HIGH CHEEK-BONES

When we look at a Mongolian, the flat nose and oblique eyes at once attract our attention, but hardly to such a degree as his high and prominent cheek-bones. The North American Indians, who are probably the descendants of Mongolians, resemble them in their prominent cheek-bones; and the Esquimaux likewise possess these in a most exaggerated form. “The Siamese,” says Darwin, “have small noses with divergent nostrils, a wide mouth, rather thick lips, a remarkably large face, with very high and broad cheek-bones. It is therefore not wonderful that ‘beauty, according to our notion, is a stranger to them. Yet they consider their own females to be much more beautiful than those of Europe.’”

Here is another “matter of taste,” which is decided in our favour by the general laws of Beauty, positive and negative.

High, prominent cheek-bones are ugly, in the first place, because they interfere with the regularly gradated oval of the face. Secondly, because, like projecting bones and angles in any other part of the body, they interrupt the regular curve of Beauty. Thirdly, because they are coarse and inelegant, offending the sense of delicacy and grace, like big, clumsy ankles and wrists. Fourthly, because they suggest the decrepitude of old age and disease. In the healthy cheek of youth and beauty there is a large amount of adipose tissue, both under the skin and between the subjacent muscles. When age or disease makes fatal inroads on the body, this fat disappears and leaves the impression of starvation. “Famine is in thy cheeks,” exclaims Shakspere; and again—

When the malar bones are too high, the fleshy cheeks, instead of including them in a plump curve, are made by contrast to appear hollow, thus simulating and suggesting the appearance of disease to those whose imagination is sufficiently awake to notice such suggestions. And besides emaciation, hollow cheeks suggest another sign of age and decrepitude—the loss of the teeth, which on the sides of the jaws help to give youthful cheeks their plump outlines.

Finally, prominent cheek-bones are objectionable because they are concomitants of the large, clumsy, brutal jaws which characterise savages and apes. To the cheek-bones the upper jaw-bone is directly attached; hence the larger the teeth are, and the more vigorously they are exercised in fighting and picking bones, the more massive must be the cheek-bones, to prevent the upper jaw from being pushed out of position. Moreover, there is attached to the cheek-bones a powerful muscle which connects it with the lower jaw, and by its contraction brings the two jaws together; and this is a second way in which violent exercise of the jaws tends to enlarge the cheek-bones, for all bones become enlarged if the muscles attached to them are much exercised.

At a recent meeting of the British Association, Sir George Campbell advanced the theory that the Aryan race, to which we belong, originally had prominent cheek-bones, like those of lower races. On general evolutionary grounds this is indeed a foregone conclusion; as is the corollary that our cheek-bones have become smaller, for the same reason that our jaws have become more delicate; viz. because we no longer use them to fight and tear our food like wild beasts, but to masticate soft cooked food, to talk, etc. Thus does the progress of civilisation enhance our Personal Beauty.

An excessive diminution in the size of the cheek-bones, as of the jaws, will be prevented by Romantic Love (Sexual Selection), which ever aims at establishing and preserving those proportions and outlines of the features which are most in harmony with the general laws of beauty.

Among the lower animals cruel Natural Selection eliminates those individuals who are ugly, i.e. unnatural, unhealthy, clumsy. With mankind charity and pity have checked the operation of this cruel though beneficial law, and progress in the direction of refinement and Beauty would therefore be fatally impeded were it not that Sexual Selection, or Love guided by the sense of Beauty, steps in to eliminate the ill-favoured, who bear in their countenance too conspicuously the marks of their savage and animal ancestry. Perhaps Mr. Wallace had some such thought in his mind when he anticipated the time when man’s selection shall have supplanted natural selection.selection.

Yet there are thousands of good people who still profess to believe that “beauty is only skin deep,” and that Romantic Love and Æsthetic culture are of no practical importance, but mere gaudy soap-bubbles to delight our vision for a transient moment!

In future ages, when Æsthetic refinement will be more common, and Romantic Love, its offspring, less impeded by those considerations of rank and money and imaginary “prudence” which lead parents to sacrifice the physique and wellbeing of their grand-children to the illusive comfort of their sons and daughters (in “marriages of reason”)—what an impetus will then be given to the development of Personal Beauty! Refined mouths and noses, rosy cheeks, sparkling eyes, plump and graceful healthy figures, now so lamentably rare, will then become as plentiful as blackberries in the autumn.

COLOUR AND BLUSHES

Although the heart’s warm blood is not carried to the cheeks in so dense a network of arteries, nor so near the surface as in the lips, yet the cheeks come next to the lips in delicate sensibility—a fact which Love has discovered instinctively; for a kiss on the cheeks is still a kiss of love, whereas a kiss on the forehead or eyelids indicates less ecstatic forms of affection or esteem.

