Body Language Reveals All
By ADAM STERNBERGH
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Each issue of US Weekly is chock-full of science. Yes, it's also chock-full of celebrities -- celebrities at premieres, celebrities nuzzling at after-parties, celebrities in sunglasses taking out the trash. But in US, and other star-tracking magazines like In Touch and Star, the photos of these celebrities now come accompanied with reams of analysis from experts in the science of body language.
In one typical issue of US this summer, Greg Cynaumon, a psychologist, analyzed a photo of Jennifer Lopez and her on-again-off-again fiance, Ben Afflack. And a few pages away, the body-language expert Patti Wood scrutinized a photo of Bob Guiney, the star of ''The Bachelor,'' whose hand was on his date's naked belly. (''Touching that spot,'' Wood noted, ''is usually a prelude to sex.'')
Wood, who is a consultant to both US and Cosmopolitan, says she ''reads'' photos by scouring them for ''body-language clusters'' and telltale physical ''cues,'' of which, she claims, there can be up to 10,000 exchanged during an interaction between two people.
For readers, these experts offer the promise, of hidden truths that the stars would not normally impart. As Janice Min, the editor of US, says: ''People think that with celebrities they're always getting spun. With these experts, they feel like the veil is lifted. And if the expert has a 'Dr.' in front of their name, it helps.''
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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/14/magazine/14BODY.html
Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at http://pattiwood.net/. Also check out the body language quiz on her YouTube Channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.
