Excerpt from: Body Language Analysis №4195: Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos, and Red Flags — Nonverbal and Emotional Intelligence
Three years ago, Elizabeth Holmes was the newest Golden Child of Silicon Valley. Her company, which she started when she was just 19 after dropping out of Stanford University, had claimed to have revolutionized the practice of medicine by being able to perform testing on just a few drops of blood — from only a finger prick (only 1/100 to 1/1000 of that typically needed with conventional methods). Such a discovery would also dramatically decrease the costs of blood tests. Ms. Holmes also had quite a knack for convincing investors to bankroll her company — which they did to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
But in October of 2015, based on the work of John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal, deep concerns as to the credibility of Theranos’ technology were raised — and the facade failed.
What follows is a partial nonverbal analysis of Ms. Holmes from this April 2015 CBS interview.
The aberrant behavior of Elizabeth Holmes’ eyelids is striking. Note how widely they’re opened. The “whites of her eyes” (sclera) are visible 360ยบ around the colored portions (irides or irises) of both eyes.
Moreover, her eyelids are open to this extreme — not just for a second or two — but nearly continuously throughout this interview. This is extremely unusual.
Additionally, in the image immediately above (2:25), Ms. Holmes is also displaying a component of Disgust (note her tightened and forward-vectored mid and lower face — along with her nostril flaring and tightened lips).
You may have also noticed that Elizabeth Holmes blinks much less frequently than normal. This should immediately jump out to you as unnatural. This red flag is a behavior correlated with nefarious motives — so much so, that it’s even been used in animations for decades.
Now, you may say that maybe Elizabeth Holmes’ forehead had been treated with Botox — and you’d be correct. But although her forehead activity is somewhat diminished due to Botox — the dynamic movement captured here (3:48) proves that it is still quite functional. Concave-up furrows are clearly visible on her forehead and her eyebrows are also momentarily elevated.
It’s profoundly important to stress — that when a person’s eyelids are opened wide during moments of verbal emphasis — there is almost always a simultaneous contraction and elevation of their forehead muscles too — as was imaged in this last example.
But the fact that such forehead contribution was rarely seen throughout this interview — that her eyelids were opened wide with a relaxed forehead — and this display was virtually continuous — is a tremendous red flag. It screams of deception. It also signals psychological pathology.
Intriguingly, although the frequency of Ms. Holmes’ voice is quite deep — witnesses have documented that she’s feigning. It’s another affectation.
Jennifer Lawrence will be playing Elizabeth Holmes in a 2019 film version of this fall from grace. It’s to be titled Bad Blood and will be directed by Adam McKay (The Big Short).
SUMMARY: In the absence of a few medical conditions (such as Thyroid eye disease), when the eyelids are opened so widely, with such high frequency and long duration — coupled with a relaxed forehead (e.g., as is demonstrated in the first three images and during almost this entire interview), there’s a very high correlation with:
• Deception
• Antisocial Personality Disorder (commonly referred to as Sociopath Behavior)
Body Language/Nonverbal Communication Expert and Physician
May 29
May 29
BLOGGER'S OBSERVATIONS. So why do I keep on posting stuff about Elizabeth Holmes? She is one of the more fascinating criminals of the 21st century, maybe of the last 100 years. It is said that she created a niche for herself by ascertaining a yearning, need, or even a guilt or shame in society that ached for redemption. She WAS that redemption: a supernaturally-blue-eyed blonde (hair color as natural as that alabaster stone forehead), a barely-in-her-20s wunderkind, a self-proclaimed genius who was - gasp - female! An actual live woman, doing the Steve Jobs bit, bucking the trend, breaking the mold (but not really, because that's not how you create and fulfill a need. You slip very slimily INTO the mold, thus easing and filling the hollow howling ache in the collective consciousness, redeeming and forgiving the meanness of our faith in womankind and their ability to create and transform.)
But oh, woe. How could we miss this? She wasn't a genius at all (even though she TOLD us she was, damn it! That's just not fair.) She was this sour little bundle of megalomaniacal greed, not smart at all but merely crafty, wily, manipulative, supremely egotistical, and so Antarctically indifferent in her icy core that she could actually feign warmth with that froggy adenoidal voice of hers. She could produce a dizzying facsimile of deep interest in her victims by allowing her sclera to show 360 degrees all around her irises. No kidding, that is how she did it - that, and not blinking, not ever, probably practicing it in front of the mirror or, perhaps, watching old videos of Marshall Applewhite.
Elizabeth was a cult, a shiny blonde one-woman cult, and people fell into line, but they fell into line largely due to a burning, almost unbearable hope that Some Day, Some Woman would come along, someone so glowingly and world-beatingly successful that they could bow down and worship, lift her up, put her on magazine covers like Forbes, and thus tell themselves and the world, SEE, see how we're acting, we don't discriminate, and we DO think women can do all kinds of swell things and be blonde and blue-eyed at the same time!
