© 2009 Richard Russell
The winners of the 5th annual Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest have just been announced and the results are all together trippy. However, the third place illusion by Richard Russell of Harvard really stuck with me.In the Illusion of Sex, two faces are perceived as male and female. However, both faces are actually versions of the same androgynous face. One face was created by increasing the contrast of the androgynous face, while the other face was created by decreasing the contrast. The face with more contrast is perceived as female, while the face with less contrast is perceived as male. The Illusion of Sex demonstrates that contrast is an important cue for perceiving the sex of a face, with greater contrast appearing feminine, and lesser contrast appearing masculine.Richard's work on the perception of faces and the artificial enhancement of gender using contrast is really interesting. His research finds that while contrast is an important cue for how we determine sex, enhancement of that contrast has the opposite effect on the perceived attractiveness of men and women. Lowering the contrast makes men less attractive and raising it makes women more attractive. This bias is exploited—and reinforced—by the cosmetic industry, photo-editors and marketers in the overly-retouched photographs found in magazines, newspaper and advertising.
Labels: Beauty, Beyonce, Gender, Illusion, OJ Simpson
15 Comments:
this is so interesting. i think you can also say they are making OJ "blacker" to make him more evil, and Beyonce "whiter" to make her more beautiful.
Beauty is a social construct and, sadly, examples like these perpetuate and reinforce the outdated visual mnemonics of race.
I thought the opposite on the first two faces. The more contrasty seems to have sharper edged features (chiseled) and the softer (aka feminine) features...
Raising the contrast helps with attractiveness for both men and women? Even though it decreases the masculinity of the men? Interesting. I can't help but think about race when thinking about this article and your examples. The tradition of darkening and lightening people of color, depending on your message. OJ is looking pretty contrasty.
Billy -- That's not what the research says. Differences in contrast give cues to gender. From there, increasing contrast for women increases their perceived attractiveness and decreasing contrast for men decreases their perceived attractiveness. I don't think it works the other way like you suggest.
This definitely makes you think about race. That's why I said, "beauty is a social construct and, sadly, examples like these (OJ and Beyonce) perpetuate and reinforce the outdated visual mnemonics of race."
I knew I was missing something. Thanks.
Hey, are you speaking at the Festival of the Photograph?
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Thanks for linking to this. In all the proffered examples, I'm mostly noticing changes in density (opacity/brightness) rather than changes in the closely-related tone reproduction characteristic called contrast. And in the first example, the stunning optical characteristic is -- for me anyway -- the softened pixel edges. Thanks for this fascinating link.
The OJ Photo in Time is bad; nasty.
I would need to know more about the digital image of Beyonce. Most Celebs have forced the right of approval on publications to comment; she or her rep made have made the choices.
I wonder how much of the effect is due simply to the fact that the brain explains the high contrast at the lips as lipstick. I'd love to see two unretouched pictures of the same person in the same lighting, one wearing makeup and the other not. I bet that's the main difference.
So what you're suggesting is that an image is worth a thousand lies?
Matt -- Female lips evolved to be redder and fuller than male lips through sexual selection. Women wear lipstick to accentuate this sexual phenotype. Today, our reaction to differences in lip shades probably represents some combination of biological response and cultural adaptation.
There is a fabulous diptych by Nancy Burson from 1996 titled "He with She and She with He" in which she melds two faces - - one male and one female. In the first image the person is 51% male. In the second image the person is 51% female. At first glance one simply thinks it is the same face repeated, but as you stare one is clearly more masculine and one is more feminine. That being said, even staring at the photographs side-b-side, it is difficult to discern the specific differences between the two photographs.
Yes beyonce is beautiful xD
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In "Before the Dawn," the author states that females are-- from what I can recall-- four percent lighter than males. This is along the lines of females having lips more red than males due to evolution.
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