The Face

Facial expressions can be quite revealing about a person, obviously. I know mine tend to be. What I wonder- what's uncertain in my mind- is whether the face itself, regardless of any expression it takes on, tells any kind of truth about the possessor. The discipline of phrenology thought that the shape of the head in general could reveal a person's whole story, more or less. The brown, the chin, the jaw, the cheeks and more indicated intellect, character, backstory and all, according to adherents of it. Some people will have some kind of porcelain or ceramic bust with the whole thing mapped out on it.

I don't put any stock in phrenology, and anyway, it's mainly the face that interests me- specifically my own, of course. I wonder endlessly whether it is reflective of my true self in any way when passive. I have the suspicion that it's imposing, reflective of a hard, humorless, perhaps inscrutable person. Every attempt to prove or disprove this via query of a friend has resulted in dead end. It seems that it's not a question that anyone can take seriously. Is that in itself an answer?

Probably my mustache has more to do with the impression I make on strangers than any other nominally unchanging aspect of my countenance. The nature of that impression undoubtedly varies from person to person, as I've found it to be the most polarizing feature of my face, bar none. Some strangers like it so much that they say so enthusiastically to my face. The rest say nothing, perhaps granting credence that such is preferable to saying something not nice.

The rest of the face I am just not sure about. I wish I could have feedback from people who won't hesitate to give an unvarnished opinion unaffected by their familiarity with me as a person. If I ever become a public figure, I trust that such opinions will abound in media, but until then, I'll have to have faith in my own thinking on the matter, which is substantially as I have outlined above, and can neatly be encapsulated in the statement "my face looks like a combination of young Mark Twain and vintage Lee Marvin".