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by DianeL » Tue August 23rd, 2011, 12:10 am
[quote=""Margaret""]People can indeed look through their lashes - it's just that eyelashes are so close to the eyes that you don't see the lashes. Princess Diana was often photographed in a pose like this, with her head bent and her eyelids partly lowered while she looked upward at someone. You can try it yourself if you put the back of your finger up to just touch your lashes and look over your finger - has to be through your lashes, if you can see over the top. However, I do think this shifts the perspective to an exterior point-of-view, because the person who is looking through her lashes wouldn't be aware of the lashes.
But the eye color thing drives me nuts, too! The really over-the-top case is in The Da Vinci Code when the main character is in the Louvre after hours, having just been shown the body, and a huge amount of descriptive detail is lavished on the way the museum is lit only by red lights set into the floor, creating a dim, eerie red glow - and then the love interest walks in, and he notices the color of her eyes![/quote]
This is also said of Lauren Bacall - but, I'm sorry, this still is not "through" by any understading I have ever had of the preposition. I try very hard to accept it merely as a peculiarity of phrasing, a romanticism - but, for my money, looking through eyelashes is best done by dint of standing 3/4 behind somebody with some seriously long ones. It is probably sad to admit this, but I have put way too much consideration into this question for something like 15 years now. Every time I run across the phrase, it drives me bazoo.
MLE has reminded me of the joy of my costume history classes (human fashion is so wonderfully, compellingly GROSS sometimes ... "ask me about my bodkin!") and set my mind at rest. Perhaps Katherine Swynford used some sort of beautiful accessory like opera glasses, with lashes on them she could peer though in a way which inexplicably would seem provocative to those who like the "through lashes" look. Hee.
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I happen to have extremely light brown eyes, and the only problem I ever had with them was that when I was younger I did not feel they were dark enough. My best friend has VERY dark brown eyes, and they are gorgeous. Mine can actually be very striking, and I have always preferred brown or green eyes over blue eyes (and, as I prefer dark hair over blond - isn't it natural I would have married, once upon a time, the biggest Nordic God, with golden blond hair and WINDEX-blue eyes!), but more than anything the importance of anyone's eyes lies in what lies behind them. Donroc's point is an important one.
You can find any color eyes beautiful depending on who is using them to look at you (this may go for the mirror too). The eyes I love best now actually have no definable color; they change, but they never seem to settle on grey, or hazel, or green, or brown. That they are mercurial is amusingly appropriate, but not their magic. The power in *that* gaze comes from much deeper than the irises!
Last edited by
DianeL on Tue August 23rd, 2011, 12:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
"To be the queen, she agreed to be the widow!"
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The pre-modern world was willing to attribute charisma to women well before it was willing to attribute sustained rationality to them.
---Medieval Kingship, Henry A. Myers
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