Faces are my topic de jour (Do you detect a hint of desperation?) A Pharyngula post<\/a> started me on this track. He suggested googling for the images that came up when you put your name in the search box. <\/p>\n

I had a quick check to make sure no images of me came up for my name. Phew. They don’t. But page after page of smiling healthy successful-and-popular-looking heathers sort of creeped me out. It put me in mind of a pretty good old film with that very premise, with Christian Slater and Winona Ryder<\/a>. <\/p>\n

And it started me thinking about faces. How we (OK then, I) pretty well tend to judge people by their faces. How “your face is your fortune” and so on. <\/p>\n

Blimey, Nintendo are bringing out a video game based on facial yoga “to appeal to women”, according to the Guardian<\/a>. So, men don’t have faces, then? <\/p>\n

Well, it turns out they do. This is from the BBC. It related to something that has always stuck in my mind since I read a book about the “Guinea Pig Club” (World War II airmen with burnt or destroyed faces who underwent pioneering facial reconstruction.) <\/p>\n

How devastating it must be to lose your facial features. Every interaction with the world must be so painful. And I suspect we are generally a lot vainer now than people were at that time. Although, our society can’t take all the blame. Have you ever read a folk tale where the heroine and\/or hero weren’t beautiful? So, I guess vanity goes pretty deep. <\/p>\n

It’s got the title “In pictures: Faces of Battle”<\/a>. It’s about an exhibition showing pictures of men whose faces were destroyed in World War I. The BBC warn you it’s quite hard to take. It also tells about the surgeon – Harold Gillies \u00e2\u20ac\u201c who pretty well invented plastic surgery to help them. The last slide says: <\/p>\n

Appearance-obsessed<\/strong>
\nFaces of Battle opens to the public on 10 November.
\n“We know it’s a difficult exhibition to come to, but people should be able to see what these injuries looked like,” Ms Doty says.
\n“And we want people to reflect on their own appearance – what would it mean if that changed?
\n“We live in an appearance-obsessed society and if you say ‘plastic surgery’, people think Nip\/Tuck. But when they see this they’ll hopefully realise what it’s really about.” (from the BBC slide.)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Share this:<\/h3>

• <\/span>Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
• <\/span>Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
• More<\/span><\/a><\/li>
• <\/li><\/ul>
  • <\/span>Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
  • <\/span>Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
  • <\/li>
  • <\/span>Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
  • <\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Faces are my topic de jour (Do you detect a hint of desperation?) A Pharyngula post started me on this track. He suggested googling for the images that came up when you put your name in the search box. I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

    Share this:<\/h3>

    • <\/span>Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
    • <\/span>Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
    • More<\/span><\/a><\/li>
    • <\/li><\/ul>
      • <\/span>Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
      • <\/span>Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
      • <\/li>
      • <\/span>Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
      • <\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[6,7,10],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pnUcF-la","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}