desirable faces

Baby-smooth skin is capable of inciting desire; unsmooth, or contoured skin is not: is this because flatness is innately more titillating than texture, or because flatness signifies nothing at all and thus doesn’t interfere with our projections? In the same way, desirable faces must be blank, drained of colour; big eyes round and expressionless; hair blond or colourless; waists, hips, feet, and minds small. The physical makeup of the child has been translated into mainstream images of the sexually and materially alluring. […] We are told to look like children if we can and for as long as we can, to pine for that look.

James R. Kincaid
Erotic Innocence