Can the shape of your skull or the look of your face say something deeper about you? Like – if you're a good parent? Or if you're smart? Or if you're more likely to be a criminal? Well – the answer is no, absolutely not. But in the past, some scientists used the pseudosciences of phrenology, which studied the skull, and physiognomy, which studied the face, to try to prove that how you look says something about who you are on the inside. Again, it's junk science. But something peculiar is happening: it seems like there's been more interest lately in some of the ideas behind phrenology and physiognomy. From "witch skulls and angel skulls," to the skull geometry of transvestigations, to the question of whether AI can detect gay faces – it seems like more and more, people want to categorize each other with just a look at their heads. Brittany is joined by Yale professor of philosophy Lily Hu and Rolling Stone culture writer Miles Klee to understand the appeal and the consequences of fake skull and face science coming back around in the culture. Support public media and receive ad-free listening & bonus content. Join NPR+ today.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the history and danger of phrenology and physiognomy?
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Can the shape of your skull or the look of your face say something deeper about you? Hello. Like if you're a good parent, or if you're smart, or if you're more likely to be a criminal. Well, the answer is no, absolutely not.
But in the past, some scientists used the pseudosciences of phrenology, which studied the skull, and physiognomy, which studied the face, to try to prove that how you look says something about who you are on the inside. Again, it's junk science. Totally fake. However, these junk sciences were used towards some pretty racist ends.
Phrenologists used to rank people by race, from most to least evolved, just by using the shapes of their skulls. So phrenology is a classic hit now in the pseudosciences. That's Yale professor of philosophy, Lily Hu. She studies social science, race, and machine learning. She's here with me today, along with Rolling Stone culture writer, Miles Klee.
How's it going?
Chapter 2: Why is fake skull science making a comeback in culture?
Because something peculiar is happening. To my eye, there's been more interest lately in some of the ideas behind phrenology and physiognomy. From quote-unquote witch skulls and angel skulls, to the skull geometry of transvestigators, to the question of whether AI can detect gay faces, it seems like more and more people want to categorize each other with just a look at their heads.
Here's my chat with Lily and Miles to understand the appeal and consequences of fake skull and face science coming back around in our culture. Even if it might not actually work, I am seeing a lot of that same idea that our skulls or our faces say something about who we are as people pop up in our culture anyway. Miles, where are you seeing that out in the wild?
Yeah, well, this got pretty big on TikTok over the last couple of years as just part of what I think of as the conspirituality pipeline. And that's just a catch-all term, I think, for woo-woo beliefs that lead you down a rabbit hole into something that can be quite racist and harmful and reactionary. So yeah, maybe it's fun to have your skull read in the same way that it's fun to think about...
Chapter 3: How are social media platforms like TikTok influencing pseudoscientific beliefs?
what your astrological sign means about your personality, right? On the surface, yeah, it's very fun. Like on TikTok, like if you want to talk about an angel skull or a witch skull, and I couldn't even begin to define those things for you, because I think people are just making those up as they go. But it can lead you down this path to basically eugenicist thought.
And underneath, there's kind of a really damaging, old debunked ideology.
Yeah. Talk to me about what some of these posts look like. I mean, you've mentioned the angel versus witch skulls, which already gives me pause. I mean, social connotations of who is angelic versus who's a witch. I could see those readings getting racist real quick. You had a great piece that you wrote for Rolling Stone where there's talk of like herbivore eyes.
Chapter 4: What are 'angel skulls' and 'witch skulls' and why are they problematic?
Please talk to me about what these posts look like and how people are engaging in them.
Yeah, you mentioned the herbivore eyes. This was something that I think really grew out of men who are spending too much time on the computer. They are basically saying that young actresses now, the really hot starlets now, all have eyes that are very wide set apart as opposed to closer together.
Right, like Halle Bailey or Anya Taylor-Joy, yeah.
