Hi! I got your message but didn’t have a way to reply in private. Concerning your question, yes, I’d be interested in reviewing the book, preferably in paperback. If you’d like a better way to contact me, my email is mls2362@truman.edu.
Hi, I got your message, though because it was on anonymous, it can only be published publicly, and I didn’t know if you were all right with that since it had your name and phone number.
I’d love to be able to help you with the article on prosopagnosia. Unfortunately I don’t have international calling (I’m living in the US), but if you happen to have an email to get in touch, I’d be more than happy to chat there.
Should any of my followers be based in the UK and have prosopagnosia, please let me know if you would be interested in helping give an interview.
Hey guys. As you may or may not know, I am face blind (prosopagnosia). There are several great sites to help explain what this is and why it happens (links below), but the short version is that I cannot easily recognize faces, even those of close relatives. Unless I see you and interact with you on a daily or near daily basis, I will probably not recognize you. It’s nothing personal. My brain just isn’t wired right for some reason, and I don’t even know why.
It’s a very embarrassing and difficult condition. The thing is, nobody knows about prosopagnosia. If they did, I wouldn’t have to preface the post with this. If they did, Firefox’s spell check probably wouldn’t be underlining it as misspelled. But it’s a huge part of my life. I have to study facebook before family events so I can correctly recognize my aunts, uncles, and cousins (and I still mess up). I don’t recognize people outside of where I normally see them, which is problematic for many reasons. Just today, I failed to recognize the people in the elevator as my classmates, and it would have been an extremely awkward ride to the fourth floor if a friend hadn’t bailed me out. It’s just a very uncomfortable existence, because everybody thinks I just don’t care, or I’m avoiding them or ignoring them. I don’t mean to- I just don’t recognize them.
It is socially devastating.
Now, to the point- I recently discovered that an ad agency in New York designed a series of shirts for the face blind. They’re simple, witty, clean, but don’t turn the condition into a joke or something to be ashamed of. These shirts would open up conversation. They would make life a little less stressful in a world full of complete strangers who know my name.
The problem is that the designs were originally made for the benefit of one of the designers’ relatives, and therefore were only produced in a small run. If I want a shirt or multiple shirts from them, it will cost me $25 each to have them specially made, plus shipping. I’m a designer; I know I could go produce something similar for cheaper, but that would be rude and dishonest, and I would love to see this agency eventually produce the shirts on the large scale for other face blind people out there.
But, I’m also kind of poor. So what I would like to do is open up sketch commissions. I would like to make at least $50 to get two shirts, but if I could reach my goal of $90, that should cover three shirts and the shipping.
I know it’s not as horribly pressing as raising money for surgery or something, but it would mean a lot to me.
Is there a good way to apologize to people for being face-blind because fuck.
Apologising with light humour seems to work. Explain that prosopagnosia is totally a real thing, give an example of how it affects you, give an example of things that make your life easier, and just be light about it. Letting people know after meeting them, ‘Hey, I have a lot of trouble recognising faces, so if we meet up again, could you just let me know where we last met and your name?’ I find this works pretty well, too. It excuses you when you bump into them and don’t know that you’ve ever seen them before.
Plus, if your friends all know, they can stick up for you, too. My friends will joke around about it with me, and if I meet someone knew and can’t keep track of who they are, they’ll help me out.
Dove hired a forensic artist to draw how women see themselves versus how others see them - the results are moving
Artist: What did the person look like?
Prosopagnosic: …Human??
(Source: choosechoice, via alcait)
I probably have a mild form of face blindness,
and I want to be a character designer.
Boy, I am an interesting individual.
There are actually quite a few artists out there who focus on drawing people even though they have prosopagnosia. It’s certainly made more difficult, but artists will break faces down into small components or shapes in order to get around this. I know that’s what I do for sure, and Chuck Close, a printmaker and painter with prosopagnosia, uses similar grid techniques when creating portraits.
Okay so I haven’t spoken about face blindness in a while, so let’s do this shiz. I looked through the tag and saw talk about attractiveness, so let’s go with that!
I personally can recognize when someone is attractive, but not by their face. People scoff at me when I say physical looks don’t matter to me, but I really mean it. At the most I might focus on a guy’s arms if they’re really nicely sculpted. Mmm. Arms. I also find darker skinned men quite pleasing to look at, because dark skin is just downright beautiful. And don’t even get me started on red hair. Just don’t. That’s really about it, and those things alone are never enough to make me fall for a guy.
I like guys based on how they carry themselves or their voices. The last guy I fell for was in my history class, and dude loved himself some history. He can’t sit still for very long and after a while he would start bouncing his leg a lot, or just sort of slump down looking like he wanted to die. But when he’s interested in something he totally engages and you can tell he’s paying attention even if he’s tapping a hole in the floor with his foot. All this, and I have no fucking idea what he looks like and I see him twice a week. I think he has bushy eyebrows? …maybe? I don’t even know.
Celebrities are a little weird, but generally the same idea. The difference is obviously I’m basing my crush off the image they let the public see. The only almost-physical crush I have would be the Korean pop star TOP. His eyes man. HIS EYES. They’re so intense and when ever he makes eye contact with the camera my ovaries explode. He’s also got this beautiful deep voice. Michael Buble is another crush voice. It’s deep and classic and he makes me swoon, though his head is shaped strangely to me.
