April 12, 2021 • 23 mins
Our ideas of what’s beautiful are tied to symmetry. Symmetry attracts. Why? What’s so compelling about faces that are the same on both sides of that nose in the middle?
To study symmetry we dive into the world of asymmetry – where things are different. Dessa talks with a professor who studies right- and left-handedness, a graphic designer who explains the appeal of a bit of asymmetry and a woman who grew up with a distinctly asymmetrical face – and ended up in a very surprising profession as a result.
Deeply Human is a BBC World Service and American Public Media coproduction with iHeartMedia.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
We meet again, listener, connecting across time and space to
share a story and to think, I'm Dessa. This is
deeply human and we're headed into the beating heart of symmetry.
Why are we particularly attracted to faces that look the
same on both sides? How and why is symmetry tied
into our ideas of what's beautiful. We'll start by speaking
with a woman named Mafi. Although she's an effervescent grown up,
(00:28):
as a kid, Marfi was acutely and uncomfortably aware of
our preference for symmetrical faces because hers wasn't remember being
asleepover once at this girl's house this guy went to
school with, and she was like really rich, and she
had like you know these like white carpets and like
(00:49):
mini tobler own bars and the company. I know. She
had this blonde brat stole and I like looking at
it and like saying a prayer to God and being
like please, please, God, Like, can I look try this
one day. If you're not familiar with the Brad's brand,
it's a line of dolls with big heads and tiny waists,
wearing nightclub fashions and runaway makeup. They've got exaggerated potty lips,
(01:13):
enormous almond eyes, and almost no nose because you don't
need a nose to be sexy, and they are, of
course perfectly symmetrical, as you might have already gleaned. I
am not a huge fan of hyper sexualized dolls with
alien proportions marketed as playthings for young girls. I've had
(01:33):
this aversion since I myself was a small girl and
was once discovered lecturing on the topic while standing at
a box in the middle of my day care center.
I digress back to Mafi, who was painfully aware of
her own facial asymmetry. Mafi's mom was awesome, always telling
Mafi how beautiful she was. But moms are so easy
to write off, like they have to say that right.
(01:55):
I had such a kind of fixed idea of myself
as someone that wasn't physically beautiful at all. I wore
really serious, full long glasses, and I also wore an
eye patch on my stronger eye to make my weaker
I have to work harder for years, and they try
and kind of kind of sex it up for me
with stickers and stuff to kind of compensate in some
(02:19):
way for the humiliation at school. Mafi has stra business
a lazy eye, and that's sometimes made eye contact difficult
because the other kids weren't sure where she was looking,
so she spent a lot of time looking down at
her hands. Although mafia is asymmetry is obvious, none of
us are quite the same on both sides. Chris mcmannus
(02:40):
is a medic and a psychologist who wrote a book
called Right Hand, Left Hand that splits us open to
study both halves, how they're built, while we use them
the way we do, and even our attitudes about each side.
Chris is a professor at the University of London. We
met at the BBC Studios to sit down for a
serious intellectual exchange. Can you lift an eyebrow? One? Which one? No,
(03:02):
I'm not sure. I didn't even I need some feedback.
I've got no idea what I'm doing. Do you do
your best to lift your left eyebrow and I'll tell you, Okay,
that's not happening. Do your best to lift your right eyebrow. God,
this isn't video. Now there is a movement that is
not okay. Chris is not likely to be cast as
(03:25):
an arch villain in the next blockbuster. When I asked
him why we're generally symmetrical in the first place. The
answer was pretty forthright. It's easier to navigate through the
world on legs that are roughly the same length and
with ears that work in pretty much the same way
and are in the same position on our head. But
growing into a symmetrical organism might be harder than it
seems on first glance. Think think about a fetus in
(03:48):
the womb, all its individual parts forming separately. How his
fingers are he is or its knees get to be
the same on both sides. Well, the answer is that
they both take the same set of instructions, the same DNA,
But by the time the knees, the ears, and the
fingers are developing, they're stuck out miles away from each other.
So they both read the same instructions and they try
(04:10):
and produce the same organ by using that codebook. Okay,
same pattern book. But if stuff goes wrong during that process,
if there's noise, there's interference, stuff happens. I mean literal noise,
I mean biological noise, but it might be physical noise
as well. Stresses stresses anything, some radioactivity, the old cosmic
(04:32):
ray coming through, perhaps some drugs or something, but anything
can happen, then the two sides get slightly different. You
and I are both making duck allourage and separate kitchens. I, however,
have had three martinis, so we have the same recipe,
but an intervening factor that means that I'm going to
(04:52):
burn the duck. Yeah, that's what we call biological noise.
