Cancer, April 2019: I draw your horoscope

From my April 2019 horoscope project, where I illustrated a common thread in the online horoscopes for each sign.

Final image:

Two self portraits by Albrecht Durer

*Durer's name has an umlaut over the U but I can't be troubled to type it in.

Durer, self-portrait at 26.

Durer, self-portrait at 28.

Durer was notoriously vain. Guess which spun-gold flowing feature he was proudest of? In the first portrait we'd probably call those "Taylor Swift barrel-curls," while I think the second may be classified as, "beachy waves" or a "tousled boho" 'do. His mod black and white outfit with taupe capelet and provocative decolletage is quite sharp but only Janis Joplin could pull off the Davy Crockett-meets-Shakespeare costume below.

Durer's work is always off-putting because it reminds me of math class, but still absorbing because he belonged to that very early generation of representative artists in whose work you can see them struggling to see the world. In other words, his work reveals the act of him visually learning, which is what I enjoy most about da Vinci, Giotto, Michelangelo and van Eyck as well. European painting lost that a bit once stylistic conventions solidified in the late 1600s.

Mask, by Wangechi Mutu

Wangechi Mutu, Mask, 2006. [Image: A collage involving two photographic images, roughly the same size. If they're both the size of notebook paper, one is pasted over the other an inch below and to the right, making a 3-D stacked effect. The image underneath is a greyish ceramic or stone African mask or sculpture, not sure what type. The image on top is of a sexy black woman with naked arms and legs, wearing bracelets. She's in some sort of glamorous photo studio with what looks like a gilded chair, paneled wall and hot pink marabou feather boa in the background. Her torso (where a leotard would be) is cut out to reveal half an eye, nose and spiked chompers, the latter near her pelvis. The cut out area extends up her neck to just below her eyes, like a turtleneck pulled all the way up or a bandit's or surgeon's mask. Long snakey pieces are affixed to the image mimicking hair (locks).]

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.

Dove takes over "reality:" we are all above average now.

[Video: a black & white Dove soap commercial from the 1950s. A young blond-ish white model with an updo, full makeup and bare shoulders demonstrates in a velvety voice why Dove is better than ordinary soap as the camera lingers on her flawless complexion.]

According to Coco & Crème, Dove-- the moisturizer and knockoff salon shampoo juggernaut-- has conducted a groundbreaking beauty quiz Body Confidence Census of 2012, and concluded that women don't feel as beautiful as they "should." Coco & Crème explains:

When most women were asked to describe their looks and their body, the most common answer was simply 'average.' “Only 2 percent of women are saying, ‘I’m beautiful’ and only 1 in 10 are saying, ‘I feel attractive,’ a Dove spokesperson said. “That’s just not where we want to be.”

Ok, am I going crazy? Because the majority of women identifying as "average," seems like the only logical possibility here. Because that's how averages work. Most people are average. Average means "most people." When you offer people the choice of, "average" along with "beautiful," the clear implication is that "beautiful" means you think you're objectively above average in the looks department. And 1 in 10 women being above average-- "attractive"-- and 2 out of 100 being way above average-- "beautiful"-- seems about right to me. How many of us look anything like Megan Fox or Halle Berry? 2% actually sounds generous to me, considering the vast number of women who are older, fatter, zittier, lumpier, stockier, ganglier, and/or wrinklier than those two. And who set the bar for beauty so high in the first place? Dove, and other companies like them.


[Video: a 1993 Dove bodywash ad. It's lit in blue, giving it a sexy night-time Boyz II Men music video look. "Moonlight Sonata"-sounding piano music plays while a purring female voice describes the product. A tall, thin, young, conventionally hot white naked model demonstrates the product in her slow-motion shower.]

In fact, those sorts of companies intentionally endorse body types that are extremely rare as the only beautiful people. And then they are shocked, shocked! to find-- in their own manipulative study-- that the vast majority of women who don't have that rare type don't identify as "beautiful." I guess we'll just have to buy a bunch of Dove beauty products to catch up. "That's just not where we want to be," says Dove. I call bullshit: that is exactly where they want to be.

Older (early nineties?) Dove print ad. [image: top half is a blonde blue-eyed white model's face who looks a little like Kathy Ireland smiling slyly, wearing makeup and lit softly. Lines are super-imposed over her face breaking it up into sections that are numbered. Below, text reads, "Touch these 4 spots. If even one is dry, it's time for Dove." Smaller text underneath is unreadable, then there's a picture of Dove soap.]

[image: 1960s print ad featuring a sequence of four pictures of a white blond-ish model in makeup with a towel on her head in a bright pink bathroom smiling as she lathers half her face with Dove and the other half with ordinary soap, then pouting as she touches the rinsed ordinary side and exclaiming with delight as she touches the Dove side, then a picture of Dove soap. Text reads, "Lend us half your face and we will prove Dove doesn't dry your skin the way soap can."

