Member-only story
This Is Us
I Miss Having a Full Face and I Miss Seeing Yours
Our eyes are tired of communicating, and our pixelated faces are so 2020
I must admit something. I have Covid-19-inspired face lust.
We’ve been watched by the walls of our homes since March 2020 and have seen too few real, in-person faces. It’s all been face porn, watching characters on TV as our pets stare on. “Faces” are not the flat, pixelated images of co-workers on Zoom, nor are they the tiny 2D versions of your parents or friends on FaceTime.
I need faces. The full, fleshy cheeks, eyes, noses, and mouths of loved ones — even strangers—are what I want. If I sound like I’m about to become face promiscuous, it’s because I am.
It’s been over a year since naked faces were in public. We are socially nothing more than a lonely pair of frantic eyeballs when masked in public, smiles unseen while smizing and yelling through fabric or over-gesturing with our arms. Our public sparring partners wildly flailing and eyeball-communicating back. Eye faces with mime arms. That’s what we’ve become.
What’s a wide-eyed gaze without a mouth dropped open? Or a wink without a smirk? From wrinkles to freckles to moles to made-up faces to the face-lifted — our histories are told by the splendid maps of our faces.
The human face has 43 muscles, allowing us to make thousands of subtle and complex expressions.
When I was five years old, I said to my mom, “I’m happy I’m my face and not my knee.” She seemed confused, but faces were the most important part of the body to child-me. Everything I felt and thought spilled out of my face. I couldn’t comprehend the complexity of the entire body. My knees or elbows? They couldn’t smile, eat ice cream, yell for my toys, or talk incessantly at my parents. My face had feelings.
The human face has 43 muscles, allowing us to make thousands of subtle and complex expressions. The briefest of expressions confesses secrets, tells silent…
