Fascinated by Gillard's lobes

Updated November 6 2012 - 12:35am, first published August 5 2010 - 4:48am
Fascinated by Gillard's lobes
Fascinated by Gillard's lobes

For a long time before she whipped the chair from under Kevin Rudd's unsuspecting backside, Julia Gillard had a measure of "unlikeability" about her. Many people, even those who had never heard her burn holes in tin roofs with that unique cockatoo-wharfie twang, knew they didn't like her, but couldn't quite put a finger on why.Now they can put three fingers on the reason: those ear lobes. Maybe even a small thumb too.It's mean, yes, and no doubt unwise to make judgments about people based on physical characteristics, but it's also innately human and therefore delusional to suggest that we don't.Countless studies have shown that people make a whole range of automatic assumptions about others based purely on physical characteristics.Without even thinking, we associate height with dominance, large heads with intelligence and attractiveness with threat. One University of Iowa study showed that political candidates who are perceived as either physically threatening or overly attractive are 65 per cent less likely to win office. Another study that made digital adjustments to photos of past United States presidents found even minor enlargements of eyes and lips made a huge difference to onlookers' perceptions about a person's honesty, warmth and "voteability".What, then, are people instinctively interpreting about Julia's large ear lobes? And what's the big deal about ear lobes anyway?Personally I'd never even noticed Julia's fleshy danglers until someone pointed them out. Now they're ALL I see, thanks very much.I'd never thought about ear lobes much until my mother's massive heart attack last September. In the aftermath - she blessedly survived - our family immersed itself in genetic research about heart disease and found one of the key physical indicators of likely coronary disease is creased ear lobes.Now I'm just going to wait here until you come back from the bathroom. All good? Me too.My sister, however, has markedly creased ear lobes just like my mother. "Don't panic", I said to her reassuringly on the afternoon of our ear lobe discovery exchange. "Plenty of heart attack victims don't have creased ear lobes, so who cares what the University of Dodgy says?"Then I went home and had a wild relief rave in my lounge room. My subsequent research has unearthed a few other interesting facts about that dark horse of the face that is the ear lobe.Firstly, it has a very large blood supply that helps to warm the ears, so it may not be her own fault that Gillard's found it hard to keep a cool head of late.The lobe is also full of nerve endings and may be an erogenous zone for some people. (Lordy. Tim Mathieson's got his work cut out for him.)Because the ear lobe has no major biological function, its purpose may be psycho-physiological, imparting information about our true selves that can't be masked or faked.Chinese face-readers have long maintained that large, thick ear lobes are a sign of intelligence and a predictor of wealth and longevity, whereas people with angular ears are more shrewd and vivacious.Possibly, then, while we outwardly mock Julia's bulbous lobes, the truth is we may well be either instinctively threatened by them or even unwittingly drawn to them?One thing's certain: it's a bloody boring election campaign.carrieon@bigpond.com

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