A 1960s print ad featuring a smiling white model with brown hair and full makeup, manicure and up-do lathering up her naked shoulders, neck, face and hands with Dove suds and gazing lustily at the bar of Dove she holds, as if about to deliver a kiss. Text underneath reads, "Soap dries your skin but / Dove creams your skin while you wash" followed by smaller text and a picture of Dove soap]

[image: a still from a black & white 1950s TV ad showing a smiling blonde white model with full make-up, manicure and polished hair caressing her face with the words, "Dove Creams" superimposed.]

[image: a 1960s Dove print ad featuring a classic white model with brown hair and full make-up "washing" her face with Dove. Below a sequence of photos shows her rinsing off the soap and being shocked and delighted to reveal smoother skin, then pictures of Dove soap.]

Here are some more recent Dove ads that promote an impossible beauty standard, even as Dove claims to champion "real beauty:"

[image: over a solid baby-blue background, text reads, "Dove hair therapy: Dove Hair Rehab, [illegible] with Marie Claire." Pictures of Dove shampoos next to a thin young white model with thick shiny straight brown hair blowing in a magical wind, smiling with surprise at her own gorgeousness.]

[image: black & white photo of a naked thin young tan white brunette model throwing her head back, smiling contentedly and clutching her hands to her heart. She's covered in suds in the shape of an off-the-shoulder fur coat that mimics an old-time Hollywood diva in her bed-chamber. Illegible text and pictures of Dove bodywash across the bottom.]

Dove is doing a "real beauty" ad campaign now, having scrubbed themselves of their dirty beauty industry past and leaving a softer more touchable corporation, hence the "Body Confidence Census of 2012." Dove has done various "Look, I'm a model but I'll give you the straight-talk, girlfriend" and "Women across America-- such as these middle-class white women-- love Dove: here they are in their natural habitats using their words" ad campaigns since the 1950s in addition to the campaigns featured above. But their most recent campaign is a send-up of stupid beauty industry messages that they previously participated in, much like the 7-Up (or Sprite?) commercials in the 1990s that mocked typical soft-drink ads. But beauty cannot be funny. Ever. Because beauty is equal to self-esteem. It is our very being. It is very very important. (For women, anyway.) Here's a sample of the new campaign:

[image: a grinning young white woman in a black tube top who is maybe a size 16 is pictured striking an exaggeratedly glam confident pose. Next to her text reads, "What do you think?" then underneath, next to empty check-mark boxes, "oversized?" and "outstanding?"]

[image: a gigantic cropped close-up of a little girl who is a red-head with freckles, staring into the camera with a level gaze. Overlayed text reads, "Hates her freckles."]

[Image: bottom half of image features 6 women of different races in white underwear standing in a line on a white background lit with studio lighting. They are grinning the slightly embarrassed grins of girls caught being silly and imitating models. They range from about size 6 to size 14. Large text reads, "Real women have real curves" followed by smaller illegible text]

[image: a redheaded young white woman covered in freckles with bare shoulders stares slightly down at the camera with a smirking yet vulnerable expression. Next to her face are two empty check-boxes with the options, "flawed?" and "flawless?"

[image: same deal as above, but features a flat-chested young thin black woman with a short afro and the options read, "half empty?" "half full?"]

[image: in front of a cappuccino-grey background a chubby black woman in her 60s sits with her shoulder to the camera and her knees pulled into her chest, turning to smile shyly at the camera. She is completely naked, revealing stomach rolls. She's lit with soft studio lighting and her hair blowing. Text is overlayed reading, "beauty has no age limit / pro-age: Dove."]

[image: a little girl of South-East Asian ethnicity is shown in cropped close-up like the red-headed kid above, with level gaze. Overlayed text reads, "wishes she were blonde."]

These are great ads. And I hate them. With the exceptions of the ads featuring the kids, which are excellent aside from the inescapable problem that they are plugging Dove, these ads are patronizing and insidious. But this post is long enough already, so if you want to know why I think that just hit me up in the comments. Back to the "Census."

Why does it follow that being average in the looks department is devastating to a woman's self esteem? I mean, I'm not stupid, I know why-- Patriarchy, our society, our consumer culture-- but this assumption is continuously unquestioned. Why do we constantly link self esteem in women with feeling beautiful, in the sense of being objectively attractive? Why is it not okay to state the truth about one's looks? Why is it unfathomable that a woman could feel unattractive (or average) and also feel perfectly fine about herself? After all, plenty of women who do feel attractive have terrible self esteem. What if it were ok for a woman to simply be average in appearance (as most, in fact, are)? What if it were normal to portray unattractive or average looking women living it up? What if unattractive or average looking women were considered viable movie stars at the same rate that beautiful women are currently? What if the "real women" frolicking in their panties in the new Dove ads weren't advertising beauty products but instead advertising a fun new water-park, or a social club for exhibitionists, or an athletic event, something where "real women" can live it up and feel great that is unrelated to improving their looks?

