comedian Jemaine Clement.


Actor/comedian Bill Murray.

Musician Nina Simone.


Actor Marc Indelicato, who played the adorable Justin on Ugly Betty. America Ferrera gets honorable mention with really expressive nostrils that she had the good sense to utilize throughout the series.

And an extra. Number 11, Actor, activist Audrey Hepburn.


Okay, just one more extra. Number 12, Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean, Black Adder).