FACE FACTS

Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne studied facial expressions. The theory resulting from his research was: the muscles of the face represented the movement of the soul. Duchenne identified and isolated fifty-three emotions that correlated with the formation of certain muscle responses. Which makes me wonder if he isn't the granddaddy of the social media phenomenon -  emoticon.

There are forty-two muscles in the human face, each capable of forming expressions and contortions. We unconsciously manifest our thoughts, desires, and disposition through the reflections cast upon our face.

If you visualize someone who's love-sick; depressed; courageous, eating chocolate cake . . . it's easy to get the picture. Thinking back to times of stress, duress, or trauma in our own lives, someone may have told us to suck it up or put a smile on our face and we've complied. We show the world what they want to see but for a fleeting moment while we decided on our public persona, our true feelings may have shown. Actually, this unspoken language of expression is hard to suppress but some will argue that what you think is what you'll be.

These reasons are why it's so important to have contact with another person in more than a one hundred forty character tweet where they've chosen the icon they want you to think they feel. It's important to see for yourself how another is actually internalizing your conversation. This is where separating fact from facade becomes complicated. We are drawn to people because of their demeanor and until we gain knowledge or life experience, we'll sometimes walk away from our conversations saying, 'What kind of a look was that?' not sure if the body language actually matched the verbal response.

If you think about it, our personality shines through our face. So does our mood. Feelings. Physical health. Even our credibility. Writers who study facial expressions and body language and apply them (with the same sensibility as adding hot pepper sauce to meat) tend to develop more well-defined characters. I encourage you to think about using a little spice in your writings.

(Mecanisme de la Physionomie Humaine - 1862) 

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