The Peahen’s Tale, or Dressing Our Parts at Work

However, there may ultimately be no logical way to reconcile decisions that prohibit employers from requiring women to wear revealing outfits and others that permit employers to require them to wear makeup,20 or decisions that prohibit penalizing a woman for being insufficiently feminine and others that permit penalizing a man for being insufficiently masculine.21 In addition, the increasing judicial acceptance of the sex stereotyping theory of sex discrimination under Title VII is in substantial tension with recent cases that insist that sex-differentiated dress and grooming requirements that merely 22 conform to existing social gender norms do not amount to impermissible sex discrimination. Because dress is so crucial a characteristic in sexually dimorphic species, and because it is so closely tied to sexual attractiveness, choice, and power dynamics, employers should be prohibited from requiring women to dress in gender normative ways that reflect those traits even if they believe that such dress codes do not amount to intentional sex stereotyping.223 Where, as here, so many threads come together to demonstrate that sex differences in dress are likely to affect the way that individuals are treated by others, employers should not be permitted to mandate differences that implicate notions of attractiveness or power

The Peahen’s Tale, or Dressing Our Parts at Work

However, there may ultimately be no logical way to reconcile decisions that prohibit employers from requiring women to wear revealing outfits and others that permit employers to require them to wear makeup,20 or decisions that prohibit penalizing a woman for being insufficiently feminine and others that permit penalizing a man for being insufficiently masculine.21 In addition, the increasing judicial acceptance of the sex stereotyping theory of sex discrimination under Title VII is in substantial tension with recent cases that insist that sex-differentiated dress and grooming requirements that merely 22 conform to existing social gender norms do not amount to impermissible sex discrimination. Because dress is so crucial a characteristic in sexually dimorphic species, and because it is so closely tied to sexual attractiveness, choice, and power dynamics, employers should be prohibited from requiring women to dress in gender normative ways that reflect those traits even if they believe that such dress codes do not amount to intentional sex stereotyping.223 Where, as here, so many threads come together to demonstrate that sex differences in dress are likely to affect the way that individuals are treated by others, employers should not be permitted to mandate differences that implicate notions of attractiveness or power

Using the 3D Facial Norms Database to investigate craniofacial sexual dimorphism in healthy children, adolescents, and adults

Background: Although craniofacial sex differences have been extensively studied in humans, relatively little is known about when various dimorphic features manifest during postnatal life. Using cross-sectional data derived from the 3D Facial Norms data repository, we tested for sexual dimorphism of craniofacial soft-tissue morphology at different ages. Methods: One thousand five hundred fifty-five individuals, pre-screened for craniofacial conditions, between 3 and 25 years of age were placed in to one of six age-defined categories: early childhood, late childhood, puberty, adolescence, young adult, and adult. At each age group, sex differences were tested by ANCOVA for 29 traditional soft-tissue anthropometric measurements collected from 3D facial scans. Additionally, sex differences in shape were tested using a geometric morphometric analysis of 24 3D facial landmarks. Results: Significant (p < 0.05) sex differences were observed in every age group for measurements covering multiple aspects of the craniofacial complex. The magnitude of the dimorphism generally increased with age, with large spikes in the nasal, cranial, and facial measurements observed after puberty. Significant facial shape differences (p < 0.05) were also seen at each age, with some dimorphic features already present in young children (eye fissure inclination) and others emerging only after puberty (mandibular position). Conclusions: Several craniofacial soft-tissue sex differences were already present in the youngest age group studied, indicating that these differences emerged prior to 3 years of age. The results paint a complex and heterogeneous picture, with different groups of traits exhibiting distinct patterns of dimorphism during ontogeny. The definitive adult male and female facial shape was present following puberty, but arose from numerous distinct changes taking place at earlier stages

Toward a social psychophysics of face communication

As a highly social species, humans are equipped with a powerful tool for social communication—the face, which can elicit multiple social perceptions in others due to the rich and complex variations of its movements, morphology, and complexion. Consequently, identifying precisely what face information elicits different social perceptions is a complex empirical challenge that has largely remained beyond the reach of traditional research methods. More recently, the emerging field of social psychophysics has developed new methods designed to address this challenge. Here, we introduce and review the foundational methodological developments of social psychophysics, present recent work that has advanced our understanding of the face as a tool for social communication, and discuss the main challenges that lie ahead

