Scary Skeleton

If you’re wondering why I removed the random pictures thing in the sidebar, I decided there were too many adult themed pictures showing up, so I thought it would be best if I moved them to a dedicated “random stuff” gallery page, which I’ll do later.

On the way home from school today, we biked in full skull-face makeup. Every person we passed on the way — roughly fifty or so people — Nefarious roared at. People had a number of reactions. Some smiled as soon as they saw her. Some smiled as soon as she roared. Some smiled after making sure that I was smiling as well. A small number just glared angrily at both her and I. The interesting statistic is that the more attractive the person was, the more likely they were to be smiling, and conversely, the uglier and more obese a person was, the more likely they were to respond with anger.

I’m not suggesting that this is because pretty people are nicer or the reverse — I think that it’s a reflection on the fact that as a generalization they themselves are used to being treated with kindness or malice on account of their physical attributes, and this gets them stuck in a feedback loop where that emotional landscape persists.

13 Comments

  1. cirrin wrote:

    That’s awesome. I love the make up.

    Thursday, July 10, 2008 at 6:14 pm | Permalink
  2. SSSasky wrote:

    Uh. That’s the greatest photo ever. Love it. You are an amazing father (at least, that’s what the internet told me).

    Thursday, July 10, 2008 at 6:38 pm | Permalink
  3. j.charles wrote:

    interesting psychological observations. i wonder if the less attractive people are used to being threatened (or at least feeling threatened – physically or emotionally) and therefore have a much greater [fear] response to the stimulus of something they don’t really understand.

    sounds like a fun ride for sure though!

    Thursday, July 10, 2008 at 8:37 pm | Permalink
  4. estrojenn wrote:

    now i want to ride around on my motorcycle in skull makeup growling at people. she looks SO cute!!!

    Friday, July 11, 2008 at 5:14 am | Permalink
  5. chrissy wrote:

    that is so cute!

    interesting thoughts on peoples reactions!

    Friday, July 11, 2008 at 2:17 pm | Permalink
  6. dresden wrote:

    let’s organize a motorcycle skullface ride.

    Friday, July 11, 2008 at 5:43 pm | Permalink
  7. katie k. wrote:

    i’m not a fan of equating obesity with ugliness.

    Friday, July 11, 2008 at 6:04 pm | Permalink
  8. dreya wrote:

    Could it be that unattractive people are simply used to any type of odd happening in public as being a personal attack? I’ve lived at both ends of the scale and I do know that people (especially children) are likely to poke fun at you in public. Although I doubt that I could see myself at ever reacting with anger and disgust in response to a young child.

    Friday, July 11, 2008 at 11:19 pm | Permalink
  9. Shannon wrote:

    Katie, no, I’m saying that in my experience the two traits had to occur together for it to have a significant predictive effect.

    Dreya, yes, I think that’s quite likely.

    Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 5:33 am | Permalink
  10. suzanne wrote:

    Hmmmmm

    Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 10:31 am | Permalink
  11. Amanda wrote:

    She’s so cute, and definately outgoing. It’s totally great that you guys are doing so much outside stuff this summer — it sounds like alot of fun!

    Maybe people are also just prettier when they’re walking around smiling?

    Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 12:05 pm | Permalink
  12. Gracie wrote:

    I just saw this awesome movie, called “What the Bleep Do we Know,” and one of the points that it made was that if an emotional situation occurs over and over again, causing the same peptides to be formed in the brain to go into the same receptors in the cells, you can change the structure of your brain. The neurons form long-term relationships, essentially weaving their own neural web. Conversely, if you manage to get out of that pattern and form new emotional states rather than just repeating the same ones over and over again, you can actually rewire your brain to form a different neural web and different peptides.

    Sunday, July 13, 2008 at 7:45 am | Permalink
  13. Chrome wrote:

    Maybe smiling makes people more beautiful?

    Thursday, July 31, 2008 at 7:07 am | Permalink
Wow Shannon, that's really annoying! What is it, 1997 on Geocities? Retroweb is NOT cool!

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