But normally, for most of us, there's what we call buffering.
There's enough control over it to make sure the two
things stay the same. So if that goes wrong, then
of course the two sides become slightly different, but it
(05:13):
means actually other things are going wrong in development as well.
If an organism's symmetry has been thrown off, there might
be other problems beneath the surface too, And that's probably
why we look for symmetry and faces and that sort
of thing. People with symmetric faces, it's probably they've got
good genes, they're well buffered, they can respond to stress
(05:36):
and survive it. And that's why we think that symmetry
is beauty in faces in particular. So we have this
idea that seeing someone and appraising their faces symmetrical and beautiful,
is that sort of shorthand for appraising their reproductive health
in biological terms, yes, all organisms are looking for somebody
(05:56):
to mate with in order to produce offspring, probably having
a symmetric faces part of that story. So far, Chris
and I have been discussing the symmetries that we can
see in one another are external appearances, but inside we're
not so symmetrical at all. So, for instance, our heart
(06:18):
is asymmetric, and what it's like that is interesting because
if you go to more primitive animals earth worms or insects,
or even some primitive vertebrates, then they have a small
heart which is in the middle of the body and
it's not at all asymmetric. We seem to get large
hearts when we have a lot of muscles, and when
(06:39):
you start to pump a lot of blood through a
symmetric heart, you get turbulence. And what seems to have
happened is that the heart is evolved so that the
blood spirals through it and stops the turbulence. So you know,
if you want to open up the chest, you'll find
that if you look at the lungs, then the right
lung has three lobes and the left lung has too.
(07:01):
If you look inside the abdomen, you'll find that there's
the liver on one side, the spleen on the other,
the stomach, the intestines, all of them are asymmetric. Famously,
the testicles even are asymmetric, and they're larger on one
side than the other, and higher on one side and
the other and so on, and all of those asymmetries
seem to really follow on from the fact that the
(07:23):
heart is asymmetric. So if you find the rare people
it's about one in ten thousand people in the world
who have their heart on the right side, then they
will tend to have their liver, their stomach, their spleen,
even their testicles reversed, so they're a mirror image. They're
flipped over. We're not at all behaviorally symmetrical either. Somebody
(07:43):
parts are stronger or more flexible, more nimble than their
partners on the other side. About nine out of ten
of us favor our right hands, though men are more
likely to be left handed than women, and there's evidence
that handedness actually starts in utero. So if you spy
on babies with an ultrasound while they are in the
presumed privacy of their mother's stomachs, you'll see that they
(08:03):
often suck the thumb of the preferred hand. And sitting
here watching you interview me, I noticed you've just clasped
your hands together. And hand clasping where you grip the
hands together, then there's usually one thumb on top. In
my case, it's the right thumb on top right for
me to write, but half the population it's the other
way around. And if if I force myself to the
(08:24):
other way around, it feels so disgusting I want to
leave my own company. What are the other behavioral asymmetries
besides right handed dominants? Like what are the part of
our bodies are asymmetrically used? Almost all of them. Although
about ten percent of people are left handed, about twenty
percent of people who left footed. What about like for
(08:45):
our sense organs? Even the eyes are the obvious one.
Eyes are slightly tricky about people are right eye the
other left died. But it's in the sense of which
I we choose to look with. So it's a strange question.
But if you had to look through a keyhole, which
I would you view? In some ways eyes themselves or
(09:08):
keyholes through which our brain peers out at the world
from inside its skull. I asked Matthew what it was
like to see the world through her eyes. I only
really focus with one eye at a time. I've got
one that I use for far away, and I've got
one that I I used to close up. The interesting thing
about it, though, is that I can look at two
things at once. Um, it's just yeah, it's just that one.
(09:32):
It's just that one is kind of performs a kind
of peripheral function in the sense that I don't focus
on it, so I'm able to kind of shut one
of them off. But it's it's probably quote. I think
you'd probably been pretty freaked out, like if we could,
if we could trade little feed for a second. But
on the other hand, you'd probably be pretty freaked out
(09:53):
to like, why could this girl only see like four
degrees in front of her? She's going to pop down.
You'll be glad to learn that Marphy had a much
better time of it as a teenager than as a
grade schooler. I remember when I got to secondary school
and suddenly boys fancied me and I just could not
believe my love. I was like, oh my god, I've
got all this sexual power and I don't know what
(10:16):
to do with that, as it happens, marfy did find
something to do with all that sexual power. When you're
at a caffeh shop or or if you're at a bar,
do you ever get the sense that maybe people recognize you? Yeah,
it does happen a bit. Now, will you tell me
what you do for a living? I am a I
suppose model, and that's the idea. It was kind of
(10:40):
an accident. Really, I got scouted at a festival when
I was fourteen or fifteen and did a test shoot
and really, like I thought it was intolerable. She tried modeling,
hated it and built completely and then essentially gets discovered
again a few years later, like modeling will only roll on.
