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Although these days one might consider the BlackBerry to be the primary conduit for human communication, it is still the face. Besides reading facial expressions, our brains—having evolved over millennia in a world in which the biggest threat to safety were members of other tribes—are hardwired to gauge the familiarity of facial features: the more different from our own, the more potentially worrisome. Exposure to what we perceive as strange or “mismatched” facial features, in fact, triggers a full-fledged neurological alarm response.
The Little Baby Face Foundation provides reconstructive surgery pro bono for children born with facial deformities, thus facilitating their acceptance into society by minimizing—or eliminating altogether—said alarm response in others. Reconstructive ear specialist Dr. Thomas Romo, having traveled the globe and helped countless children under often less-than-ideal conditions, hatched the idea to have the little patients and their parents flown to New York City to receive top-quality care, all expenses paid.
The Fifth Annual Little Baby Face Foundation Fall Benefit and Auction, headlined “Believe in Miracles”, at Cipriani on Fifth Avenue drew celebs Martha Stewart; Michael Bolton; choreographer Judith Jamison; actors Donna Murphy, Jaid Barrymore, Dylan Baker, and Federico “Furio” Castelluccio; NBC correspondents Dan Abrams (legal) and Dr. Max Gomez (medical); CBS’s Magee Hickey; all-star hairstylist Rudolfo Valentin; plus the aforementioned founding father Dr. Romo with wife Diane.
God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another. Prince Hamlet’s criticism of tampering with God’s handiwork pertained to women’s addiction to makeup. Shakespeare never wrote about the Little Baby Face Foundation. If he had, no doubt it would have been a sonnet of praise.
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