Featurism: The Insidious Force Behind Same Face Syndrome
The privileging of certain facial features in contemporary art reflects a broader societal bias.
A specter is haunting the contemporary art world – the specter of Same Face Syndrome.
Same Face Syndrome, according to website DigitalCultures, is “an art expression for the phenomenon of illustrators having the inability of drawing faces with different features” that is particularly prominent in anime and manga. TVTropes speaks about Same Face Syndrome in their trope article titled “Only Six Faces”, noting how Same Face Syndrome often occurs when a character’s base must be simple to replicate within animation, thereby reducing chances for a unique design beyond the limits of a distinctive hair color or fancy fashions. As TVTropes notes, the “unfortunate result” may be a “fundamentally homogenized artstyle”.
Like DigitalCultures, TVTropes emphasizes Same Face Syndrome’s prevalence in the world of animanga. Unusual eye colors are a frequent tactic to distinguish characters beyond changing their actual facial structures. Western media is also guilty of Same Face Syndrome, but I argue that anime and manga’s massive influence on the art world has contributed to the spread of Same Face Syndrome, as countless artists draw inspiration from anime and manga art styles. As Xiao Faria da Cunha opens in their article “What has Anime done to Contemporary Western Art”:
“The public’s attitudes toward Anime has gradually changed as Japanese Anime, and Eastern Asian anime in general expanded its influence into major line theaters in the past few years. No matter how much professionals and art lovers loath or admire the mingling of anime art and contemporary western art, anime art has made its mark on the Western contemporary art world.”
As issues of Same Face Syndrome occur relatively unabated in the anime industry, fans of the shows absorb those artistic habits as ideals. Same Face Syndrome, while somewhat criticized by modern artists, thrives within popular online art. If it is acknowledged, it is treated as a minor flaw in an otherwise adequate repertoire. Same Face Syndrome is never a dealbreaker, it seems, for fans of a particular artist. The artistic tendency of reproducing a similar visage is treated as a mere quirk, barely a blemish.
In discussing Same Face Syndrome, it is crucial to note that such facial features that reoccur most often are not simply ubiquitously generic. They consist, by and large, of wide, double-lidded eyes, a small, straight nose, and thin lips on a thin face. That is to say, Same Face Syndrome frequently reproduces Eurocentric facial features as an ideal.
Although artists who suffer from Same Face Syndrome are likely not reproducing Eurocentricist ideals intentionally, the prejudice of featurism – or discrimination based on racialized features – is so present within modern society that it seeps into our minds as an implicit bias, shaping our ideas of what is beautiful and worth drawing. As the blog Dear Dark Skinned Girl describes, “Facial features, so often an indicator of ethnicity alongside skin color, can affirm or deviate from a set standard of beauty”. Colorism and texturism, two similar biases, similarly punish people of color, and featurism is equally nefarious. “Similar to the way people say you can have “good hair,” meaning that you have loose curls,” Dear Dark Skinned Girl observes, “I’ve also heard people talk about having a “good nose” meaning thinner and smaller”.
People of color – and in this piece, I will focus on Black people – who have facial features that deviate from Eurocentric beauty standards face judgment, erasure, and punishment simply for existing outside of an ideal. Writing for An Injustice!, Allison Witz explains in their article “Why Facial Features Matter in Your Dating and Professional Life” how featurism can shape the career trajectories and romantic lives of Black women, whose Afrocentric facial features often render them undesirable in the eyes of racist hiring managers and heterosexual men who idolize a Eurocentric appearance. Witz writes that “Featurism within the Black community continues to place women with Afrocentric features at the bottom tier of the social hierarchy”.
The art world is a microcosm of this social hierarchy – reflecting the biases that exist outside of it. The choice to hone one’s skill on thin lips and small noses is a choice made by innumerable people, who usually see their focus as entirely innocent. As Dear Dark Skinned Girl laments, “Sometimes even, it feels like there is only one type of darker-skinned woman that is uplifted: the one with a thin nose, straight hair, or other Euro-centric features.” To be frank, that darker-skinned woman is often the only darker-skinned woman that appears in mainstream anime-inspired art – when darker-skinned women appear at all. TVTropes comments that Same Face Syndrome “results in various instances of Ambiguously Brown characters, where skin tone is the only clue for guessing the characters' ethnicity” Shaping one’s idea of artistic elegance – and what faces should be uplifted – upon a Eurocentric face, even when that Eurocentric face has darker skin, has serious consequences for the world outside of a sketchbook.
Featurism drives the criminalization of people with Afrocentric features – most common, of course, in Black people. According to Blair, Irene V., et al’s article, “The Influence of Afrocentric Facial Features in Criminal Sentencing”, incarcerated people “with more Afrocentric features received harsher sentences than those with less Afrocentric features…racial stereotyping based on the facial features of the offender is a form of bias that is largely overlooked” (Blair et al. 674). To conclude, they note that, “offenders who possess more Afrocentric features are receiving harsher sentences for the same crimes, compared with less Afrocentric-looking offenders” (Blair et al. 678). The article “A Punishing Look: Skin Tone and Afrocentric Features in the Halls of Justice” confirms that Afrocentric features result in harsher treatment within the criminal justice system (King and Johnson 90).
For artists who struggle with Same Face Syndrome, I encourage you to read and share the plenty of resources that exist for drawing Afrocentric features. Representation influences society in real, tangible ways. People with Afrocentric features deserve to see themselves centered within artwork. Blackness, and Black features, will always be beautiful. Mainstream art would do well to reflect that.
References
Blair, Irene V., et al. “The Influence of Afrocentric Facial Features in Criminal Sentencing.” Psychological Science, vol. 15, no. 10, 2004, pp. 674-679, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40064026?.
da Cunha, Xiao Faria. “Anime's Influence in Contemporary Art.” Xiao Faria da Cunha, https://xiaochineseart.medium.com/what-has-anime-done-to-contemporary-western-art-2b182199f99.
King, Ryan D., and Brian D. Johnson. “A Punishing Look: Skin Tone and Afrocentric Features in the Halls of Justice.” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 122, no. 1, 2016, p. 122, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.1086/686941.
Maddox, Keith B. “Perspectives on Racial Phenotypicality Bias.” Personality and Social Psychology Review, vol. 8, no. 4, 2004, pp. 383-401, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1207/s15327957pspr0804_4.
“Only Six Faces.” TV Tropes, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlySixFaces.
Rose, Naima Autumn. “What is Featurism? – Dear Dark Skinned Girl.” Dear Dark Skinned Girl, 4 May 2020, https://deardarkskinnedgirl.com/2020/05/04/what-is-featurism/.
“Same Face Syndrome – Meaning, Origin, Usage.” Online dictionary for slang, memes & emotes, 28 April 2021, https://digitalcultures.net/slang/same-face-syndrome/.
Wiltz, Allison. “Why Facial Features Matter in Your Dating and Professional Life.” An Injustice!, 7 December 2020, https://aninjusticemag.com/why-facial-features-matter-in-your-dating-and-professional-life-ead84ed7ecce?gi=493e335dffd9.