Someone introduced me to this photographer called Tyrone Nabon, who
(11:04):
now is a really good friend of mine, and he
wanted someone that wasn't kind of fashion e and he
took some photos of me and they ended up on
the cover of Pop So what did that mean? Like?
How big a deal is that? I suppose? Maybe? Still
do I really know? I mean, they've had lots of
(11:24):
other kind of big celebs. Um uh much? You hate this?
You hate name dropping? Like you really hate this? Part?
Is that right. I find it quite embarrassing. Yeah, okay, stop,
I'm gonna take over. Pop is a UK fashion and
culture magazine that's featured people like Naomi Campbell and Britney
Spears on its covers, and Storm, the modeling agency that
(11:46):
signed Mafi, discovered people like Kate Moss. Mafi is kind
of crushing it and I ended up being her calling card.
I don't know if this is easy to answer from
the inside, but do you have a sense of how
(12:08):
much the lazy eye defines your career? Oh? No, yeah,
I mean it, it is my career. Basically, a bit
of asymmetry might have an attraction all its own. To
talk aesthetics more generally, for a moment, I have wrangled
my design friend Vance Wallenstein. Vance and I met in
(12:32):
our early twenties, having crossed paths in the Minneapolis indie
music scene and conveniently for future podcasting me, He ended
up the head of design at Moment PS one, a
branch of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. I
asked Vance to explain how symmetry is understood and treated
in his field. I think historically, you know, symmetry represented
(12:53):
the ideal perfection the most beautiful. It was the most elegant,
it was the most you know, wealthy. You know, you
think of places of worship, religious texts, even tombstones for example,
you rarely see you know, a name left justified or
right justified. It's going to be centered. It's the most
kind of respectful, maybe precious way to present information. Symmetry
(13:19):
also had class connotations. It was refined. Vance who has
a special expertise and typography can see those class connotations
play out in our type treatments. At least in the
Western world. You have, you know, the emergence of data
to still Russian constructivism, you know, bau House, all of
(13:41):
these sorts of movements in Europe that are advocating for
an asymmetrical approach to typography and reading as a way
to kind of socialize the experience of reading and advertising,
to make it for the people in a way. It
wasn't absolute perfect. Symmetry is also like totally impossible to
(14:02):
find in nature. Absolutely it's the ideal, but as we
all know, the ideal with regards to anything doesn't exist,
which does not stop us from trying to find it.
I do think that you know, the eye is trying
to make connections between forms, etcetera, and create lines. When
things are asymmetrical, the experience of viewing something from a
(14:24):
visual standpoint becomes much more dynamic as a result, and
I would say charged exciting in a way because you
have to do more work and optically, once you've done
that work to actually figure out the alignments, the experience
just becomes so much more rewarding. What do you mean
when you say that we're doing more work, Does that
mean that, like, my eyes are literally moving all around
the picture. Yes, because your eyes do want, just by nature,
(14:47):
to have things be balanced, to be symmetrical. So when
they're not, you have to create those visuals. Those you're
you're you're creating those points, You're finding those points to
create those lines for it to become symmetrical. Asymmetry being
a much more I would argue, challenging but rewarding experience,
And I think that can be applied to just about anything,
(15:08):
whether it's type setting, whether it's art, whether it's a human,
whether it's how they look, how they act. Part of
the reason that evolutionary biologists give for a general attraction
(15:31):
to symmetrical human faces is that human beings that were
able to develop one eye that looks pretty much like
the other eye, like grew up in an environment without
too many developmental strains, and they got some genes that
were able to express themselves evenly across the body, like
it might be an indicator for reproductive health. And then
(15:51):
to balance that against like every adolescent girls crush to
be real heteronormative on like the classic scar over just
one eye, or the Monroe piercing on one side of
the mouth, you know, or like if you imagine flappers,
like the parting your hair really far to one side.
When you talk about like asymmetry being more of a
(16:12):
challenge and more interesting, fundamentally, there's also a limit to that. Right.