So uh. Yeah. Rambling happened there. It’s nearly 5 AM. This post was never destined to be a masterpiece.
For the TLDR; I find people attractive, just for different reasons other than how they look. I would imagine this would be why I rarely/never experience sexual attraction with a crush, but I do not consider myself asexual.
syrupie replied to your post: On the note of attractiveness and prosopagnosia: I…
I agree about the hair and clothes. personally I like eyes because if I can’t remember anything else about someone’s face I can memorize their eye color. I actually used a line on my girlfriend about how every time I see her eyes its like the first time;)
That’s really cute and also fairly similar to something that I’ve told my boy-friend. It’s like every time I look at him, I’m shocked because it’s like seeing him for the first time, and it’s kind of amazing. Sure, it’s upsetting when I can only see certain aspects of his face in my mind (mostly the shape of his jaw and eyes), but being there in person to experience that sense of renewal can be neat.
lightinstone replied to your post: I dont have prosopagnosia btw so this may seem…
Speaking as someone without prosopagnosia, your friend might just have different standards of attractiveness than the rest of you. I and my friends have wildly differing favourite actors/models.
Very true. Some people are also much more attracted to non-facial characteristics, too. Whether that be someone’s height, build, style, hair, or personality, there are other things that can be used to judge attraction aside from a face.
As I getting older, I could deceive more easily on expression.
I wonder how people remember my face like.
Actually, if people’s faces were this vibrantly coloured, maybe I could remember who was who.
On the note of attractiveness and prosopagnosia:
I think it’s also important to mention that, because I have trouble knowing what even I look like, that I have little conception of my own physical attractiveness. I generally have to go by what I’m told by others, and my level of, say, beauty is not something I generally think about since it’s not something I notice facially. I’m much more concerned with my hair and clothing when it comes to attractiveness since it’s what I can notice and readily analyse.
In the words of my best-friend, this makes me “clothing-sexual” since I’ll focus on someone’s clothes much more than them when deciding on aesthetic beauty.
almostatthefinishline asked: I dont have prosopagnosia btw so this may seem like a really weird question but can you tell attractive people from... not so attractive people? I'm pretty sure one of my friends has some sort of mild proso because whenever there is a hot guy that walks past I'm really vocal about it and my other friends agree but she sort of doesn't say anything about it and no she is not asexual, she has a rather attractive bf if I do say so myself. Do you get notice people more attractive than yourself also?
Hmm, this is tough to answer, and I can only really answer it from my perspective (so anyone else with prosopagnosia, please jump in with what it’s like for you).
For me, I do have trouble telling if someone is attractive or not, and many of my friends have noticed that I don’t find someone attractive that everyone else will. Levels of physical attraction are very difficult for me. That said, it’s also important to note that I am within the asexual spectrum (closest to demisexual), so physical attraction is already something that I don’t regularly experience, regardless of being face blind.
From an aesthetic view of attractiveness, the only things that I can really tell is how symmetrical a face may be, especially looking at the jawline. I tend to break faces down into basic shapes, so I can at least tell if a face is more or less even. I also pay a lot of attention to eyes and smiles on whether I view someone as being aesthetically good looking.
But, long story short? It’s difficult because of the prosopagnosia since I have to memorise a lot of different aspects of a face’s shape to get a feel for what someone looks like. And it’s also difficult for me to personally answer since physical attraction isn’t my strong suit.
So if anyone else would like to jump in, please do!
Prosopagnosia though. My new favorite disorder/disease/thing. Sorry necrotizing fasciitis you just aren’t quite as interesting. I’ve found a new obsession.
^^ It’s a disorder. Sometimes it is caused by brain injury, stroke, or neurodegenerative diseases, but it is most commonly a congenital disorder. There are many blogs on Tumblr who make ProsoPosts if you’re interested
One such blog, right here.
We don’t post the most consistently, but we still like to answer questions and be an area of support for those in the proso community and those interested in prosopagnosia.
Anonymous asked: can people with prosopagnosia recognize cartoon faces? what about anthropomorphic characters? sorry if i'm being ignorant.
Hi! And no worries; this is a great question.
I think it definitely depends from person to person since prosopagnosia can vary in severity, but there seems to be a general consensus that animated characters are easier to identify. I don’t think that it’s because of their faces but because of the exaggerated colours and shapes used in animation. For instance, it will be easier to recognise the character who has violet hair and an outfit that rarely changes because those are easy identifiers that have nothing to do with the face.
Often in animation, faces are drawn exactly or nearly the same (I’m looking at you, anime), so I don’t think that those who have prosopagnosia are really given any extra clues from an animated face. But we’re certainly given some more stable clues for identification that would be lovely in real life. I often tell friends that,’if you change your hair, you’re a different person’, and at least animated characters tend to have the same hair and same outfits.
As for anthropomorphic characters, so long as they had unique features to be used in identification, I think that someone with prosopagnosia wouldn’t have too much trouble recognising them. For instance, if one character in an entire show or film has cat ears, you’re probably going to remember that detail.
