Food for Thought: Face of Fancy

A week or two ago, Yanovi, Kazou, and I had an interesting conversation that latched itself onto my mind.

We were discussing how family members can resemble each other, but overall look different due to having different interests. Of course, there's having a different sense of style—dressing differently, hair, makeup, or having a different aura because of how you behave or interact with others.
But taking it a step further, we started wondering: can your actual facial features change according to your interests?

To illustrate this better, we thought about how Yano looks compared to her sister. Yano's more into Asian fashion and is just really cute and girly, whereas her sister looks more cool, mature, and casual. In this case, it was more about how they presented themselves and I haven't gotten a good enough look at Yano's sister to be able to compare much else.

But then we thought about Karu, for example, who frankly doesn't look like any other person we know of Mexican ethnicity. We are kind of generalizing ethnic looks, but it is true that some traits are more commonly signature of a certain ethnicity. Karu's really into Japanese culture and she's the most moe thing in the world (without treading into obnoxious moe type). Maybe it's also because of the way she acts and does her makeup, but to us, she could almost pass off as a Japanese girl if you slightly look past her Caucasian-looking traits. None of us had ever met anyone else of Mexican heritage who looks so much like an anime character—with her gigantic, bubbly eyes and adorable princess aura.

And there's also Chiisana who often also looks straight up out of an anime, or if she wanted, a cute idol group. She also pretty much has the personality of your fumbly, adorable, quirky anime protagonist with a fluffy little voice to boot, so that helps. But her very features, like her huge doe-like eyes, soft cheeks, and delicate smile—in my opinion—aren't characteristic of her family but very well align with her interests in anime and k-pop/j-pop. (Also, her k-pop inspiration is Seohyun who also has big, pure eyes and soft cheeks.)

So we wondered if maybe through imitation of figures within our interests, muscle memory helps to shape our facial features? Maybe our face would change because we use certain muscles more and certain ones less. In the case of Karu and Chiisana, we'd hypothesize that they'd want and try to have bigger, doe-like eyes because it's a trait desired in anime characters and the cute-styled idols.

Eventually, I started thinking about myself too and I wonder if it's true.
One thing is for sure though: I have changed a lot of my behavior according to my interests. Although another factor does come into play, which is that I felt more free and confident to make these changes into the kind of me that I wanted to be after high school ended—so it's not just as shallow as suddenly wanting to be like k-pop idols or whatnot.

Basically in the past few years, I started showing more... of a...cutesy??? side? which I'm usually afraid to show because I'm also tall and aggressive, but it's always been a part of me.
Aside from aegyo, the main difference imo is that I started trying to eye smile. I've been told a few times (by people who didn't know me until these past 2 years) that I eye smile a lot, but I actually used to never do it before. ;u; Eye smiling is a behavior that k-pop idols like f(x)'s Sulli, T-ara's Jiyeon, and SNSD's Tiffany are known for—AND IT'S PROBABLY REALLY NO COINCIDENCE that I have fangirl crushes on all of them and find cute eye smiles in general attractive.

 

(Sulli, Jiyeon, Tiffany - god they're all so perfect why)

I think one day I just decided, HEY THIS IS A LOOK I WANT TO TRY I'M GONNA TRY IT and I remember that it looked so very awkward at first, like my eyes would be half closed for no reason. But now instead of looking grossly forced, it's become a natural behavior for me and I like doing it because in my opinion, showing mirth from your eyes too makes your smile look warmer and more genuine.. which my cold-looking face needs.

And I do think that there's a bit of a notable change in the shape of my eyes. There are probably other factors like that I wear glasses which restricts my upper peripheral vision, thus leading to lazier eyelids, but I do think my eye shape has gotten a bit.. thinner? They also curve slightly more naturally towards the upside-down crescent shape you see when those girls above do their eye smiles, although not nearly to that degree. I'm speaking just in comparison to a few years ago when I never eye smiled. It feels more like, "oh that's just the way she smiles" rather than, "why the fuck is she squinting?"

This next part's more of a stretch, but I wonder if even the shape of my lips has been influenced by my interests. I distinctly remember that in freshman year of high school, a classmate who dreamed of modelling told me he was jealous that I had thin lips???? I wonder if it's because I've been self conscious since then—plus being fueled by seeing the beauties in k-pop—that I had wanted to have fuller lips. And nowadays, I've actually been told that I have somewhat full lips, so I wonder if there's been a change.. >A>;; I also remember when I was really into AKB48 and had a intrigued-hate relationship with Itano Tomomi and how she was known for what her fans considered desirable lips. I don't know why but I started pouting more and trying to form that W shape (probably curiosity?) and now it's kind of a habit to jut my lips out slightly or sometimes curl it into a W?! In this case, it's behavioral habit—but once habit becomes natural, doesn't the result basically become one of your features?