It's like at a certain point, if we're to asymmetrical,
generally we consider that's considered less beautiful. Like if one
side of your face is super different than the other, right, Like,
is there is there a sweet spot? Yeah? Absolutely, And
I think with regards to any sort of whether it's
the human form or arch design, it's you know, finding
(16:36):
that point of tension and how does asymmetry kind of
react against symmetry and that kind of that liminal place
where things vibrate. The Monroe the piercing, the scar, the
hair part, I think is where the experience becomes the
most charged. So if it's everything is purely symmetrical, it's
a very static experience. If it's completely asymmetrical, it's going
(17:00):
to be chaos. That sweet spot in between and finding
those moments of yeah, vibration, we respond in the most
exciting kind of ways. Do you think that if you'd
(17:25):
been born like ten or twenty years earlier, that you
would have still had a shot at a modeling career. No,
I don't think so. Like what's changed in the industry.
I think generally attitudes have changed towards people that previously
would have been kind of mothered by society. Like there's
lots of disabled models now, and transgender models and plus
(17:45):
sized models, and you know, it's much more of a
culture of tolerance. Do you think that you're asymmetry is
like accepted by the industry because you're otherwise very beautiful
and symmetrical in a classic way? I think of like
Cindy Crawford's more, you know, this kind of calling card
against a backdrop of supermodel beauty. Um, yeah, I do
(18:08):
think so. It's funny. I mean, whenever I've been told
to lose weight, which obviously has happened. I always think,
kind of, you know, such a cheek, isn't it? Like
I'm allowed to have a lazy eye as long as
I haven't got like back rolls or a fatass. But
I also think that the truth is that it's you know,
(18:28):
usually it's the imperfection that gives something its own kind
of sparkle. And also it's what kind of draws interest
because the meaning is kind of closed, otherwise there's nowhere
to go with it, Like, what do you mean by that?
How do you see the relationship generally between beauty and symmetry.
I think that physical imperfections are suggestive of something internal,
(18:49):
and they invite analysis in a way that perfection doesn't
really And that's what I mean when I say that
the meaning is closed. A perfection is that there's no
past to read into it, and there's no kind of
future to extrapolate it. Just it doesn't suggest identity or individuality.
Marphi says she has mixed feelings about the fact that
her lazy eye receives so so much attention in her career.
(19:11):
None of us are reducible to just one feature, but
On the other hand, I think it's kind of wonderful.
And if it's, you know, managed to function as a
kind of invitation for other people to exercise a bit
of self forgiveness for their flaws and all the rest
of it, then I feel, you know, really kind of
touched and quite humbled really to have anything to do
(19:32):
with that. The throngs of crazed fans camped outside my
podcast mansion often tell me that I have a perfectly
symmetrical broadcast voice, so you may be surprised to learn
that my face is not particularly symmetrical at all. The
(19:53):
left side of my mouth tilts up. It's always the
first to start smiling, which can make the right half
of my face look like it's just a it was
disappointed in you, like there were staff cuts. So I
am playing both good cop and bad cop at the
same time. Why is symmetry beautiful? Symmetrical faces indicate good
(20:14):
genes and developmental resilience, strong reproductive stock. But we ask
more of faces than to be only beautiful. We want
to connect, to see the flash of anger or delight,
the lust or tenderness as it breaks across the brow
or ripples the muscles of the jaw. We want to
know who the face belongs to and what she makes
(20:34):
of us. We don't just look at faces. We look
to them to reveal an inner life, fortified by past
triumphs and freighted with the old hurts. We want to
know how the pretty face on the magazine is related
to the little girl at the sleeve bar with a
doll and a private prayer. Next time I'm deeply human,
(21:02):
we'll be asking why do you see faces and clouds?
And why does the creaking of an old house freak
you out, even though you are positive you're the only
one home. In short, why are we so eager to
perceive other creatures everywhere and in everything? Within the human brain,
we have specialized systems for detecting other social animals, and
(21:23):
we have, if you like, dedicated mechanisms for identifying others
and their form and their shapes and their movements. I mean,
I could hear his voice so clearly. I didn't feel
a worn Somebody said, Oh, I feel like there was
somebody behind me touching me. He was not me, he
felt creepy. Guy said, I felt like that there was
(21:46):
a monkey replicating my movements on my back. Deeply Human
is a BBC World Service in American public media co
production with I Heart Media. Oh and if you want
to know what happens when you ask a very modest,
self effacing model describe her own face, it's pretty cute.
