Canthus (pronounced kan-thuhs)
The angle or corner on each side of the eye, formed by
the natural junction of the upper and lower lids; there are two canthi on each
eye: the medial canthus (closer to the nose) and the lateral canthus (closer to
the ear).
1640–1650: From Ancient Greek κανθός (kanthós) (corner of the eye) (and also an
alternative spelling of cantus (in music, sung, recited, sounded, blew, chanted
etc)), which became conflated the New Latin canthus, from the Classical Latin cantus
(the (iron) rim of a wheel)). The term
describing the “iron rim of a wheel” was ultimately of Gaulish origin, from the
Proto-Celtic kantos (corner, rim) and
related to the Breton kant (circle), the
Old Irish cétad (round seat) and the Welsh
cant (rim, edge). The Greek form was borrowed by Latin as canthus and with that spelling it
entered English. In the medieval way of
such things, canthus and cantus
became conflated, possibly under the influence or regional variations in pronunciation
but some etymologists have noted there was tendency among some scribes and
scholars to favor longer Latin forms, for whatever reason more letters being
thought better than fewer. The most familiar
descendent in music is the canto (a description of a form of division in
composition with a surprisingly wide range of application). Canthus is a noun and canthal is an adjective;
the noun plural is canthi (pronounced kan-thahy).
One word in English which has long puzzled etymologists
is the late fourteenth century cant (slope,
slant) which appeared first in Scottish texts, apparently with the sense “edge,
brink”. All dictionaries list it as
being of uncertain origin and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes words
identical in form and corresponding in sense are found in many languages including
those from Teutonic, Slavonic, Romanic & Celtic traditions. Rare in English prior to the early
seventeenth century, the meaning “slope, slanting or tilting position” had been
adopted by at least 1847 and may long have been in oral use. The speculation about the origin has included
(1) the Old North French cant (corner)
which may be related to the Middle Low German kante or the Middle Dutch kant,
(2) the New Latin canthus, from the
Classical Latin cantus (the (iron) rim
of a wheel), (3) the Russian kutu
(corner) and (4) the Ancient Greek κανθός (kanthós)
(corner of the eye). To all of these
there are objections are the source remains thus uncertain.
The metrics of the attractiveness of women
PinkMirror is a web app which helps users optimize their
facial aesthetics, using an artificial intelligence (AI) engine to deconstruct the
individual components an observer’s brain interprets as a whole. Because a face is for these purposes a
collection of dimensions & curves with certain critical angles determined
by describing an arc between two points, it means things can be reduced to metrics,
and the interaction of these numbers can used to create a measure of
attractiveness.
Positive, (left), neutral (centre) & negative (right) eye canthal tilt.
Perhaps the most interesting example of the components is
the eye canthal tilt, a positive tilt regarded as more attractive than a
negative. The eye canthal tilt is the
angle between the internal corner of the eyes (medial canthus) and the external
corner of the eyes (lateral canthus) and is a critical measure of periorbital (of,
pertaining to all which exists in the space surrounding the orbit of the eyes (including
skin, eyelashes & eyebrows) aesthetics.
The eye canthal tilt can be negative, neutral, or positive and is
defined thus:
Positive: Medial canthus tilt between +5 and +8o
below the lateral canthus.
Neutral: Medial canthus and lateral canthus are in a
horizontal line.
Negative: Medial canthus tilt between -5 to -8o
below the lateral canthus.
