Ted Cruz is not particularly warm. Whether he tried to be funny or witty or angry, there is always something so very off-putting about him. The words coming out of his mouth are no more offensive than those coming out of the mouths of dunderheads like Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, or even Ben Carson. But for some reason, and you know what I’m talking about, there is a certain bizarro-world je ne sais quoi about Senator Cruz. Something that makes you want to leave a room the moment his visage appears. Richard E. Cytowic, M.D. is a neurologist. He’s written an article in Psychology Today where he attempts to figure out that thing about Ted Cruz we all know is real but just cannot put our collective fingers on.
Campaign Action
Senator Cruz’s countenance doesn’t shift the way I expect typical faces to move. Human faces can’t help but broadcast what we feel, what we may be thinking, and even what we may intend. Many animals likewise broadcast what’s happening in their heads, as Charles Darwin illustrated at length in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
[...]
I have rarely, if ever, seen a conventional smile from Senator Cruz. In a natural smile the corners of the mouth go up; these muscles we can control voluntarily as well. But muscles circling the eyes are involuntary only; they make the eyes narrow, forming crow’s feet at the outside corners. Even the Mona Lisa’s smile shows this. The eyes give away one’s game and let us tell forged from genuine smiles. Grandma may have told you to put on a happy face, but you can’t if it isn’t heartfelt.
That’s true! There is something in that. Sure we all know that Ted Cruz looks like someone crossed with Grandpa Munster but Grandpa Munster was kinda awesome (and his politics were pretty fantastic) and there was something warm about him.
No matter the emotional coloring of Senator Cruz’s outward rhetoric, his mouth typically tightens into the same straight line. If it deviates from this, the corners of his mouth bend down, not upwards. The outside of his eyebrows bend down, too, when he emotes, something so atypical that it disturbs me. Typically a person’s eyebrows arch up, as does the corrugator muscle that furrow the forehead.
Thank you, Dr. Cytowic. Now, I can go back to just disliking Ted Cruz the man and not just Ted Cruz the face.