(22:09):
They are kind of thick at the bit where they
kind of approach each other in between my um, you know,
upstairs with my nose? Did you say hold on? Did
you just say the upstairs of your nose? Is that
this phrase that you just said? And my cheeks are
probably quite cheeky as well. Quite my mouth is kind
(22:34):
of medium size. I'd say stop, So I'm going to
cut in. You know, I'm gonna cut in because like
as someone who's read about your face, like as other
people are writing about it. Um, this is just hilarious
because I'm you know, other writers are like her lips
(22:56):
are pillowy, like I got a medium sized mouth, ask
We meet again, listener, connecting across time and space to
share a story and to think, I'm Dessa. This is
deeply human and we're headed into the beating heart of symmetry.
Why are we particularly attracted to faces that look the
same on both sides? How and why is symmetry tied
into our ideas of what's beautiful. We'll start by speaking
with a woman named Mafi. Although she's an effervescent grown up,
(00:28):
as a kid, Marfi was acutely and uncomfortably aware of
our preference for symmetrical faces because hers wasn't remember being
asleepover once at this girl's house this guy went to
school with, and she was like really rich, and she
had like you know these like white carpets and like
(00:49):
mini tobler own bars and the company. I know. She
had this blonde brat stole and I like looking at
it and like saying a prayer to God and being
like please, please, God, Like, can I look try this
one day. If you're not familiar with the Brad's brand,
it's a line of dolls with big heads and tiny waists,
wearing nightclub fashions and runaway makeup. They've got exaggerated potty lips,
(01:13):
enormous almond eyes, and almost no nose because you don't
need a nose to be sexy, and they are, of
course perfectly symmetrical, as you might have already gleaned. I
am not a huge fan of hyper sexualized dolls with
alien proportions marketed as playthings for young girls. I've had
(01:33):
this aversion since I myself was a small girl and
was once discovered lecturing on the topic while standing at
a box in the middle of my day care center.
I digress back to Mafi, who was painfully aware of
her own facial asymmetry. Mafi's mom was awesome, always telling
Mafi how beautiful she was. But moms are so easy
to write off, like they have to say that right.
(01:55):
I had such a kind of fixed idea of myself
as someone that wasn't physically beautiful at all. I wore
really serious, full long glasses, and I also wore an
eye patch on my stronger eye to make my weaker
I have to work harder for years, and they try
and kind of kind of sex it up for me
with stickers and stuff to kind of compensate in some
(02:19):
way for the humiliation at school. Mafi has stra business
a lazy eye, and that's sometimes made eye contact difficult
because the other kids weren't sure where she was looking,
so she spent a lot of time looking down at
her hands. Although mafia is asymmetry is obvious, none of
us are quite the same on both sides. Chris mcmannus
(02:40):
is a medic and a psychologist who wrote a book
called Right Hand, Left Hand that splits us open to
study both halves, how they're built, while we use them
the way we do, and even our attitudes about each side.
Chris is a professor at the University of London. We
met at the BBC Studios to sit down for a
serious intellectual exchange. Can you lift an eyebrow? One? Which one? No,
(03:02):
I'm not sure. I didn't even I need some feedback.
I've got no idea what I'm doing. Do you do
your best to lift your left eyebrow and I'll tell you, Okay,
that's not happening. Do your best to lift your right eyebrow. God,
this isn't video. Now there is a movement that is
not okay. Chris is not likely to be cast as
(03:25):
an arch villain in the next blockbuster. When I asked
him why we're generally symmetrical in the first place. The
answer was pretty forthright. It's easier to navigate through the
world on legs that are roughly the same length and
with ears that work in pretty much the same way
and are in the same position on our head. But
growing into a symmetrical organism might be harder than it
seems on first glance. Think think about a fetus in
(03:48):
the womb, all its individual parts forming separately. How his
fingers are he is or its knees get to be
the same on both sides. Well, the answer is that
they both take the same set of instructions, the same DNA,
But by the time the knees, the ears, and the
fingers are developing, they're stuck out miles away from each other.
So they both read the same instructions and they try
(04:10):
and produce the same organ by using that codebook. Okay,
same pattern book. But if stuff goes wrong during that process,
if there's noise, there's interference, stuff happens. I mean literal noise,
I mean biological noise, but it might be physical noise
as well. Stresses stresses anything, some radioactivity, the old cosmic
(04:32):
ray coming through, perhaps some drugs or something, but anything
can happen, then the two sides get slightly different. You
and I are both making duck allourage and separate kitchens. I, however,
have had three martinis, so we have the same recipe,
but an intervening factor that means that I'm going to
(04:52):
burn the duck. Yeah, that's what we call biological noise.
But normally, for most of us, there's what we call buffering.
There's enough control over it to make sure the two
things stay the same. So if that goes wrong, then
of course the two sides become slightly different, but it
(05:13):
means actually other things are going wrong in development as well.
