The human face has widely varying characteristics depending on the race, nationality, gender, and age, etc. And these differences can create unique personal beauty (However, I feel that the advancement of media and internet has narrowed the difference between Western and Eastern standards of beauty). Understanding the characteristics that are deemed attractive in both cultures can help the aesthetic plastic surgeons obtain better results from their procedures.

 

Let us start this series by examining the facial metrics, golden ratio between the eye and nose, surgical techniques and wrinkles.

 

Figure 1. Commonly known golden ratios

 

Applying the golden ratio to a human face

 

When the width of a face is divided into five equal parts, with 1 being the far left part and 5 being the far right, an attractive face would have eyes at about 2/5 and 4/5 (Figure 1). It is ideal to have the horizontal length of the eyes and the inter-canthal distance(distance between eyes) to be similar. These standards are based on Caucasians and a slightly wider intercanthal distance may appear more natural in Asians (we will take a closer look at the aesthetics of the eyes in the next article). The vertical length of the face can be divided into three parts; upper, mid and lower faces. Many prefer the lower face to be slightly smaller than the upper and mid face and the ideal ratio of the three parts is 1:1:0.9.

 

Figure 2 . Ratios of an attractive face.

 

In ancient physiognomy, the upper face (sangjung) stretches from the hairline of the forehead to immediately above the eyebrows, the mid face (joongjung) from the eyebrows to the nasal tip and the lower face (hajung) from below the nasal tip to the tip of the chin. It was thought that a beautiful face had a harmony among these three parts, which is in agreement with the modern ratio regarding the upper, mid and lower face.

 

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As for the lips, the lower lip should be slightly thicker than the upper lip, with the ratio of the vertical thickness being 1:1.7-2 (the lower lip being 1.7-2 times thicker). In ancient physiognomy, reddish color of the lips was considered the most desirable as the lips were thought to represent the blood pumped from the heart. 

 

-To be continued