Computer analysis of face beauty: a survey

The human face conveys to other human beings, and potentially to computer systems, information such as identity, intentions, emotional and health states, attractiveness, age, gender and ethnicity. In most cases analyzing this information involves the computer science as well as the human and medical sciences. The most studied multidisciplinary problems are analyzing emotions, estimating age and modeling aging effects. An emerging area is the analysis of human attractiveness. The purpose of this paper is to survey recent research on the computer analysis of human beauty. First we present results in human sciences and medicine pointing to a largely shared and data-driven perception of attractiveness, which is a rationale of computer beauty analysis. After discussing practical application areas, we survey current studies on the automatic analysis of facial attractiveness aimed at: i) relating attractiveness to particular facial features; ii) assessing attractiveness automatically; iii) improving the attractiveness of 2D or 3D face images. Finally we discuss open problems and possible lines of research

Facial width-to-height ratio in a large sample of Commonwealth Games athletes

Evidence that facial width-to-height ratio (FWHR) is a sexually dimorphic morphological measure is mixed. Research has also linked FWHR with aggression and other behavioral tendencies, at least in men. Again, other research has found no such relationship. Here, I tested for both possible relationships using a sample of 2,075 male and 1,406 female athletes from the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. Men showed significantly greater FWHRs than women, but this difference could be attributed to differences in body size. In addition, I found greater FWHRs in men who competed in sports involving physical contact and those stereotyped as more masculine. Again, these results could be attributed to differences in body size between categories. For women, no differences in FWHR were found regarding the amount of contact involved in a sport and how that sport was stereotyped. Finally, the FWHRs of athletes showed no relationship with the amount of aggression and related traits that were judged as required for success in those sports, although FWHRs did correlate with perceived endurance demands in women. Therefore, in a large sample of athletes, the sex difference in FWHR could be attributed to body size, and little support was found for the predicted links between this facial measure and behavior

Exploring sexual dimorphism of the modern human talus through geometric morphometric methods

Sex determination is a pivotal step in forensic and bioarchaeological fields. Generally, scholars focus on metric or qualitative morphological features, but in the last few years several contributions have applied geometric-morphometric (GM) techniques to overcome limitations of traditional approaches. In this study, we explore sexual dimorphism in modern human tali from three early 20th century populations (Sassari and Bologna, Italy; New York, USA) at intra- and interspecific population levels using geometric morphometric (GM) methods. Statistical analyses were performed using shape, form, and size variables. Our results do not show significant differences in shape between males and females, either considering the pooled sample or the individual populations. Differences in talar morphology due to sexual dimorphism are mainly related to allometry, i.e. size-related changes of morphological traits. Discriminant function analysis using form space Principal Components and centroid size correctly classify between 87.7% and 97.2% of the individuals. The result is similar using the pooled sample or the individual population, except for a diminished outcome for the New York group (from 73.9% to 78.2%). Finally, a talus from the Bologna sample (not included in the previous analysis) with known sex was selected to run a virtual resection, followed by two digital reconstructions based on the mean shape of both the pooled sample and the Bologna sample, respectively. The reconstructed talus was correctly classified with a Ppost between 99.9% and 100%, demonstrating that GM is a valuable tool to cope with fragmentary tali, which is a common occurrence in forensic and bioarchaeological contexts

Morphometric study of cephalo-facial indices among Bini children in southern Nigeria

Cephalometry is an important branch of anthropometry which involves the morphological study of structures present in the human head or scientific measurement of the dimensions of the head. Some of the most important cephalometric parameters include the length/height and breadth/width of the head, the face and the nose as well as their respective indices. These cephalometric parameters are vital in the description of variation which is a common phenomenon that characterizes human physiognomy. They are also useful in the description of human inter-racial and intra-racial  similarities both within and across gender. This study involved 450 Bini children (235 males and 215 females) between ages 5-12 years. The length and width of the head and face of each subject was measured between the appropriate anatomical landmarks using spreading and sliding calipers. The measurements were used to calculate the cephalic and facial indices for each subject. The result showed sexual variation in both cephalic and facial indices among the Bini children with the males having higher values than the females. Also, the result of this study showed that prevalence of brachycephalic head type among both male (51.1%) and female (49.8%) Bini children. The mesoproscopic face type was the most prevalent face type among both male (62.6%) and female (47.4%) Bini children. The cephalo-facial indices are vital in demonstrating similarity and variation in physical morphologies of individuals or group of people of different ethnicity, races, gender and geographical locations. Keywords: Cephalometry, Cephalic index, facial index, Bini children, Nigeri