If an organism's symmetry has been thrown off, there might
be other problems beneath the surface too, And that's probably
why we look for symmetry and faces and that sort
of thing. People with symmetric faces, it's probably they've got
good genes, they're well buffered, they can respond to stress
(05:36):
and survive it. And that's why we think that symmetry
is beauty in faces in particular. So we have this
idea that seeing someone and appraising their faces symmetrical and beautiful,
is that sort of shorthand for appraising their reproductive health
in biological terms, yes, all organisms are looking for somebody
(05:56):
to mate with in order to produce offspring, probably having
a symmetric faces part of that story. So far, Chris
and I have been discussing the symmetries that we can
see in one another are external appearances, but inside we're
not so symmetrical at all. So, for instance, our heart
(06:18):
is asymmetric, and what it's like that is interesting because
if you go to more primitive animals earth worms or insects,
or even some primitive vertebrates, then they have a small
heart which is in the middle of the body and
it's not at all asymmetric. We seem to get large
hearts when we have a lot of muscles, and when
(06:39):
you start to pump a lot of blood through a
symmetric heart, you get turbulence. And what seems to have
happened is that the heart is evolved so that the
blood spirals through it and stops the turbulence. So you know,
if you want to open up the chest, you'll find
that if you look at the lungs, then the right
lung has three lobes and the left lung has too.
(07:01):
If you look inside the abdomen, you'll find that there's
the liver on one side, the spleen on the other,
the stomach, the intestines, all of them are asymmetric. Famously,
the testicles even are asymmetric, and they're larger on one
side than the other, and higher on one side and
the other and so on, and all of those asymmetries
seem to really follow on from the fact that the
(07:23):
heart is asymmetric. So if you find the rare people
it's about one in ten thousand people in the world
who have their heart on the right side, then they
will tend to have their liver, their stomach, their spleen,
even their testicles reversed, so they're a mirror image. They're
flipped over. We're not at all behaviorally symmetrical either. Somebody
(07:43):
parts are stronger or more flexible, more nimble than their
partners on the other side. About nine out of ten
of us favor our right hands, though men are more
likely to be left handed than women, and there's evidence
that handedness actually starts in utero. So if you spy
on babies with an ultrasound while they are in the
presumed privacy of their mother's stomachs, you'll see that they
(08:03):
often suck the thumb of the preferred hand. And sitting
here watching you interview me, I noticed you've just clasped
your hands together. And hand clasping where you grip the
hands together, then there's usually one thumb on top. In
my case, it's the right thumb on top right for
me to write, but half the population it's the other
way around. And if if I force myself to the
(08:24):
other way around, it feels so disgusting I want to
leave my own company. What are the other behavioral asymmetries
besides right handed dominants? Like what are the part of
our bodies are asymmetrically used? Almost all of them. Although
about ten percent of people are left handed, about twenty
percent of people who left footed. What about like for
(08:45):
our sense organs? Even the eyes are the obvious one.
Eyes are slightly tricky about people are right eye the
other left died. But it's in the sense of which
I we choose to look with. So it's a strange question.
But if you had to look through a keyhole, which
I would you view? In some ways eyes themselves or
(09:08):
keyholes through which our brain peers out at the world
from inside its skull. I asked Matthew what it was
like to see the world through her eyes. I only
really focus with one eye at a time. I've got
one that I use for far away, and I've got
one that I I used to close up. The interesting thing
about it, though, is that I can look at two
things at once. Um, it's just yeah, it's just that one.
(09:32):
It's just that one is kind of performs a kind
of peripheral function in the sense that I don't focus
on it, so I'm able to kind of shut one
of them off. But it's it's probably quote. I think
you'd probably been pretty freaked out, like if we could,
if we could trade little feed for a second. But
on the other hand, you'd probably be pretty freaked out
(09:53):
to like, why could this girl only see like four
degrees in front of her? She's going to pop down.
You'll be glad to learn that Marphy had a much
better time of it as a teenager than as a
grade schooler. I remember when I got to secondary school
and suddenly boys fancied me and I just could not
believe my love. I was like, oh my god, I've
got all this sexual power and I don't know what
(10:16):
to do with that, as it happens, marfy did find
something to do with all that sexual power. When you're
at a caffeh shop or or if you're at a bar,
do you ever get the sense that maybe people recognize you? Yeah,
it does happen a bit. Now, will you tell me
what you do for a living? I am a I
suppose model, and that's the idea. It was kind of
(10:40):
an accident. Really, I got scouted at a festival when
I was fourteen or fifteen and did a test shoot
and really, like I thought it was intolerable. She tried modeling,
hated it and built completely and then essentially gets discovered
again a few years later, like modeling will only roll on.
