06-17-98: Gingerish secrets
What your face says about you Ginger Spice's big eyes could betray her innermost secrets. Anjana Ahuja reports.
If Geri Halliwell, aka Ginger Spice, had consulted a Siang Mien expert, she would have realised that her outing with the most famous girl band in the world was doomed. For, while the ancient Chinese art of face-reading deigns her big, round eyes a perfect attribute for a career in showbusiness, its philosophy predicts that she becomes "vulnerable should something not go according to plan". Not only that, but Siang Mien also states that people blessed with large eyes "have absolutely no inhibitions about making a grand entrance". What better way to embody that stereotype than emerging at the biggest music awards ceremony in Britain wearing an abbreviated Union Jack dress with built-in knickers? Everything about you, according to The Secret Language of Your Face, a guide to Siang Mien, is written in your features. Your personality, job prospects and romantic inclinations are betrayed by the shape of your nose, the fullness of your lips and the evenness of your teeth. The future of your current relationship can be gauged by seeing if your Moon face is compatible with his Bucket face (this is good news for James Major and Emma Noble who, with their attractive angular looks, "make an absolutely unbeatable combination"). The mole on my chin is said to spell great happiness in old age. And there's more. We can guess at sexual desires, although the book solemnly declares that "under no circumstances should we abuse our knowledge to gain an advantage over strangers, superiors, colleagues or subordinates". Fat chance. Men with bulging eyes enjoy wild, passionate sex, while people with small eyebrows derive spiritual pleasure from carnal abstinence. Individuals with one eyebrow higher than the other regard sex as forbidden, and women with slanted eyes are shameless and promiscuous. Dispiritingly, the book doesn't do a bad job of summing me up: full of good ideas but too impatient to turn them into action (thick eyebrows) and a self-critical perfectionist who is likely to be in journalism or the media (small ears) - though it falls down badly by saying that my hooked nose has endowed me with "an infallible instinct for money and business". Alas, I possess neither. Chi An Kuei, the Munich-based author, says that the only way to outwit Siang Mien is to have plastic surgery. Surely not everyone with prominent gnashers can be accused of being "stubborn, often pig-headed and prepared to lie for personal advantage"? "Yes, it is true," Mrs Chi says excitedly. "I cannot explain it, but it is true in my experience. It works one hundred per cent. Why should we not believe it? Scientists cannot explain why we dream, but nobody disputes that we do it." She believes that looking at face shapes is important for gauging whether a relationship will work. For example, two people with round faces will form a stable, loving, though not particularly passionate relationship. "If you don't believe me, look at couples you know," Mrs Chi says. My dinner parties will never be the same again.