Why do you need your face?

I pose a question- why do you need your face? Put it another way, if you lost your face what would it mean to you? What would you give to get it back. We spend a lot of time looking at the face of others. Sometimes its unconscious as we interpret the movement of their eyebrows and lips to conceptualise the meaning of their words. Other times we consciously evaluate their faces and decide why we think they are attractive or not. Then there is that moment when you convinced yourself that the unique combination of the features, colour and the exact position of every crease you’ve seen before, you’ve realised you may have met this person before. You catch yourself watching as you quickly compare the face to the catalogue of memories in your mind until you finally realize who they are, where you have seen that person before.

It is almost too simple to declare the face as an important part of the body. The best evidence is when you identify an abnormal face or feature. You wonder how the person acquired the deformity- was it an accident or where they born with it. Its almost amazing how a small feature out of place or an asymmetry can define how we perceive a face as normal or not. On the other hand it is the very assymetrical defects that defines each individual with their unique identity in which we find each others beauty.

Our identity within many communities is also defined by our face. From racial features with which we are born with to decorations we add to our faces. Forget ID cards, our face is the passport with which we interact in society and are evaluated by our neighbours.