Love Life: Have You Ever Dated Someone Who Looked like You?
Kate Sullivan, Allure magazine
We get a lot of crazy products and pitches here at Allure:Savory lip balms,anti-aging perfume. This week, I was sent a chocolate wine, which contains not notes of chocolate, but actual, creamy milk chocolate flavoring. The wine is brown! (In the brown wine's defense, it was quickly seized by a coworker who thought it sounded like a dream come true.) Usually, the wacky items end up on the giveaway table and the wacky emails end up deleted. But an email from Find Your FaceMate-a dating service where people can find a mate that looks like them-stopped my deleting finger cold.
See more: The 6 Most Flattering Haircuts for Round Faces
FaceMate uses facial recognition software to match you up with someone with similar features. Obviously, this method of finding love sounds insane and I highly doubt it's more effective than other dating services. (Your odds are up no matter what; anyone who is using a dating service wants to be partnered.) But see, the company included a picture of Eddie Cibrian and LeAnn Rimes with their pitch. What the hell?! They look exactly alike. How had I not even noticed that before? Then, I came across this here Star magazine story (yeah, yeah) posted on Jezebel, where celebrity couples' faces got the mash-up treatment-Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively definitely have the same jawline! Anecdotally, two of my married friends look like siblings. Who does their seven-month-old baby look like? BOTH OF THEM.
See more: Top 21 Drugstore Beauty Bargains
Okay, FaceMate, I'm listening now: Since their service launched in July 2010, they claim to have made 1,000 matches, about 30% of which have been interracial. (So it's not some creepy clone service.)
And there is a little bit of scientific meat on these OMG-does-it-feel-like-you're-kissing-a-mirror bones: In 2010, a University of Urbana-Champaign study used digital manipulation to morph a subject's face onto that of someone whose attractiveness he or she was rating. The face-melded pics were a big hit. Earlier research done at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland found that straight men and women were drawn to members of the opposite sex who shared traits like eye and hair color with their opposite gendered parent-and that's pretty much saying they liked people who looked like them.
See more: The 10 Commandments of Mascara
None of this means that lookalike couples have a stronger attraction or feelings that last longer than those of us enrolled in the Paula Abdul-MC Skat Kat School of Love. But it is intriguing, right?
Have you ever dated a doppleganger?
See more from Allure:
The 12 Best Eye Creams
10 Hairstyles That Make You Look 10 Years Younger
Best of Beauty 2012
The 10 Most Gorgeous Hair-Color Ideas for Brunettes
