We admire sincerity expressed by a freely mobile mouth, yet characterize our stage villains with wobbly, weak mouths. Their features are usually an odd combination of dominant brows, slit eyes with receding chins, and mobile mouths. Politicians have been especially careful about their social faces - with the coming of TV and the decline of radio. The golden voices are losing out to the locker-room boys. Though a man's beliefs about economics, foreign policy, the environment, and population regulation are important in campaigns, we still choose our leaders from gut-level impressions of chins, cheeks, or steadiness of eye and carriage as our ancestors have always done.
Few subjects are as delicate as skin deformities.
One can't help but feel sorry for someone with a purple birthmark over his face, or a messy scar. These may not cause people direct discomfort. They do, however, alter strikingly the subtle social cues our eyes are so accustomed to evaluating. A missing nose, hypertrichosis or hypotrichosis, harelips and many other pathologies obviously affect our stature. That's why they are so emotionally loaded and are sometimes awkward to deal with, whichever end one is on.