The sad thing is that very often, the "before" pictures look like much more interesting people. I don't know which is the worse curse: being average and wanting to be beautiful, or being pretty and being terrified of no longer being pretty.
I keep thinking how amazing Madonna would look if she had just let herself age naturally. She'd have a real FACE, one that tells all the stories of her life. Instead, she looks like AI now.
I'm so glad I had no access to cosmetic procedures when I was in my teens and 20s. I would 100% have fallen for that crap. Self hatred and narcissism are indeed the two sides of a coin.
There are so many of them who would’ve been gorgeous if they had just let age happen. Cher is one of them — Statuesque, great bone structure. Madonna too. She’s a shorty, but she has good bone structure, once again, and a slim dancer’s body if she would have just let nature take its course.
The older I get the more convinced I am that being pretty is not everything it is cracked up to be.
So many "after" photos for both orthodontics and facial modifications end up looking like the procedure that happened was a personality removal.
Can't imagine why anybody would want a smaller jaw. Our genetically-identical ancestors had massively larger jaws than us: chewier diet? More appropriate diet? Lower toxin exposure? Different mineral content in the water? Who knows? But they did. Something like 3cm wider for paleolithic man, at least 1cm wider for medieval people, and possibly this is why we have such a problem with crooked teeth and wisdom tooth non-eruption. Teeth haven't changed size but jaws have gotten smaller. And that's not a good thing. You'd think people would be going for a larger jaw, if anything.
Personality removal! That is so funny! That’s exactly right. I had no idea that people‘s jaws used to be bigger. It makes sense though because they were probably chewing things that were much tougher than we chew. I have heard that our stomach acid used to be much stronger, basically it was as strong as battery acid. This would also make sense because we were surviving harsher conditions and more septic food. Evolution has made us soft.
The time frame and genetics suggest it's not evolution that's done it, but environmental changes: meaning, if our babies grew up in the same environment, drinking the same water, eating the same food, breathing the same air and experiencing the same forces on their jaws and teeth (probably using teeth as tools a lot more), then they, too, would have wider faces and jaws. From medieval to now is an eyeblink in terms of evolution and genetics, so... probably not that.
Those women trying to look like kitty cats would've just looked sickly in 1200: not good wife prospects, would probably die in childbirth. Underdeveloped face would've been a sign of chronic illness and poor nutrition in childhood, most likely.
the "significantly" wider dental arches would've made their faces look noticeably different. I'd love to see a bunch of reconstructions based on medieval skulls, side by side with modern controls of the same sex, age, and ethnicity. Because I'm weird that way ;)
If you wanna go further down that rabbit hole, here's a study comparing American white kids in Iowa from the 90s, against age and race-matched kids from the same area in the 40s, and even there, dental arches have noticeably shrunk. It's something about modern life, and it has gotten worse even in recent decades.
Important research. The philosopher Levinas rightly talked so much about the importance of the face as essential to the existential encounter between the subject and the Other. Even a deformed face. I have seen no greater intensity of love than in the face of a young boy looking at his mother, whose face was grotesquely deformed, but as I looked at the boy, his mother's face became also beautiful to me. The loss of true encounter means the loss of the real face and its beauty. If only our culture could show us that we all are touched by angels at birth.
The sad thing is that very often, the "before" pictures look like much more interesting people. I don't know which is the worse curse: being average and wanting to be beautiful, or being pretty and being terrified of no longer being pretty.
I keep thinking how amazing Madonna would look if she had just let herself age naturally. She'd have a real FACE, one that tells all the stories of her life. Instead, she looks like AI now.
I'm so glad I had no access to cosmetic procedures when I was in my teens and 20s. I would 100% have fallen for that crap. Self hatred and narcissism are indeed the two sides of a coin.
There are so many of them who would’ve been gorgeous if they had just let age happen. Cher is one of them — Statuesque, great bone structure. Madonna too. She’s a shorty, but she has good bone structure, once again, and a slim dancer’s body if she would have just let nature take its course.
The older I get the more convinced I am that being pretty is not everything it is cracked up to be.
So many "after" photos for both orthodontics and facial modifications end up looking like the procedure that happened was a personality removal.
Can't imagine why anybody would want a smaller jaw. Our genetically-identical ancestors had massively larger jaws than us: chewier diet? More appropriate diet? Lower toxin exposure? Different mineral content in the water? Who knows? But they did. Something like 3cm wider for paleolithic man, at least 1cm wider for medieval people, and possibly this is why we have such a problem with crooked teeth and wisdom tooth non-eruption. Teeth haven't changed size but jaws have gotten smaller. And that's not a good thing. You'd think people would be going for a larger jaw, if anything.
Personality removal! That is so funny! That’s exactly right. I had no idea that people‘s jaws used to be bigger. It makes sense though because they were probably chewing things that were much tougher than we chew. I have heard that our stomach acid used to be much stronger, basically it was as strong as battery acid. This would also make sense because we were surviving harsher conditions and more septic food. Evolution has made us soft.
The time frame and genetics suggest it's not evolution that's done it, but environmental changes: meaning, if our babies grew up in the same environment, drinking the same water, eating the same food, breathing the same air and experiencing the same forces on their jaws and teeth (probably using teeth as tools a lot more), then they, too, would have wider faces and jaws. From medieval to now is an eyeblink in terms of evolution and genetics, so... probably not that.
Those women trying to look like kitty cats would've just looked sickly in 1200: not good wife prospects, would probably die in childbirth. Underdeveloped face would've been a sign of chronic illness and poor nutrition in childhood, most likely.
https://academic.oup.com/ejo/article-abstract/16/3/163/395360
the "significantly" wider dental arches would've made their faces look noticeably different. I'd love to see a bunch of reconstructions based on medieval skulls, side by side with modern controls of the same sex, age, and ethnicity. Because I'm weird that way ;)
If you wanna go further down that rabbit hole, here's a study comparing American white kids in Iowa from the 90s, against age and race-matched kids from the same area in the 40s, and even there, dental arches have noticeably shrunk. It's something about modern life, and it has gotten worse even in recent decades.
https://www.ajodo.org/article/S0889-5406(01)10809-7/abstract
I just lost my shit at “fully loaded adult diaper attached to her can” 🤣🤣🤣
Important research. The philosopher Levinas rightly talked so much about the importance of the face as essential to the existential encounter between the subject and the Other. Even a deformed face. I have seen no greater intensity of love than in the face of a young boy looking at his mother, whose face was grotesquely deformed, but as I looked at the boy, his mother's face became also beautiful to me. The loss of true encounter means the loss of the real face and its beauty. If only our culture could show us that we all are touched by angels at birth.
Disconnecting sex from reproduction has been a disaster for the human race.
Good luck putting that genie back in the bottle!