Someone introduced me to this photographer called Tyrone Nabon, who
(11:04):
now is a really good friend of mine, and he
wanted someone that wasn't kind of fashion e and he
took some photos of me and they ended up on
the cover of Pop So what did that mean? Like?
How big a deal is that? I suppose? Maybe? Still
do I really know? I mean, they've had lots of
(11:24):
other kind of big celebs. Um uh much? You hate this?
You hate name dropping? Like you really hate this? Part?
Is that right. I find it quite embarrassing. Yeah, okay, stop,
I'm gonna take over. Pop is a UK fashion and
culture magazine that's featured people like Naomi Campbell and Britney
Spears on its covers, and Storm, the modeling agency that
(11:46):
signed Mafi, discovered people like Kate Moss. Mafi is kind
of crushing it and I ended up being her calling card.
I don't know if this is easy to answer from
the inside, but do you have a sense of how
(12:08):
much the lazy eye defines your career? Oh? No, yeah,
I mean it, it is my career. Basically, a bit
of asymmetry might have an attraction all its own. To
talk aesthetics more generally, for a moment, I have wrangled
my design friend Vance Wallenstein. Vance and I met in
(12:32):
our early twenties, having crossed paths in the Minneapolis indie
music scene and conveniently for future podcasting me, He ended
up the head of design at Moment PS one, a
branch of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. I
asked Vance to explain how symmetry is understood and treated
in his field. I think historically, you know, symmetry represented
(12:53):
the ideal perfection the most beautiful. It was the most elegant,
it was the most you know, wealthy. You know, you
think of places of worship, religious texts, even tombstones for example,
you rarely see you know, a name left justified or
right justified. It's going to be centered. It's the most
kind of respectful, maybe precious way to present information. Symmetry
(13:19):
also had class connotations. It was refined. Vance who has
a special expertise and typography can see those class connotations
play out in our type treatments. At least in the
Western world. You have, you know, the emergence of data
to still Russian constructivism, you know, bau House, all of
(13:41):
these sorts of movements in Europe that are advocating for
an asymmetrical approach to typography and reading as a way
to kind of socialize the experience of reading and advertising,
to make it for the people in a way. It
wasn't absolute perfect. Symmetry is also like totally impossible to
(14:02):
find in nature. Absolutely it's the ideal, but as we
all know, the ideal with regards to anything doesn't exist,
which does not stop us from trying to find it.
I do think that you know, the eye is trying
to make connections between forms, etcetera, and create lines. When
things are asymmetrical, the experience of viewing something from a
(14:24):
visual standpoint becomes much more dynamic as a result, and
I would say charged exciting in a way because you
have to do more work and optically, once you've done
that work to actually figure out the alignments, the experience
just becomes so much more rewarding. What do you mean
when you say that we're doing more work, Does that
mean that, like, my eyes are literally moving all around
the picture. Yes, because your eyes do want, just by nature,
(14:47):
to have things be balanced, to be symmetrical. So when
they're not, you have to create those visuals. Those you're
you're you're creating those points, You're finding those points to
create those lines for it to become symmetrical. Asymmetry being
a much more I would argue, challenging but rewarding experience,
And I think that can be applied to just about anything,
(15:08):
whether it's type setting, whether it's art, whether it's a human,
whether it's how they look, how they act. Part of
the reason that evolutionary biologists give for a general attraction
(15:31):
to symmetrical human faces is that human beings that were
able to develop one eye that looks pretty much like
the other eye, like grew up in an environment without
too many developmental strains, and they got some genes that
were able to express themselves evenly across the body, like
it might be an indicator for reproductive health. And then
(15:51):
to balance that against like every adolescent girls crush to
be real heteronormative on like the classic scar over just
one eye, or the Monroe piercing on one side of
the mouth, you know, or like if you imagine flappers,
like the parting your hair really far to one side.
When you talk about like asymmetry being more of a
(16:12):
challenge and more interesting, fundamentally, there's also a limit to that. Right.
It's like at a certain point, if we're to asymmetrical,
generally we consider that's considered less beautiful. Like if one
side of your face is super different than the other, right, Like,
is there is there a sweet spot? Yeah? Absolutely, And
I think with regards to any sort of whether it's
the human form or arch design, it's you know, finding
(16:36):
that point of tension and how does asymmetry kind of
react against symmetry and that kind of that liminal place
where things vibrate. The Monroe the piercing, the scar, the
hair part, I think is where the experience becomes the
most charged. So if it's everything is purely symmetrical, it's
a very static experience. If it's completely asymmetrical, it's going
(17:00):
to be chaos. That sweet spot in between and finding
those moments of yeah, vibration, we respond in the most
exciting kind of ways. Do you think that if you'd
(17:25):
been born like ten or twenty years earlier, that you
would have still had a shot at a modeling career. No,
I don't think so. Like what's changed in the industry.
