But in retrospect, it makes sense. We are at our prime in high school physically and mentally. It is a fun and adventurous time for most.
And this cold, cruel world can be hard on us as time goes by.
Gravity too takes its toll.
In a previous post, I have examined how physiognomy had some influence on our adolescent social competence. Here, I explore how aging and gravity affects our faces.
In the subject below, we see the effects of age from age 18 to age 58. Note some specific changes:
The nose continues to grow and flatten as we age. (Thus having delicate feature when young can be an advantage toward older attractiveness). Eyebrows tend to thin and turn grey in color. Ears lengthen too. Elasticity of the skin weakens, and cheeks drop into jowls. For most adults, eyes tend to narrow as we age, due to brow dropping and flattening, but in this subject, the youth picture shows a certain look of "bedroom eyes" not apparent in the older photo. I learned the term "bedroom eyes" from a high school girl friend; it denotes a placement of the pupil high in the eye socket and covered slightly by the eyelid.
Generally, eyes tend to narrow with aging and also drop somewhat into skull, as brows fall and fatty tissue declines. Chins tend to broaden.
Here's another subject:
In this case we again see the broadening and flattening of the nose. Smile lines become accentuated and cheeks fall with loss of elasticity. Brows drop somewhat, become depressed, and crow's feet wrinkles become apparent at outside edges of eyes. Upper and lower eyelids show some drooping, and development of eye bags is apparent. Dropping cheeks create appearance of broader face. Lips lose some prominance due to decline in fatty tissue.
Many of our facial features are tied to our faces' underlying musculature. Our intricate muscles pull facial skin as we age. Botox treatments are a popular method of disconnecting our brains, muscles, and facial skin. To understand better facial changes in the above two subjects, it is helpful to study the muscles of the human face.
Each of the labeled muscle zones can create dynamic wrinkle areas to cause crow's feet, bunny lines on nose, frown lines, horizontal forehead wrinkles, vertical wrinkle on the upper lip, etc. More about types of wrinkles in a future blog.
Here's another subject showing more pronounced effects of aging:
Nose growth and flattening in this subject are apparent. Smile lines show lack of symmetry due to plastic surgery on right side of face to remove malignant skin cancer on nose. Thinning and flattening of lips can be detected. Upper front teeth show deterioriation (bruxism)from years of nightly grinding while dreams help work through daytime work and home stress. Neck tissue weakens and falls with gravity, creating a double chin. In the upper half of the face, marked assymmetry and aging effects are prominent. Drooping lower eyelids and eye bags are accentuated from deposits of cholesterol due to creeping arteriosclerosis and from emergent liver spots. Crow's feet wrinkles grow at outside edges of eyes.
This subject, though obviously a whole brained person, has had accelerated activity in the left brain executive function of the cerebral cortex, due to job and family stress, which is projected in the enlargened right eye and the upsloping of worry lines in the right side of forehead Inherited pattern baldness led to this poor man's loss of head hair by age 30.
Ears and nose exhibit growth of strong black hairs. Ear wax has less liquidity and requires regular physician extraction. Spots of forehead (actinic keratosis) may at any time turn malignant.
Wrinkling of facial features can follow emotions, and this face shows some indication of continuous feelings of repugnance and horror.
As mentioned in previous blogs, females of the species typically control pair bonds, wavering between potential mates with strong testosterone markers vs. potential mates with willingness/ability to invest in progeny cultivation. Another factor is heterozygosity--that young adults have an ingrained inclination to selecting potential mates that mix up the genes--that diversity of gene stock leads to stronger offspring.
Check out these offspring:
Isn't it marvelous that as humans we have such acuity in discerning the features of fellows of our species?
Praise God for heterozygosity.
