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It's
in your eyes Frank
Sinatra has topped a new poll of men with sexy eyes, while Lauren
Bacall out-smoulders Kylie Minogue and Cameron Diaz. But what exactly
makes eyes so alluring? In a survey
commissioned by a British laser surgery company, the singer was
recently voted the man with the sexiest eyes, followed by Steve
McQueen, Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise and Elvis Presley. As for the
women, according to the poll Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth
Taylor and Princess Diana used their eyes to best effect. "We were
amazed at how many older people were named in the survey,"
says a spokesperson for the firm. "It just goes to show that
people's eyes can remain strikingly attractive all through their
life." Indeed, 500-year-old
Mona Lisa won the number five spot among the women, beating spring
chickens Kylie Minogue, Bette Davies, Sophia Loren, Natalie Imbruglia
and Cameron Diaz. Blue eyes are
best, say 46 percent of the punters who were asked to name their
favourite colour, followed by green (28 percent), brown (15 percent),
hazel (nine percent) and grey (two percent). As Samuel Coleridge
observed, when he wrote "What a life is in the eye! What a
strange and inscrutable essence," our eyes are much more than
mere organs designed to help us see. We use them to express ourselves,
to cry, to assert ourselves, and even to disguise what we are thinking.
Our language is full of clues to the multitude of their moods and
employment: we "look daggers" at our enemies, offer "bedroom
eyes" to our lovers, and we "light up" our eyes when
we are happy. The Japanese have a word "mokushoh", which
roughly translates as "eye-laughter", while the Chinese
call covetousness the "red-eye disease". And the Zulu
phrase "isa liwela umfela ugcwele", suggesting that "yearning
reaches for the impossible", translates literally as "the
eye crosses a flooded river". Before science
set out to dissect and demystify them, the eyes were a source of
such power that many cultures invested them with superstitious fears.
The Ainu of Japan, for instance, plunged a knife into the eyes of
a slain bear to stop its spirit from seeking revenge, while the
warring Easter Islanders routinely vandalised the eyes of the islands'
famous toppled basalt statues, motivated by the same loathing that
prompted Dutch iconoclasts to slash at the eyes in paintings during
the Reformation. After all,
eyes can be both fearsome and accusing. It was once popularly believed
that the eyes of a murder victim recorded the image of the killer's
face. The warriors of the Marquesas Islands traditionally tattooed
concentric circles called ipu under their arms that appeared like
extra, all-seeing eyes whenever they raised a club in battle to
terrify the enemy, and it is surely no coincidence that the symbol
of Saddam Hussein's feared secret police is an eye on a map of Iraq. Apart from
all this, our eyes confer us with a great evolutionary advantage. "Two eyes
show an item from separate angles, so it appears against a slightly
different background on each retina," explains Daniel McNeill
in his book The Face. "The brain assesses this discrepancy
and thus gauges distance, a trick called parallax. Two eyes also
provide backup. If some Odysseus drives a hot spike into one, we
unlike Polyphemus have another." The visible part of the eye
consists of three parts: the white, the iris and the pupil. The
iris is the coloured or chromatic part of the eye and is not one
uniform colour but a hodgepodge of spots, lines and blobs unique
to each individual. The iris is actually a pair of muscles that
alter the size of the pupil, enlarging or contracting it to let
in or keep out more light. The amount of melanin pigment accidentally
present in the iris determines the colour of one's eyes. Brown eyes
are rich in melanin deposits, while blue eyes are light on melanin. However, it's
not just eye colour that contributes to the eye's power over our
hearts and minds. Our pupils dilate or widen when we are excited,
responding to fear, anxiety, surprise, and even loud noise. Conversely,
they shrink when we are bored or drowsy. "We tend
to like those who care about us, so big pupils attract us,"
says McNeill. "Researchers showed men pairs of photos of women
identical in every way except that retouchers had enlarged the pupils
of one, and found men preferred her but couldn't say why... Our pupils
reach peak size in adolescence, almost certainly as a lure in love,
then slowly contract till age 60." The eyelashes
also play their part in visual allure. In evolutionary terms they
keep out dust, dirt and insects and protect against the harsh effects
of wind and sunlight, but they also frame the eyes, drawing attention
to their colour and - in Lauren Bacall's case - becoming seductive
veils. According to anthropologist Branislaw Malinowksi, the Trobriand
Islanders called the eyes the "erotic gateways of desire",
decorating them more than any other part of the body and even biting
off eyelashes in lovemaking, an act they called "mitakuku". The eyebrows,
too, play a vital role in the eye's range of expression. Raised
brows can signal both surprise and skepticism, while drawing them
together into a frown suggests concentration, puzzlement or disapproval. Frank Sinatra
was adept at raising one eyebrow in an intense and wry arch, as
are Robbie Williams and George Clooney (respectively number nine
and ten in the survey). Marilyn Monroe
did the same and also practised a sleepy, languid smile in which
she half-closed her eyes and slightly raised her brows, evoking
the raptures of love. Science hasn't
entirely succeeded in removing the mystery from the eyes and their
profound power to captivate and enchant us. As Shakespeare observed
in Antony and Cleopatra, "eternity was in our lips and eyes". From his lofty
vantage point, no doubt Old Blue Eyes would agree. |
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