Pinkmirror cites academic research which confirms a
positive canthal tilt is a “power cue” for female facial attractiveness and while
it’s speculative, a possible explanation for this offered by the researchers
was linked to (1) palpebral (of, pertaining to, or located on or near the
eyelids.) fissure inclination being steeper in children than adults (classifying
it thus a neonatal feature) and (2) it developing into something steeper still
in females than males after puberty (thus becoming a sexually dimorphic feature). Pinkmirror notes also that natural selection
seems to be operating to support the idea, data from Johns Hopkins Hospital finding
that in women, the intercanthal axis averages +4.1 mm (.16 of an inch) or +4o,
the supposition being that women with the advantage of a positive medial
canthus tilt are found more attractive so attract more mates, leading to a
higher degree of procreation, this fecundity meaning the genetic trait
producing the characteristic feature is more frequently seen in the population. Cosmetic surgeons add another layer to the
understanding, explaining the canthal tilt is one of the marker’s of aging, a
positive tilt exuding youth, health, and exuberance where as a line tending beyond
the negative is associated with aging, this actually literally product of
natural processes, the soft tissue gradually descending under the effect of
gravity, as aspect of Vogue magazine’s definition of the aging process: “Everything gets bigger, hairier & lower”.
With people, medial canthus tilt is thus an interaction of (1) the roll of the genetic dice and (2) the cosmetic surgeon’s scalpel. With manufactured items however, designers have some scope to anthropomorphize objects and few visages are as obviously related to a human’s eyes than the headlamps on a car.
The positive, neutral & negative: 1965 Gordon-Keeble GK-1 (left), 1958 Edsel Corsair Hardtop (centre) & 1970 Maserati Ghibli Roadster (right).
When headlamps were almost universally separate circular
devices, the creation of a medial canthus tilt really became possible in the
mid-1950s after dual units were first made lawful in the US and then rapidly
became fashionable. Overwhelmingly, the
designers seemed to prefer the neutral and where a positive tilt was use, it
was exaggerated well beyond that found in humans. Instances of the negative were rare, which
would seem to support the findings of attractiveness in humans but they were
sometimes seen when hidden headlamps were used and there they were necessitate
by the form of the leading edge under which they sat. The suspicion is that designers found a
negative slant acceptable if usually they were hidden from view.
2005 Porsche 911 Turbo S (996) (left), 2016 Ford (Australia) Falcon XR8 (FG) (centre) & 2000 Ferrari 550 Maranello.
As the interest in aerodynamics grew and there were advances
in shaping glass and plastic economically to render compound shapes, headlights
ceased to be merely round (though rectilinear shapes did start to appear in the
1960s) and took on abstract forms. The demands
of aesthetics however didn’t change and designers tended still to neutral or positive
tilts. Care needed still to be taken
however, the derided “poached egg” shape on the 996 generation of the Porsche 911 (1997-2006)
not popular with the obsessives who buy the things, their view being each update
should remain as devoted to the original (1963) lines as themselves. One of the closest to a flirtation with a
negative tilt showed up on the Ferrari 550 Maranello (1996-2001) and the
factory hasn’t repeated the experiment.
Deconstructing Lindsay Lohan
The Pinkmirror app exists to quantify one’s degree of attractiveness. It’s wholly based on specific dimension and thus as piece of math, is not influenced by skin tone although presumably, its parameters are defined by the (white) western model of what constitutes attractiveness. Users should therefore work within those limitations but the model would be adaptable, presumably not to the point of being truly cross-cultural but specifics forks could certainly be created to suit any dimensional differences between ethnicities. Using an industry standard known as the Photographic Canthal Index (PCI), one’s place on Pinkmirror’s index of attractiveness is determined by the interplay of (1) Nose width, (2) Bi-temporal to bi-zygomatic ratio, (3) chin length, (4) chin angle, (5) lower-lip height & (6) eye height.
Lindsay Lohan scored an 8.5 (out of 10), was rated as “beautiful” and found to be “very feminine, with great features of sexual dimorphism”, scoring highly in all facets except lower lip height and eye height. Her face shape is the heart, distinguished by a broad forehead and cheekbones, narrowing in the lines of down to the jaw-line, culminating in a cute pointy chin. Pinkmirror say the most attractive face shape for women has been found to be the triangle, scoring about the same as the oval while the heart, round, diamond, rectangle and square are also attractive to a lesser degree. Within the app, pears and oblongs are described as “not typically seen as attractive” and while the word “ugly” isn’t used, for the unfortunate pears and oblongs, that would seem the implication.
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