I think generally attitudes have changed towards people that previously
would have been kind of mothered by society. Like there's
lots of disabled models now, and transgender models and plus
(17:45):
sized models, and you know, it's much more of a
culture of tolerance. Do you think that you're asymmetry is
like accepted by the industry because you're otherwise very beautiful
and symmetrical in a classic way? I think of like
Cindy Crawford's more, you know, this kind of calling card
against a backdrop of supermodel beauty. Um, yeah, I do
(18:08):
think so. It's funny. I mean, whenever I've been told
to lose weight, which obviously has happened. I always think,
kind of, you know, such a cheek, isn't it? Like
I'm allowed to have a lazy eye as long as
I haven't got like back rolls or a fatass. But
I also think that the truth is that it's you know,
(18:28):
usually it's the imperfection that gives something its own kind
of sparkle. And also it's what kind of draws interest
because the meaning is kind of closed, otherwise there's nowhere
to go with it, Like, what do you mean by that?
How do you see the relationship generally between beauty and symmetry.
I think that physical imperfections are suggestive of something internal,
(18:49):
and they invite analysis in a way that perfection doesn't
really And that's what I mean when I say that
the meaning is closed. A perfection is that there's no
past to read into it, and there's no kind of
future to extrapolate it. Just it doesn't suggest identity or individuality.
Marphi says she has mixed feelings about the fact that
her lazy eye receives so so much attention in her career.
(19:11):
None of us are reducible to just one feature, but
On the other hand, I think it's kind of wonderful.
And if it's, you know, managed to function as a
kind of invitation for other people to exercise a bit
of self forgiveness for their flaws and all the rest
of it, then I feel, you know, really kind of
touched and quite humbled really to have anything to do
(19:32):
with that. The throngs of crazed fans camped outside my
podcast mansion often tell me that I have a perfectly
symmetrical broadcast voice, so you may be surprised to learn
that my face is not particularly symmetrical at all. The
(19:53):
left side of my mouth tilts up. It's always the
first to start smiling, which can make the right half
of my face look like it's just a it was
disappointed in you, like there were staff cuts. So I
am playing both good cop and bad cop at the
same time. Why is symmetry beautiful? Symmetrical faces indicate good
(20:14):
genes and developmental resilience, strong reproductive stock. But we ask
more of faces than to be only beautiful. We want
to connect, to see the flash of anger or delight,
the lust or tenderness as it breaks across the brow
or ripples the muscles of the jaw. We want to
know who the face belongs to and what she makes
(20:34):
of us. We don't just look at faces. We look
to them to reveal an inner life, fortified by past
triumphs and freighted with the old hurts. We want to
know how the pretty face on the magazine is related
to the little girl at the sleeve bar with a
doll and a private prayer. Next time I'm deeply human,
(21:02):
we'll be asking why do you see faces and clouds?
And why does the creaking of an old house freak
you out, even though you are positive you're the only
one home. In short, why are we so eager to
perceive other creatures everywhere and in everything? Within the human brain,
we have specialized systems for detecting other social animals, and
(21:23):
we have, if you like, dedicated mechanisms for identifying others
and their form and their shapes and their movements. I mean,
I could hear his voice so clearly. I didn't feel
a worn Somebody said, Oh, I feel like there was
somebody behind me touching me. He was not me, he
felt creepy. Guy said, I felt like that there was
(21:46):
a monkey replicating my movements on my back. Deeply Human
is a BBC World Service in American public media co
production with I Heart Media. Oh and if you want
to know what happens when you ask a very modest,
self effacing model describe her own face, it's pretty cute.
(22:09):
They are kind of thick at the bit where they
kind of approach each other in between my um, you know,
upstairs with my nose? Did you say hold on? Did
you just say the upstairs of your nose? Is that
this phrase that you just said? And my cheeks are
probably quite cheeky as well. Quite my mouth is kind
(22:34):
of medium size. I'd say stop, So I'm going to
cut in. You know, I'm gonna cut in because like
as someone who's read about your face, like as other
people are writing about it. Um, this is just hilarious
because I'm you know, other writers are like her lips
(22:56):
are pillowy, like I got a medium sized mouth, ask
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