Lots of women are objectively un-pretty. Period. I didn't say they are worthless or unloved or helpless or involuntarily celibate or grappling with their own emotional agony. I said they are not pretty. So if self esteem is linked to feeling pretty, and those women know perfectly well they aren't pretty, what then? Could it be that being average looking, or even ugly, is not the end of the world? If women weren't taught in a million little way that they are synonymous with their looks, would it be so devastating to feel unattractive? Is it possible that our positions on the beauty-versus-self-esteem continuum is not the problem, that the problem is, in fact, the constant conflation of self-worth and beauty for women? In other words, the problem isn't that we're playing the game and failing to win, it's that we're playing the game at all.

To be clear, I don't fault women who play the game self-beautification (including myself). It has simply never occurred to many women that there's any other option, for one. And if they have considered the other option, it looks so bleak: fuzzy legs, hair that isn't flowing or exhibiting "multi-dimensional color," un-sexyness, surrendering to the same old body you were born with, practical shoes, less attention from men, less attention from other women, constantly getting judged as a clueless woman who simply doesn't understand beauty, a walking "before" picture with no after, giving up the intoxicating fantasy that there's a wonderful new life awaiting the prettier version of you. That's no fun. Our entire culture portrays the un-winnable game of beauty as a worthwhile past-time-- the only worthwhile past-time. In the sense of being un-winnable, you may win some "battles," i.e. feel good sometimes through self-beautification, but you are guaranteed to lose the "war." But when self-esteem through self-beautification is portrayed as the only game in town, I certainly see why women try to play it, and I admit that for lots of people that's the best decision to make about how to live in our reality. I also have no problem with the original article I linked to, which takes the "census" at face value. My beef is with the game itself and the industry behind it.

And where is the concern that men don't feel attractive enough? If it's so damn important to feel beautiful, why is there no ad featuring a little boy staring plaintively into the camera with the words, "hates his unibrow," and the understated logo of TweezerMan in the bottom corner? No one would look at such an ad and think, "That little boy is in for a world of heartbreak!" or "Wow, TweezerMan really understands mens' struggles." They'd probably say, "so what?" and laugh, because the boy in the picture will grow into a man who is valued by society as more than the sum of his facial hairs. His beauty just isn't that big a deal. People are concerned about men, though. The media has been overflowing with concern that men aren't getting paid enough, that they're getting left behind in the "man-cession," that they're suffering high rates of heart disease, that they're not graduating from college at the same rate as women, that they are plagued by violence. No one has clutched their pearls and cried out, "Most men say they feel "average looking!" Oh, no! Only 2% identify as 'hawt!' That is not where we want to be! Think of the children!"

I promise this is related to portraiture but I don't know how to tie it in in any pithy, or even logical, way. But this is something I really do think about every time a woman sits for a portrait. I know what she's expecting-- an understated homage to her beauty that may, as an afterthought, reflect her personality-- and these issues are something I grapple with. The farther I get down this rabbit hole of resenting the beauty industry, the more difficult it is to depict, let alone identify, what the woman probably values as her pretty assets, because I'm getting more out of touch with the commonly agreed upon standards of beauty. I want to depict character, what makes the person interesting, and that usually conflicts with a pretty, feminine portrait that the customer very likely wants. The customer is always right, she's the one who has to live with the portrait, and I don't want to make her feel bad. I'm feeling a little stuck. What do you think about all this?

ETA: I originally included notes about Dove chocolate in this post, but it's actually a different company. Unilever owns Dove soap; Mars owns Dove chocolate. Even though the logos are virtually identical and feature pitchers of cream pouring themselves into a finished product. My bad.

A Month Without Mirrors

I absolutely loved this essay on The Beheld by beauty blogger Autumn Whitefield-Madrano, who recently went a month without looking at her own reflection.

Not only is she starkly honest about the experience of the mirror and about what femininity feels like, Whitefield-Madrano is also incredibly perceptive to how socialization, psychology and abstract philosophy play out in everyday life. Even if you don't give a crap about makeup or the beauty industry, read the essay if you're interested in human consciousness, "The Gaze" in psychology and feminist theory, or portraiture.

[Image: a screenshot from Disney's Snow White showing the evil Queen's reflection in her magic mirror].

Moving Toward the Ugly

I loved this post up at Leaving Evidence. The author asks, what happens if we stop chasing beauty and start embracing our own ugliness as "magnificent?"

Commenter "naa" writes:

I was surrounded by a community of femmes of color, reclaiming and celebrating beauty as a thing of liberation, and yet there wasn’t space to ask what happens when we can’t live up to our own ideals? Or who we’re leaving out?
Moving towards the ugly feels like a real risk: a risk to be real, a risk to lose the privilege/power of beauty, and a risk to be valued for ONLY what we are- glorious and many-layered freaks.

Go check it out!

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).