As if we need one more fact to debate – a University of California, Los Angeles study was just released, claiming conservative female politicians are better looking than their liberal counterparts. Conducted by researchers from the school of psychology, the recent study finds that Republican women have more feminine facial features, and Democratic ladies possess stronger features and stray away from the ‘stereotypical’ gender norms. The correlation between typical feminine features and political affiliation is actually shown to increase the more conservative the lawmaker’s voting record.
Professor Kerri Johnson led the study, which fed photos of 434 members of the U.S. House of Representatives into a computer, then compared the faces to the norm for their sex and evaluated more than 100 different facial dimensions, such as the shape of the jaw, location of the eyebrows, cheekbones, eye shape, and fullness of the lips. The results showed Republican women were twice as feminine as the Democratic women. “I suppose we could call it the ‘Michele Bachmann effect,’” says Johnson.
Representatives Michele Bachmann, along Kay Granger from Texas and Cathy Rodgers McMorris from Washington, were reported in the study as having some of the most feminine features. Former Presidential hopeful, Sarah Palin, was also flagged as having a more womanly appearance than Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, and Representative Rosa Delauro of Connecticut.
While the study focused primarily on women, the men did not escape researcher’s attention. Republican men were shown to have less masculine features than male Democrat politicians. The results were similar to the ladies findings, softer facial representations seem to follow conservatives, while stronger eyes and cheeks, are found with the liberals.
UCLA’s study does not address which political party is more inclined to lobby the services of a cosmetic surgeon, however, but these numbers probably fare somewhere in the middle – Mother Nature doesn’t care to discriminate. Vitenas Cosmetic Surgery knows that true beauty is bi-partisan. Our vote? We have the prettiest patients around!