What makes the cheeks so sensitive is the great delicacy of their transparent skin, which readily allows the colour of the blood to be seen as through a veil, not only in blushing, but in the natural rosy aspect of youth and health.

Though the cheeks may not vie with the lips and teeth, the hair and the eyes, in lustrous depth of colour, they have an advantage in their chamÆleonic variety and changes of tint, and their delicious gradations. Even the delicate blushes on an apple or a peach, caused by the warm and loving glances of the sun,—what are they compared to the luscious, mellow tints on a maiden’s ripe cheeks? Nor is it possible to find in the leaves of an autumnal American forest more endless individual nuances and shades of red and rose and pink than in the cheeks of lovely girls—unless indolence or other sins against health have painted them with ghastly repulsive pallor, or the hideous Hottentot habit of bedaubing them with brutal paint has ruined their translucent delicacy.

Says the author of the Ugly Girl Papers: “Some cheeks have a winelike, purplish glow, others a transparent saffron tinge, like yellowish-pink porcelain; others still have clear, pale carmine; and the rarest of all, that suffused tint like apple-blossoms.”

At summer resorts where girls drink in daily draughts of the elixir of youth and beauty, commonly known as fresh air, one of their greatest love-charms is these colour-symphonies on their cheeks, changing their melody with every pulse-beat. These charms they might possess all the year round did not their parents commonly convert their dwelling-houses into hothouses, reeking with stagnant, enervating air.

If, therefore, we read that Africans prefer the opaque, inky, immutable ebony of their complexion to the translucent, ever-changing tints, eloquent of health and varied emotions, in a white maiden’s face, we—well, we simply smile, on recalling the fact that even among ourselves a cheap, gaudy chromo is preferred by the great multitude to the work of a great master which they do not understand. The slow growth of Æsthetic refinement is illustrated by the fact that it is only a few years since Fashion has set its face against the use of vulgar paints and powders, which ensure a most questionable temporary advantage at the expense of future permanent defacement.

The colours of the cheeks, so far under consideration, are to a certain extent subject to our will and skill; for no one who cultivates the complexion and has plenty of pure air need be without these blooming buccal roses. But the “thousand blushing apparitions” that start into our faces are, as Shakspere’s well-chosen words imply, as independent of our will and control as any other apparitions.

Are blushes ornamental or useful? That is, were they developed through Sexual or through Natural Selection? Such Shaksperian expressions as “Bid the cheek be ready with a blush, modest as morning;” “Thy cheeks blush for pure shame to counterfeit our roses;” and “To blush and beautify the cheek again,” suggest the notion that the great poet regarded blushes as beautiful; while the following permit a different interpretation: “Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty;” “Blushing cheeks by faults are bred, and fears by pale white shown;” “You virtuous ass, you bashful fool, must you be blushing?” “His treasons will sit blushing in his face.”

Let us see if any light is thrown on the problem by going back to the beginning, and tracing the development of the habit of blushing. That blushing is a comparatively recent human acquisition is made apparent from the facts that it is not seen in animals, nor in very young children, nor in idiots, as a rule; while among savages the faculty of blushing seems to be dependent on the presence of a sense of shame, which is almost, if not entirely, unknown to the lowest tribes.

That animals never blush, Darwin thinks, is almost certain. “Blushing,” he says, “is the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions. Monkeys redden from passion, but it would require an overwhelming amount of evidence to make us believe that any animal could blush.” Concerning children he says: “The young blush much more freely than the old, but not during infancy, which is remarkable, as we know that infants at a very early age redden from passion. I have received authentic accounts of two little girls blushing at the ages of between two and three years; and of another sensitive child, a year older, blushing when reproved for a fault.”

“In the dark-brown Peruvian,” says Mr. Tylor, “or the yet blacker African, though a hand or a thermometer put to the cheek will detect the blush by its heat, the somewhat increased depth of colour is hardly perceptible to the eye.” Dr. Burgess repeatedly had occasion to observe that a scar in the face of a negress “invariably became red whenever she was abruptly spoken to, or charged with any trivial offence.” And Darwin was assured by several trustworthy observers “that they have seen on the faces of negroes an appearance resembling a blush, under circumstances which would have excited one in us, though their skins were of an ebony-black tint. Some describe it as a blushing brown, but most say that the blackness becomes more intense.”