Chapter 5: How does incel culture contribute to toxic ideas about faces and bodies?
And their analysis of that was that they have prey eyes or they're more like a deer or something. And I don't really get what they're going for there. All this stuff really comes also out of incel culture. Guys who feel deprived of sex with women are so obsessed with the notion that your face or body shape is determining a lot of how you move through life.
I mean, of course, to a certain extent, yes, the way we are perceived is a lot of, you They're talking about, you know, millimeters of chin slant or nose shape or, you know, eye tilt as making all the difference in the world and preventing them from finding, you know, sexual fulfillment.
So they have this really toxic way of looking at bodies and faces as completely deterministic of, you know, what's going to happen to you in your life. You know, eventually it gets down to TikTok and maybe they're having more fun with it. It's like something that escaped containment.
Lily, what do you make of this impulse to categorize faces in this way?
You know, we live in such a visual culture where we're examining faces all the time. And so in that sense, it's not a surprise that people are trying this out just simply because... They've all become experts at the human face in the last five years. And so why not try to identify some correlations? You know, you're spending all this time collecting all this data.
You might as well come up with some new theory about faces and personality. I mean, of course, in the end, it's not actually that playful.
To get some background, when was phrenology popular and why?
Yeah, phrenology was most ascendant as a science in the 19th century, but it really grew in prominence because it seemed to provide answers to longstanding social questions. So questions like, who are the criminals in society? Or in the American context, how are we going to incorporate the enslaved population or the free black population or the Native American population into the broader society?
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Chapter 6: What social questions did phrenology try to answer in the 19th century?
In Europe, the questions have more to do with the degenerate type or the criminal type. And phrenology becomes a potential sort of answer to these social questions, figuring out how we're going to sort out these populations and handle them, whether those populations are those that are being colonized or even the enemy, as it were, from within.
Yeah, to that point about who's being colonized, I read that scholars believe that there's a pretty direct connection between Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act and phrenologists declaring Native Americans as not fit for civil life based on head shape. It's interesting to consider how phrenology and physiognomy justified racism as an answer to these social questions.
That said, how was phrenology disproved?
It turns out that you really have a difficult time finding out who is a criminal based on the shape of their skull or the look of their face. So physiognomy and phrenology is just not working from a working perspective. Like it's not able to do the kinds of things that some people expected them to do.
Right. And the scientific consensus is that evidence doesn't support a genetic basis for race or for racial difference in terms of mental capacity either. But I began getting served phrenology content maybe a year or a year and a half ago. I started getting these like posts about Viking-like phenotypes, that language coming up a lot more.
I mean, phenotype is something I hadn't really thought about since freshman year of high school when I took biology. And for those who need a refresher, phenotype just means how your genes are expressed and how you look. Like for example, I have my dad's nose instead of my mom's nose, even though both are encoded in my genes.
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Chapter 7: How was phrenology disproved and why does it persist?
But I've seen these kinds of like, you know, return type posts about needing more Viking-like things. phenotypes. It just seems like they kind of want more strapping white people. I don't know. Have you seen that kind of stuff as well?
Oh, absolutely. And it's not particularly subtle, right? It's no different than Nazi propaganda of the day that would elevate, you know, kind of blonde, blue eyed person. And, you know, we talked about for knowledge of being, you know, repeatedly debunked. I think it's interesting they use the word phenotype, which is an actual biological concept that makes sense.
Chapter 8: How is the concept of phenotype misused in modern racist ideologies?
Right.
My phenotype is that I do have blue eyes. I think they use this term because It is an established biological concept. And so it seems somehow more objective or more scientific, even though they're just using it in a pretty transparently racist way to say buff white guys are where it's at. And that's all we should be focused on producing as a species.
Coming up, why phrenology is linked to fate and who that hurts.
There's this disciplining, right, which says you can't construct your fate. That's all biologically determined. And, you know, it's their job to police that and to enforce it as social reality. Stick around.
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