A few, limited observations on traditional portrait perspective for the newcomer

[Bernice Loui]

Question is.. why is that type of distortion acceptable and widely accepted?

Answer could be connected to why the market for images has changes SO much in today's data centric image sharing world.

~As for your avatar image, that would be a longer than normal focal length image. Cropped out of a "wider" image achieves essentially the same visual effect as a longer then normal focal length lens.


Bernice

Just to divert a little, today so many portraitures and blog videos are so distorted with big noses and obtuse faces due to getting closer with their wide-angle lenses on cameras and how vlogging cameras are used. They make the subjects look pretty bad. Yet people just accept them or don't notice or don't care.

[Tin Can]

So many cell phone images are published/shared per second worldwide

the wide angle cell phone IS the Standard now

this will change as cell phones improve

long focus phones are coming

evolution

[Ulophot]

In response to Bernice, above, and without straying into non-forum territory: I think it fair to say that the lunge, as it were, into distortion, which has continued through the present (as opposed to more isolated examples earlier, e.g., Brandt's nudes), began in the mid- to late-1960s hand-in-hand with the psychedelic counter-culture. Other factors, such as lens design improvements and mobility of broadcast-quality TV cameras, contributed to the on-the-street, in-your-face news interviews with the lens not more than 2 feet from the interviewee; however, in my view, having lived through these changes and studied them, the cultural change, now many decades old, has created a "new normal" for younger generations especially. I think I'll leave it there.