We Need to Talk about TikTok's Obsession with Face Reading and its Dark History

Comments · 2.6K

• AB

  @AbbyCox · 3 years ago · pinned

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• BA

  @BandFairy · 3 years ago (edited)

  It&apos;s always super depressing to me when historians have to come out and say, &quot;No, guys, this is actually a bad thing. Please don&apos;t do the bad thing.&quot;

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• EM

  @emilylucitt · 3 years ago

  As an anthropologist, thank you for this. The idea that &quot;face reading&quot; is a trend is beyond disturbing.

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• LI

  @liav4102 · 3 years ago

  This is why historians are essential to society! Humans are so prone to recreating the same problems.

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• ED

  @EdenYell · 3 years ago

  I love that &quot;a small nose like a cat is associated with being timid&quot; because a cat WILL fight god or become him

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• LO

  @LoveLoveLoveTropical · 3 years ago

  “Your face is a scrapbook of your ancestors” I never heard it put like this and honestly it’s struck me so well it’s such a lovely sentence 😭💕

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• CO

  @coffeecrochet4732 · 3 years ago

  One of the things I&apos;ve noticed about TikTok is an obsession with appearance and plastic surgery is often pushed on the app as a solution. That is why &quot;face reading&quot; resurfaced.... It&apos;s to make us all unhappy with how we look and move towards artificial enhancements to &quot;fix&quot; our lives whether that be makeup, plastic surgery, photoshop, etc.

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• MA

  @magnoliaopal · 3 years ago

  Someone should make a Wikipedia page titled &quot;Face Reading&quot; and just have it be a redirect to &quot;Physiognomy&quot; so people that look for it will be redirected there too.

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• SI

  @sianthesheep · 3 years ago

  This is a real testament to the old adage &nbsp;&quot;those who don&apos;t understand history are doomed to repeat it&quot; &nbsp; with people ignorantly parroting ideas steeped in racism, from a lineage whose ideas that were rooted in white supremacy. As ever your ability to take something from the past and using it to help understand the present is spot on.

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• CR

  @CrittersBeinCute · 3 years ago

  A lot of this reminds me of a doctor YouTuber who calls out dangerous women&apos;s health misinformation and she says over and over, &quot;Look at their content, they are spreading these lies because want you to buy this product/ideology.&quot;<br>That &quot;face reading&quot; is exactly the same situation. So gross.

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• ON

  @onipot9639 · 3 years ago

  As a fellow WooWoo girl, seeing all of this on my insta feed has been horrifying. <br>One ad I keep getting compares Megan Markle to Princess Diana, and you can imagine which one has the features that show &apos;compassion&apos; and which one has the &apos;selfish nose&apos; -<i>___</i>- <br>First time I saw it I was like &quot;What in the Phrenology?&quot; , I literally teach kids about this in literature seminars to help them understand these beliefs in books, and now they learn about it on TikTok but in the wrong way

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• AN

  @annec781 · 3 years ago

  Sami heritage here. &nbsp;When my mother was in college in the 1940s, they did “facial measurements” in an anthropology class, and her professor was surprised that she, light brown haired, blue eyed, measured as Chinese. &nbsp;He even personally redid her measurements. &nbsp;Gotta love it.

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