While contrast decreases with age, the application of cosmetics serves to increase the luminance portion of facial contrast. The effect of cosmetics on the color portion of facial contrast has not been investigated. The application of lipstick not only darkens the lips but should also increase red-green contrast of the lips, which we found to be higher in younger faces. Women also apply eye make-up (i.e., mascara, eye-liner and eye shadows) in a way that increases luminance and color contrast of the eyes, as well as eyebrow make-up (e.g., color pencils or permanent make-up) that increases luminance contrast of this region. Cosmetics are known to increase the apparent attractiveness, femininity, and healthiness, of female faces. Elsewhere we have suggested that by increasing facial contrast, cosmetics increase facial femininity and hence attractiveness of the female face. Here we add to this account with the suggestion that another function of cosmetics is to make the face look younger by increasing facial contrast.
One of the most important components of cosmetic use is the application of lipstick. Red shades are commonly used for lipstick, which should have the effect of darkening lips that are naturally pinkish. Indeed, typical application of cosmetics have been shown to make the lips darker and to increase the luminance contrast around the lips, making the female face more sex-typical. However, red lipstick should also have the effect of increasing red-green contrast. Stephen & McKeegan found that people increase the redness (a*) of the lips to make a female face appear more feminine and attractive. Elliot & Niesta found that pictures of women are perceived by men as more attractive and sexually desirable when they are associated with the color red – whether by the placement of a red border around the picture, or the presence of a red colored shirt on the woman. They offered this association as a possible reason for the common use of red lipstick. Here we found that the red-green contrast around the lips decreases with age. Because of this, we propose that red lips are associated with youthfulness as well as with femininity and sexuality.
As this is the first investigation of the role of facial contrast in age perception, many questions remain. One group of questions involves the relative importance of the different aspects of facial contrast in the perception of age. Are certain features or color dimensions more important than others for age perception? And do these different aspects of facial contrast have independent or interdependent effects on age perception? These questions cannot be directly answered by the current work because we manipulated all the age-related contrast features at once. However, a reasonable assumption is that the feature changes that are more strongly related to age (e.g. luminance contrast around the eyebrow or redness contrast around the lips) play a larger role in the perception of age than those feature changes that were more weakly related to age (e.g. luminance contrast around the eyes or yellowness contrast around the lips). A similar issue is that we did not vary the magnitude of the manipulations, and so questions about how much of a change is required for an effect on age perception, or whether more of a change is required to have an effect on different faces will require further research.
Another group of open questions about the role of facial contrast in the perception of age relates to the kinds of faces for which it is a useful cue. Here we investigated only Caucasian females between 20 and 69 years of age, so we cannot directly address the question of whether facial contrast is a cue for perceiving the age of people outside of this demographic group. Because we only investigated faces from 20–69 years of age in studies 1 and 2, and faces from 23–59 years of age in study 3, additional work will be needed to determine whether facial contrast is a cue for age perception in faces of children or the elderly. We suspect that facial contrast is also a cue for age perception in adult Caucasian male faces because facial aging processes are largely similar in male and female faces, and because skin color has been shown to be a cue to age perception in both female and male faces. Further, the grayscale morphed averages of Caucasian male faces of different ages shown in Figure 1 of Burt & Perrett’s 1995 study appear to show decreases in facial contrast with age. The ways that faces of different races change with age are believed to be largely similar, which suggests the likelihood that facial contrast is a cue to age not only for Caucasian faces but also for faces of racial groups. However, even if facial contrast does decrease with age in faces of other races, including male faces, the particular aspects of facial contrast that vary with age and are used as cues for age perception may not be exactly the same in different racial groups or between the sexes, further emphasizing the need to investigate these other demographic groups.
Conclusions
We have shown that aspects of facial contrast decrease with age in adult Caucasian female faces, and that facial contrast is associated with perceived age. Faces with lower facial contrast look older than faces with higher facial contrast, and the same face can be made to appear younger or older by increasing or decreasing facial contrast. Thus, facial contrast can be added to the list of known signs of aging. Among the signs of aging, facial contrast is of particular interest because of its clear relationship to cosmetics use.
*About the Authors
AP and EM are employees of CE.R.I.E.S. - the CHANEL R & T skin research center on healthy skin. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors’ adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
To read the entire study: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0057985#s1
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