Eyebrows can tell tales
WITH the reconstruction of a 600,000- year- old skull of a homo heidelbergensis it has now been postulated that eyebrows in humans were more instrumental in survival than protecting the eye sockets than with other mammals. They are thought to have been a precursor of language and responsible for developing social networks superior to Neanderthals and other hominids, although some anthropologists believe Neanderthal did already possess a sophisticated language.
What is universally accepted is that eyebrows can express a variety of emotions from the emoji to the villain in melodrama who manually manipulates his eyebrows. Roger Moore self- deprecatingly joked that the emotional range of his acting was raising one eyebrow and then the other.
While eyebrows are essential to facial recognition and their study as part of microexpressions, popularised in the TV series Lie to Me, brow fashions throughout history seem to defy any of the laws of aesthetics. Social media, on the other hand, has turned male and female eyebrow grooming into a billion- dollar business. Eyebrow shapes are many and varied and usually culturally or celebrity based. From Cleopatra to Cara Delevingne, the arch might be high, steep, flat, s- shaped, rounded or shortened, thick or thin. Originally eyebrows were thought to be important in gender identification.
More testosterone produced thicker bushier eyebrows, which is part of the current bad boy image originally satirised by Groucho Marx. Sean Connery had his eyebrows waxed for James Bond. David Beckham was a pin- up boy for eyebrow slits.
The plucked and pencilled eyebrows of Charles Hawtrey of the Carry On series tended to signify a gay or asexual male.
Regardless of size or shape, the messages both males and females can send with their eyebrow cocked, raised, lowered, or furrowed, are an integral part of social interactions.
When popular music was first played by symphony orchestras, Reader’s Digest summed up intellectual snobbery versus people power with the quip, “The highbrows raised their eyebrows, the lowbrows raised the roof.”
While T- shirts proclaim “Eyebrows speak louder than words”, lecturers unconsciously raise their eyebrows with their voice to emphasise a point.
Serial letter writers, however, have to content themselves with word placement, typography, or punctuation for emphasis, but options are somewhat limited if bold print, underlining or exclamation mark is edited out. WILLIAM ROSS,
Cranbrook.