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