The answer is: It's probably gay.
Do you have a gay face? With some thumping house music in the background and possibly the world's most unflattering built-in camera, Gay Check Online is here to tell you whether the crook of your nose, the shape of your eyes, and the width of your chin are the makings for a big ol' homosexual face. Let Gay Check Online access your camera, hold still, and wait a few seconds to be told whether you're gay or straight based solely upon your mug. Like an unpublished Orwell manuscript or the second coming of phrenology, there is something unsettling and unnerving about the whole website. And that's the whole point.
"Gay Check Online is not a practical tool but a statement: This tool is as ridiculous as homophobia," creators Kim Asendorf and Ole Fach told Animal New York. And while some of us may scoff at the idea that anyone would truly believe in such a silly facial assessment system, there actually have been scientific studies about distinguishing sexual orientation from facial features in the last year. The Center for Theoretical Study at Charles University in Prague found that the typical gay face has a smaller and shorter nose, a massive and rounded jaw, and a mix of feminine and masculine features. In other words, having a gay face is so arbitrary, it's definitely non existent.
Asendorf and Fach hope to highlight the paranoia, presumption, and backwardness of trying to identify someone's lifestyle by their appearance. "You have a gay face," used to a be a playground insult I heard flying around during recess (or in some of the cattier bars of New York's gayer neighborhoods). The lash of the mockery was insidious — sure, it implied something was wrong with your face, and with more thought, it also meant something was wrong with being gay. Gay Check Online is attempting to say that if our social conventions can determine that one face is supposedly gay, then they might as well all be gay. That's right: The artists have designed the tool so that no matter who's pouting in front of the webcam, they will be met with the same colorful "Congratulations, you are gay!" bouncing across their screens. Go ahead and try it, straighties.
[h/t ANIMAL]
