Word After Word

There’s a wonderful article on face blindness in People by Bill Hewitt.

On the cover of the magazine, which is about The Revenge of the Exes and Who Can’t Let Go, it’s hard to tell who can’t let go, who is the exes, and who is letting go. It’s hard to tell if that’s all the same woman in different phases of revenge, or different women with varying revenges. Paging through the magazine, it’s really hard to tell any of the blonde women apart at all. They all look like Jessica Simpson.

That’s how people look to those of us who are faceblind: normal but more the same than different. The faces simply look alike. In the art that accompanies the story, beautifully written by Hewitt, the faces have been distorted. That’s not what faces look like to a face blind person. I know it’s hard to imagine.

Tee keeps telling me that to imagine blind, you close your eyes. (Which actually isn’t what being blind is like but I see her point which is that you can’t blink and squint and see this way that I see.) That’s because it’s not a vision problem.

It’s something else. And, people in People are the most alike-looking group because their hair and costumes are also very very alike.

But the writing is really great!