But oh. No! Now those blinded worshippers have been knocked on their asses, and sit there stunned and blinking. Wait! How could a GIRL. . .But that's the thing. Didn't we already know women could be ruthless and heartless and utterly-self-servingly-sociopathic? Look at Cruella de Ville. That chick in Fatal Attraction. The Sunset Boulevard lady. (Never mind that they're all fictional.) But Elizabeth had so much confidence, she seemed to know something, and there is nothing more seductive than a woman who seems to know something. So here was this mega-billion-dollar phenom who turned out to be crass, tin-plated, shallow, and utterly uninformed about ANY aspect of medicine or science (and if you saw transcripts of some of her interviews, undazzled by those icy ever-open scleral globes, you'd recognize her laughable ignorance at once). She was all show and no go, and the vaporware she didn't produce wasn't just another talking vibrator or a refrigerator that anticipates your grocery needs. It was all about blood - human blood - literally, about sucking blood out of people's fingers with some ludicrous thing called a "nanotainer".
The old videos, the early 2015 ones (which is really not so long ago) are now embarrassing to watch, with rich old men (board members, mostly) grabbing their scrotums every time she told a lame joke or made a ridiculous globally-transformative prediction. Well, she did change the world, sort of. She knocked a whole lot of people on their asses, but for all the wrong reasons.
The one question that lingers in my mind is: since it took nine years for her bubble to burst, and since she couldn't have spent ALL that time grasping the scrotums of rich old men, what did she DO all day? How did she fill her time? Doing eyeball exercises, having her forehead frozen and her hair foiled? Getting voice lessons for that dull drone she used, or was that just Steve Jobs-style steroids?
Like Martha Stewart, Elizabeth may rise again. But those crazy eyes disturb me. Something is just not right there. They have a feverish quality. a shininess that is unnatural. Madness can, if turned just the right way, change the world. We've seen it. But the ideal of blonde and blue-eyed has had its share of bad press.
But oh, woe. How could we miss this? She wasn't a genius at all (even though she TOLD us she was, damn it! That's just not fair.) She was this sour little bundle of megalomaniacal greed, not smart at all but merely crafty, wily, manipulative, supremely egotistical, and so Antarctically indifferent in her icy core that she could actually feign warmth with that froggy adenoidal voice of hers. She could produce a dizzying facsimile of deep interest in her victims by allowing her sclera to show 360 degrees all around her irises. No kidding, that is how she did it - that, and not blinking, not ever, probably practicing it in front of the mirror or, perhaps, watching old videos of Marshall Applewhite.
Elizabeth was a cult, a shiny blonde one-woman cult, and people fell into line, but they fell into line largely due to a burning, almost unbearable hope that Some Day, Some Woman would come along, someone so glowingly and world-beatingly successful that they could bow down and worship, lift her up, put her on magazine covers like Forbes, and thus tell themselves and the world, SEE, see how we're acting, we don't discriminate, and we DO think women can do all kinds of swell things and be blonde and blue-eyed at the same time!
But oh. No! Now those blinded worshippers have been knocked on their asses, and sit there stunned and blinking. Wait! How could a GIRL. . .But that's the thing. Didn't we already know women could be ruthless and heartless and utterly-self-servingly-sociopathic? Look at Cruella de Ville. That chick in Fatal Attraction. The Sunset Boulevard lady. (Never mind that they're all fictional.) But Elizabeth had so much confidence, she seemed to know something, and there is nothing more seductive than a woman who seems to know something. So here was this mega-billion-dollar phenom who turned out to be crass, tin-plated, shallow, and utterly uninformed about ANY aspect of medicine or science (and if you saw transcripts of some of her interviews, undazzled by those icy ever-open scleral globes, you'd recognize her laughable ignorance at once). She was all show and no go, and the vaporware she didn't produce wasn't just another talking vibrator or a refrigerator that anticipates your grocery needs. It was all about blood - human blood - literally, about sucking blood out of people's fingers with some ludicrous thing called a "nanotainer".
The old videos, the early 2015 ones (which is really not so long ago) are now embarrassing to watch, with rich old men (board members, mostly) grabbing their scrotums every time she told a lame joke or made a ridiculous globally-transformative prediction. Well, she did change the world, sort of. She knocked a whole lot of people on their asses, but for all the wrong reasons.
The one question that lingers in my mind is: since it took nine years for her bubble to burst, and since she couldn't have spent ALL that time grasping the scrotums of rich old men, what did she DO all day? How did she fill her time? Doing eyeball exercises, having her forehead frozen and her hair foiled? Getting voice lessons for that dull drone she used, or was that just Steve Jobs-style steroids?
Like Martha Stewart, Elizabeth may rise again. But those crazy eyes disturb me. Something is just not right there. They have a feverish quality. a shininess that is unnatural. Madness can, if turned just the right way, change the world. We've seen it. But the ideal of blonde and blue-eyed has had its share of bad press.
