Shakespeare, Darwin, and Nakdimen on Eyebrows

Having once written a psychiatric journal article about the significance of physical features, including eyebrows (1), I’ve noticed a recent trend in some high-fashion advertisements—including certain ads in today’s The Wall Street Journal Magazine—for glamorous female models to have lowered eyebrows, rather than heightened eyebrows, which is the traditional standard in women’s makeup.

Shakespeare

“All the world’s a stage…

 And one man in his time plays many parts…

 And then the lover…

 with a woeful ballad

 Made to his mistress’ eyebrow…”

 —As You Like It, II.vii

Darwin

“It has often struck me as a curious fact that so many shades of expression are instantly recognized without any conscious process of analysis on our part. No one, I believe, can clearly describe a sullen or sly expression; yet many observers are unanimous that these expressions can be recognized in the various races of man. Almost everyone to whom I showed Duchenne’s photograph of the young man with oblique eyebrows at once declared that it expressed grief or some such feeling; yet probably not one of these persons, or one out of a thousand persons, could beforehand have told anything precise about the obliquity of the eyebrows with their inner ends puckered, or about the rectangular furrows on the forehead. So it is with many other expressions, of which I have had practical experience in the trouble requisite in instructing others what points to observe” (2, p. 359).

Nakdimen

“Technically speaking, there is a conceptual error in the phrase ‘so expressive a feature,’ because it is behavior (i.e, a facial expression), not the appearance of a physical feature, that is expressive. When, as part of a person’s nonverbal communications, the eyebrows move in any of various ways, that behavior, interpreted in the context of other behavior and the situation, reveals something about the person’s current emotional and cognitive state. Moreover, if you observe a person’s nonverbal communications in varying contexts, you may eventually come to some valid conclusions about his or her character. But, as far as we know, the anatomical position of a person’s eyebrows only mimics facial expression, as a physiognomic mask might, and does not reveal anything about a person’s mind or character, any more than a mask would.

“Nevertheless, if a person’s eyebrows are anatomically high and arched, an observer will subconsciously receive the same kind of impression that he or she would receive from the corresponding, similar-looking, true nonverbal communication, which in this case is the surprised or nonanalytic facial expression. This process, which is not authentic nonverbal communication, may be termed ‘nonverbal quasi-communication,’ to indicate that it is artificial, rather than genuine, body language.

“Anatomically high, arched eyebrows, ‘quasi-communicate’ that the person has, among other attributes, a nonanalytic cognitive style. The fact that women—relatively speaking, and on the average—have such physiognomy fosters the stereotype that they are more intuitive and less logical than men, not to mention all the other attributes quasi-communicated by arched eyebrows (e.g., submissiveness, credulity) as a result of the kind of facial expression they mimic” (1, pp. 500-501).

Comment

I don’t know why some advertisers are lowering women’s eyebrows, which is a relatively masculine attribute. Is it a fashion fad like big shoulder pads once were? Is it a feminist power statement? Will lovers sing ballads to women with lowered eyebrows? Should novelists pay attention to characters' eyebrows and other physical features?

1. Kenneth A. Nakdimen, M.D. “The Physiognomic Basis of Sexual Stereotyping.” Am J Psychiatry 141:4, pp. 499-503, April 1984

2. Charles Darwin. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals [1872]. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1965.

Added June 6: Mona Lisa enigmatic, I would argue, because “Mona Lisa has no clearly visible eyebrows or eyelashes. Some researchers claim that it was common at this time for genteel women to pluck these hairs, as they were considered unsightly. In 2007, French engineer Pascal Cotte announced that his ultra-high resolution scans of the painting provide evidence that Mona Lisa was originally painted with eyelashes and with visible eyebrows, but that these had gradually disappeared over time, perhaps as a result of overcleaning.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa