The Golden Ratio and Facial Beauty: What Makes a Face Attractive?

The full text of my column published in the June 2025 issue of D&PS.

What is the golden ratio of the face?

In King Kong, the heroine and Kong watch the sunset from the top of the Empire State Building and exchange the word “beautiful,” one sign at a time. It is a beautiful scene, but it raises a question: would Kong find a human woman beautiful?

The golden ratio is often the first concept that comes to mind in facial analysis. People have long recognized that the vertical proportions of facial features contribute to beauty. Renaissance artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo explored universal human proportions, describing ideal relationships as the golden proportion. The idea that harmonious proportions make a face or body attractive appears in both Eastern and Western traditions.

Horizontal lines divide the face into three sections: hairline to brow, brow to nasal tip, and nasal tip to chin. Equal lengths, or a ratio of roughly 1:1:0.8, are described as ideal proportions. Vertical lines divide the face into five sections: the central section containing the nose, each section from the outer ear to the outer eye corner, and each section from the outer to the inner eye corner. Equal widths are regarded as the ideal relationship.

One beauty test popular on social media is the “finger trap test.” A straight index finger is placed against the nasal tip and chin; if the lips do not touch it, the profile is said to be ideal. This derives from the line developed by orthodontist Dr. Robert Ricketts in the 1950s. In the proposed ideal relationship, the upper lip sits 4 mm and the lower lip 2 mm behind the line connecting the nasal tip and chin.

Figure 1. King Kong looking at the heroine.

The golden ratio, commonly expressed as 1:1.618, is often discussed in relation to nature. Parts of galactic structures and the forms of shells are described through this proportion. One explanation is that favorable genetic traits are more likely to be expressed in such proportions. Because these traits support survival and reproduction, the brain has evolved to respond positively to them. In this account, encountering the golden ratio produces a pleasurable response.

By this reasoning, if one of two puppies looks distinctly prettier to a person, it would also appear more attractive to other dogs. Our perception of beauty in landscapes and faces is partly attributed to proportion. It can also be understood as the result of neural development: as we grow, we learn to respond positively to information associated with survival and reproduction.

How have ideals of facial beauty changed over time?

Koreans show a mixture of features traditionally described as northern and southern Asian types. Among Chinese actors, Fan Bingbing, from Shandong, is often used as an example of the northern type, and Tang Wei, from Hangzhou, of the southern type. Traditional descriptions associate the northern type with greater height, a slender face, fair skin, and an open appearance. Fine hair with less graying is described as giving a composed impression, while pale skin and a long face are associated with an aristocratic look. Light brows and broad upper eyelids are read as gentle; a long nose with a narrow tip as intellectual; and smaller eyes, nose, and mouth as neat. Under the same aesthetic framework, narrow eyes, small irises, short lashes, a large jaw, and a flatter face may be viewed less favorably.

Figure 2. The golden ratio.

Figure 3. The Four Beauties of ancient China. From left: Xi Shi, Wang Zhaojun, Diaochan, and Yang Guifei.

The beauty described in classical literature (crescent-shaped brows, narrow eyes, cherry-like lips, silky hair, and pale skin) corresponds to this northern type. One explanation is that northern populations were both numerous and socially dominant, producing literature and art that favored familiar features. Until the Joseon era, women from Pyongyang and Kanggye, considered typical examples of northern beauty, were regarded as especially beautiful.

The Joseon-era saying “handsome men in the south, beautiful women in the north” reflected this preference for northern female features. Edo-period Japan had a comparable expression, “Kyoto women, eastern men,” praising women from Kyoto and men from Tokyo. As in the Korean association with Pyongyang, the northern-type features associated with Kyoto appear to have shaped the Japanese ideal.

Modern Korean beauty ideals gradually changed as people grew up seeing more Western faces. At first, the so-called Daegu beauty, with mostly northern-type features and southern-type eyes, became popular. With further Western influence extending to body proportions, the southern type increasingly became the preferred ideal. By the 2010s, Korean ideals were described as resembling those of the Hellenistic period. That period is associated with peace and material abundance, circumstances said to favor a face that is small relative to the body. In a peaceful, prosperous, stable society, a youthful appearance may offer social advantages.

Figure 4. The Venus de Milo: a face from the Hellenistic period.

By contrast, the earlier period of conflict between city-states appears to have favored more mature facial forms. Disney characters offer a more recent comparison: Snow White has a mature-looking face, while the characters in Frozen look younger. In this interpretation, the long period of peace after World War II is reflected in their faces.

People can usually estimate age fairly accurately within their own ethnic group, but may misjudge the age of someone from another group. East Asians, for example, often readily recognize one another's age range, while Western observers may find that assessment less reliable.

When we find someone beautiful, part of the brain responds with pleasure. One account holds that the neural framework established during adolescence remains influential throughout life, particularly the patterns formed by around age 15. If someone repeatedly watched the 1953 film Roman Holiday before that age and found Audrey Hepburn beautiful, her facial proportions may become a lasting template for beauty in that person's mind.

In the distinction between “right-brain” and “left-brain” beauty, the former is guided by the feeling a face evokes, while the latter is described as more analytical and rational. Faces admired by the general public are often placed in the first category; those favored by makeup artists, film producers, and photographers in the second. The analytical approach examines the eyes, nose, and mouth individually. It is detailed but may focus more on separate features than on overall harmony. In this framework, cultural refinement, education, occupation, family background, and, increasingly, wealth and professional or social success can also influence the judgment.

A third category, described as “brainstem beauty,” is exemplified by Marilyn Monroe. It emphasizes an eye-catching face, striking blond hair, gait, legs, expressions, and particularly scent or body odor, which is described as a strong brainstem stimulus. Very pale or tanned skin is likewise said to appeal to primitive responses outside conscious awareness.

Under this evolutionary explanation, youthful features associated with favorable conditions for survival and reproduction are perceived as beautiful, while older features associated with less favorable conditions are not. The information driving these responses is described as being stored in the brain or DNA.

Faces often look larger with age, and makeup is frequently used to compensate. Highlighting the center and shading the edges creates more dimension, which in turn can make a face look younger. Audrey Hepburn's unusually large eyes and dark brows are striking. Her eyes may look large because her face is small, or her face may look small because her eyes are large. Since the same person's face generally looks smaller in youth and larger with age, a smaller-looking face is associated with youthfulness. In this account, Hepburn's appeal also reflects the brain's tendency to release pleasurable signals in response to youthful features.

How does the brain judge facial beauty?

A face may look larger with age because the skin stretches or fat cells enlarge. Stretching of the retaining ligaments that anchor skin to bone can also allow descent and broaden the apparent contour. Bone remodeling contributes as well. Around the eyes, the orbital opening enlarges and lengthens vertically, with scalloping at the superomedial and inferolateral orbit. Distortion of the superomedial curve contributes to increased medial upper-eyelid fat. These skeletal changes allow brow soft tissues to descend toward the orbit, producing brow ptosis and lateral orbital hooding. Remodeling and widening of the orbit deepen the orbital sulcus and may contribute to a sunken appearance and eyelid ptosis. Together with soft-tissue changes, these changes accentuate the tear trough and scleral show.

The concept of “facial fat fitness” also helps describe aging. Young, healthy facial fat has little inflammation. When its volume increases, it tends to add fat cells rather than enlarge existing ones, producing smooth fullness. In aging facial fat with chronic inflammation, expansion tends to occur through increased cell size rather than cell number. This contributes to the sagging appearance commonly seen with age.

Figure 5. Comparison of immune-cell composition and function in healthy and abnormal adipose tissue in relation to metabolic disease.

Dr. So-yeon Yi, Korea's first astronaut, published research on facial changes in microgravity. A characteristically square face became closer to an oval. Gravity, then, exerts a sustained influence on facial aging here on Earth. The faces of Donna and Sophie in Mamma Mia! offer a familiar illustration of age-related change. Meryl Streep certainly holds her own against Amanda Seyfried in appeal; her presence in The Devil Wears Prada is especially compelling. Even so, the younger Seyfried has an oval face tapering into a V, while the older Streep's outline broadens toward the bottom, like an inverted V.

In the “right-brain” account of beauty, facial contour carries the greatest weight. During face-to-face conversation, we tend to look beneath the other person's eyes. We make occasional eye contact rather than staring continuously, and our gaze often settles just below the eyes. At the same time, we register the entire facial outline and form an emotional impression of the person.

Some studies of the basis of facial beauty have observed which facial forms very young babies prefer. These findings emphasize three-dimensional contour rather than a flat outline: a soft, rounded form often described as a heart line.

The late-1990s finding that even three-month-old babies look longer at attractive faces was interpreted as evidence that the pursuit of beauty is instinctive and rooted in an inherited physiological response.

“Apple cheeks” describe a pleasing midface that flows smoothly from the eyes toward the mouth. Preferred cheek shapes differ somewhat between Eastern and Western aesthetics. In the Eastern ideal described here, the highest point lies at the intersection of a line from the outer-third eye region to the mouth corner and a line from the midpoint of the alar cartilage to the root of the helix. In the Western ideal, it lies where a line from the lateral canthus to the mouth corner crosses a line from the nasal ala to the tragus. Western aesthetics may also favor cheek hollows as an attractive source of definition, sometimes accentuating them with makeup.

I see many patients of Chinese heritage, from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore as well as Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. One area they pay particular attention to during filler treatment is the temple. Some Korean patients dislike excessive temple volume because it makes the forehead look too wide. Chinese patients often prefer more fullness than Korean patients do, sometimes also influenced by traditional face-reading beliefs associating temple volume with marital harmony.

Figure 6. Yase Onna (left) and Kohime (right), contrasting characters from traditional Japanese masked theater. Source: https://nohmask21.com/eu/yaseonna.html

In East Asian aesthetics, a lateral cheek without hollowing is often preferred. In traditional Japanese masked theater, Yase Onna has prominent cheekbones and an angular face and is portrayed here as a jealous antagonist. Kohime, associated with beauty, has rounded contours and a profile reminiscent of the flowing lines of Goryeo celadon. This double curve is called the ogee curve and is important to the perceived beauty of facial contour.

The lateral cheek is layered from skin to subcutaneous fat, SMAS, and sub-SMAS fat, with a very dense parotid fascia beneath. Arteries, the parotid gland, and nerves lie deepest within the parotidomasseteric fascia. Hollowing occurs between the zygomatic ligament, zygomatic cutaneous fascia, parotid fascia, and masseteric fascia. The first cause is loss of superficial and sub-SMAS fat. The second is differential laxity: fibrous bands limit loosening near ligaments, while tissues farther away loosen more. Third, if a strong zygomatic cutaneous ligament holds back fat and skin that would otherwise descend, the lower zygomatic region and masseteric ligament may appear prominent, creating a relative pseudodepression beneath them.

Why can the face look larger with age?

Facial skin aging begins as early as the twenties, while fat and muscle changes begin around the mid-thirties. Tissues around the scalp and ears contain little subcutaneous fat and have a thick, tough SMAS that resists stretching, with firm connections between internal structures. In contrast, the cheeks around the nose and mouth and the tissues along the jawline have a thinner SMAS, more fat, and looser internal attachments, making them more prone to descent with age.

Skin around the eyes is only one-fifth to one-seventh as thick as skin elsewhere on the face, so wrinkles appear here first. Just as people with naturally thin, fragile skin develop lines early, this region shows collagen loss, reduced elasticity, and increasing wrinkles at a relatively young age. The eyes must move constantly in every direction, and abundant surrounding fat cushions them within the bony orbit. When the surrounding skin and muscles lose elasticity, the tissues may bulge forward. Fat above and below the eye is often connected; downward redistribution under gravity can therefore leave the upper lid hollow while making lower-eyelid fat more prominent.

Alongside these skin and fat changes, ligaments anchoring the skin to bone form an oval around the orbital rim. In contrast with protruding orbital fat, fixed linear attachments such as the tear trough become more visible.

Under-eye aging is often reduced to “bulging fat,” leading people to assume that removing the fat is all that is needed. In 2005, however, R. A. Goldberg and colleagues evaluated several components: tear-trough depression, orbital fat prolapse, reduced skin elasticity, eyelid edema, orbicularis prominence, and malar mounds. They also assigned numerical scores to these features. See Goldberg, Robert Alan, et al., “What Causes Eyelid Bags? Analysis of 114 Consecutive Patients,” Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery 115.5 (2005):1395–1402.

The retaining ligaments around the eye, including the orbicularis retaining, tear-trough, and zygomatic cutaneous ligaments, are important in lower-eyelid aging. The visible protrusions and hollows of the under-eye area and midface are often described as mounds and grooves. Mounds include lower-lid bulges, malar mounds, and malar fat pads. Grooves include the tear trough, comprising the nasojugal and palpebromalar grooves, the midcheek groove, and the nasolabial fold. Some people are most bothered by a hollow tear trough; others by the bulging, descended malar fat pad between the midcheek groove and nasolabial fold. These contours emerge from the interplay of retinacula cutis, retaining ligaments, and muscles of facial expression that influence superficial fat migration and tension.

Nasolabial folds also deepen with age. A close look at Alfredo in Cinema Paradiso reveals a midcheek groove running alongside the nasolabial fold, together with marionette lines and jowls. As jawline definition is lost, the boundary between face and neck becomes unclear. Children often begin a drawing of a person with the outline, and a clearly defined facial outline does give a sharper, more youthful impression.

Four midface muscles involved in smiling lift the nasolabial region, three pull the mouth corners and jawline downward, and one elevates the chin. Over time, the mouth corners and jawline tend to descend while the chin becomes more prominent. Deep fat pads lie at the base of the nasolabial region, with muscles of facial expression running in different directions above them. The broad space beneath the cheekbone allows varied muscle attachment angles. Superficial fat lies above these muscles. The main muscles attaching to the nasolabial fold are the levator labii superioris alaeque nasi, levator labii superioris, and zygomaticus major and minor.

Figure 7. Alfredo and Toto in Cinema Paradiso. Source: https://aspenfilm.org/film/cinema-paradiso-1988.

The first type of nasolabial fold reflects local differences in tissue volume, particularly insufficient volume beside the nasal ala. The canine fossa of the maxilla, which supports this region from below, is recessed. Nasolabial fat bulges above the fold, while there is naturally very little superficial fat below the fold beside the nostril.

The second type results from age-related soft-tissue descent. Upper-lip skin below the fold is relatively firmly attached to the underlying orbicularis oris and stretches less; skin and tissue above the fold are more loosely attached. With age, superficial nasolabial fat over the anterior cheek thickens and descends over the firmly attached upper-lip skin. Filler placed parallel to such a fold may be unable to move downward and instead shift upward, making the region above the fold fuller and the crease more pronounced.

The third type arises as muscles originating at the cheekbone descend toward the mouth corner and run superficially, pulling on skin beneath the lower border of the nasolabial fat. These include the levator labii superioris alaeque nasi, levator labii superioris, and zygomaticus major and minor.

A marionette line is an oblique crease from the mouth corner toward the jawline that remains visible at rest, also called a static labiomandibular fold. It usually runs backward and downward along the posterior border of the depressor anguli oris. Bone, ligaments, and soft tissues all contribute. In White and Black populations, the modiolus (the muscular convergence near the mouth corner) usually lies at or above the corner. In East Asian populations, including Koreans, it commonly lies about 11 mm lateral and 9 mm inferior to it. This helps explain why the mouth corners may appear more downturned at rest in East Asian faces.

Among East Asian individuals as well, a lower modiolus is associated with a greater tendency toward mouth-corner descent and creasing with age. The most superficial modiolus muscle, the depressor anguli oris, and the superficial and deep fibers of the intermediate-depth orbicularis oris occupy different planes. Greater separation between these planes can allow a depression at the mouth corner and an oblique vertical commissural line. An increasing thickness difference between the cheek's superficial jowl fat and the subcutaneous tissues of the lower lip can also deepen this line and cause mouth-corner drooping.

Jowls may develop through inferior migration of the fat compartment itself or loosening of the mandibular septum. Migration of the compartment produces more pronounced submalar hollowing. Jowling involves shortening of the supraplatysmal plane, with relatively little descent beneath the platysma. Skin stretching contributes, but redundant subcutaneous tissue also develops. Traditionally, the mandibular ligament was thought to form a firm bone-to-skin attachment responsible for jowls and marionette lines, with the anterior jowl border corresponding to the marionette line.

A recent paper, Minelli, Lennert, et al., “The Surgical Anatomy of the Jowl and the Mandibular Ligament Reassessed,” Aesthetic Plastic Surgery 47.1 (2023):170–180, found that the fullest part of the jowl lies over the posterior end of the mandibular septum. This is where the mandibular ligament ends and, histologically, where the retinacular fibers are longest. The authors also found that subplatysmal structures do not contribute to jowl volume.

Micro-CT examination of tissues around the jowl showed that muscle attaches to bone, but the connection from muscle to skin consists of dense and loose retinacula cutis rather than a firm ligamentous structure. The authors propose that this permits skin gliding when the mouth opens. The deep third of the mandibular ligament connects with the platysma, depressor labii inferioris, and depressor anguli oris and attaches close to bone. Toward the skin, however, it is described as a dense retinacular structure rather than a true osteocutaneous ligament extending from bone to skin.

Skeletal changes occur slowly but affect both soft tissues and overall facial form. A slight increase in anterior facial height, mostly in the lower face, begins in the twenties and thirties, and mandibular length continues to increase afterward. Maxillary retrusion in the thirties and forties influences the nasolabial folds. Craniofacial remodeling begins in the forties and fifties and continues through the fifties and sixties. After the sixties, craniofacial convexity changes substantially across the maxilla and mandible.

(To be continued in the next issue)

References

1. Cho Yong-jin, Faces: The Face of the Korean People, Sakyejul, 1999.
2. Cho Yong-jin, Beauty, Hainaim Publishing, 2007.
3. The Merz Scale
4. Galanin, Ivan, Carina Nicu, and Jacob I. Tower. "Facial fat fitness: a new paradigm to understand facial aging and aesthetics." Aesthetic Plastic Surgery 45(2021): 151-163.
5. Pessa, Joel E. "An algorithm of facial aging: verification of Lambros's theory by three-dimensional stereolithography, with reference to the pathogenesis of midfacial aging, scleral show, and the lateral suborbital trough deformity." Plastic and reconstructive surgery 106.2(2000): 479-488.
6. Goldberg, Robert Alan, et al. "What causes eyelid bags? Analysis of 114 consecutive patients." Plastic and reconstructive surgery 115.5(2005): 1395-1402.
7. Alghoul, Mohammed, and Mark A. Codner. "Retaining ligaments of the face: review of anatomy and clinical applications." Aesthetic surgery journal 33.6(2013): 769-782.
8. Mendelson, Bryan C., et al. "Surgical anatomy of the lower face: the premasseter space, the jowl, and the labiomandibular fold." Aesthetic Plastic Surgery 32.2(2008): 185-195.
9. Reece, Edward M., and Rod J. Rohrich. "The aesthetic jaw line: management of the aging jowl." Aesthetic surgery journal 28.6(2008): 668-674.
10. Minelli, Lennert, et al. "The surgical anatomy of the jowl and the mandibular ligament reassessed." Aesthetic plastic surgery 47.1(2023): 170-180.

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