Now evidence has already been quoted in a previous chapter showing that negroes admire a black skin more than a white one (vide Descent of Man, 1885, p. 579). Is it likely, therefore, that the blush was admired by negroes, and became a ground of selection, because it intensified the blackness of the skin. It hardly seems probable that the coarse negro can be influenced in his amorous choice by any such subtle, almost imperceptible difference; and even the great originator of the theory of Sexual Selection does not believe that it accounts for the origin of blushes: “No doubt a slight blush adds to the beauty of a maiden’s face; and the Circassian women who are capable of blushing invariably fetch a higher price in the seraglio of the Sultan than less susceptible women. But the firmest believer in the efficacy of sexual selection will hardly suppose that blushing was acquired as a sexual ornament. This view would also be opposed to what has just been said about the dark-coloured races blushing in an invisible manner.”

On the other hand, it seems equally difficult to account for the origin of blushing on utilitarian grounds. No one likes to be caught blushing; on the contrary, every one tries to conceal such a state by lowering or averting the face. How could such an unwelcome, embarrassing habit prove of advantage to us? Sir Charles Bell’s remarks on the subject may serve as a clue to the answer. That blushing “is a provision for expression may be inferred,” he says, “from the colour extending only to the surface of the face, neck, and breast—the parts most exposed.... The colour caused by blushing gives brilliancy and interest to the expression of the face. In this we perceive an advantage possessed by the fair family of mankind, and which must be lost to the dark; for I can hardly believe that a blush may be seen in the negro.... Blushing assorts well with youthful and with effeminate features, while nothing is more hateful than a dog-face that exhibits no token of sensibility in the variations of colour.”

The poet Young tells us that “the man that blushes is not quite a brute;” and Darwin quotes from Humboldt a sneer of the Spaniard, “How can those be trusted who know not how to blush?” Darwin’s remark that some idiots, “if not utterly degraded, are capable of blushing,” also accords with Bell’s notion that blushing is a provision for expression. Bell’s assertion that it is “indicative of excitement” is, however, not sufficiently definite. What is it that a blush expresses? Evidently nervous sensibility, a moral sense, modesty, innocence. The Circassian who can blush is more highly valued than another, because the blush is eloquent of maiden modesty and heart untainted. The fact that there is also a blush of violated modesty, a blush of shame, and of guilt, does not argue against this view, any more than the fact that we blush if, though innocent, we are accused of guilt. It is the association of ideas and of emotions that evokes the blush in such cases.

We may therefore conclude that a blush is useful on account of its moral beauty, i.e. its expressiveness of presumptive innocence, or at least of a desire to be considered innocent; whereas the unblushing front and cheek indicate a brutal, callous indifference to virtue. We admire a blush as “the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions.” And we admire it also, to some extent, on purely Æsthetic grounds, if not exaggerated. A slight blush has a rosy charm of its own, and it is only when it becomes a too diffused and deep facial Aurora borealis that it loses its charm, because suggestive of the hectic or fever flush, or the redness caused by anger, heat, violent exertion, etc., which has a physiological origin distinct from that of blushing.

According to Bell, “the colour which attends exertion or the violent passions, as of rage, arises from general vascular excitement, and differs from blushing. Blushing is too sudden and too partial to be traced to the heart’s action.” Darwin endeavours to find the explanation of blushing in the intimate sympathy which exists between the capillary circulation of the surface of the head and face, and that of the brain, which would account for the mental confusion of shyness, modesty, etc., being so immediately photographed on the face. He sums up his theory in these words:—

“I conclude that blushing—whether due to shyness—to shame for a real crime—to shame from a breach of the laws of etiquette—to modesty from humility—to modesty from an indelicacy—depends in all cases on the same principle; this principle being a sensitive regard for the opinion, more particularly for the depreciation of others, primarily in relation to our personal appearance, especially of our faces; and secondarily, through the force of association and habit, in relation to the opinion of others on our conduct.”

He gives various illustrations showing how by directing our attention to certain parts of the body we can increase their sensitivity and activity in a manner analogous to that postulated by the theory of blushing. But for these the reader must be referred to his essay on this subject in the Expression of Emotions—a masterpiece of physiological and psychological analysis. One more passage, however, may be cited, as it helps to justify this long discussion of blushing by showing its special relations to Romantic Love and Personal Beauty:—

“It is plain to every one that young men and women are highly sensitive to the opinion of each other with reference to their personal appearance; and they blush incomparably more in presence of the opposite sex than in that of their own. A young man, not very liable to blush, will blush intensely at any slight ridicule of his appearance from a girl whose judgment on any important subject he would disregard. No happy pair of young lovers, valuing each other’s admiration and love more than anything else in the world, probably ever courted each other without many a blush. Even the barbarians of Tierra del Fuego, according to Mr. Bridges, blush ‘chiefly in regard to women, but certainly also at their own personal appearance.’”