Christina Ricci with a forehead reduction - Better? Worse? Masculine? Feminine?

This probably isn't the best photo to start with since Ms. Ricci's hairline looks kind of crooked, one eyebrow looks higher than the other and her smile is leaning one direction too, but here she is...

Christina Ricci "before" (with her naturally high forehead) and "after" (with a shorter forehead)

Does she look less masculine? Some FFS doctors say that women have lower hairlines (although this is not true). So if you believe that, then she should look more feminine, right? But to me her masculinity/femininity seems unchanged. She looks better to me, but not more feminine. I think this is because her hairline has a feminine shape to it. It's not receding at the corners at all.

One thing that COULD affect masculinity and femininity when lowering a hairline is how the overall proportions of her face change. If Christina had a long chin, and we made her hairline lower, her chin would look longer in relation to her forehead. As an example, here's Bill Clinton.

Bill Clinton "before", with his natural hairline, and "after", with a lower one.

Mr. Clinton has a long chin, but it's somewhat balanced out by his tall forehead. It's not the first thing you notice when you look at him. But when you make his forehead smaller, the focal point of his face changes and the balance goes off kilter. He, like Christina Ricci, does not look more feminine with a lower hairline. If anything, I think he looks more masculine with that big chin.

Facial Proportions - Tori Spelling with a Higher Hairline and Slimmer Nose

In my last post about facial proportions, in which I Photoshopped Tori Spelling to show what FFS doctors might do to her if they got a hold of her, I did not change two things:

1. I stopped short of raising her hairline because FFS doctors would never do such a thing. The common belief (or mistake?) is "the lower the better" and that high hairlines are masculine. So in the photo of her, her facial proportions were not quite in tune with Leonardo da Vinci's guidelines (that the face is divided into thirds).
2. Also, although I made her nose more symmetrical, I did not make her nose narrower. In art class, it is often taught that the outer edges of the nose line up with the inner edges of the eyes. I'm not sure if that holds true for all ethnicities, but there are other guidelines out there as well. This is jut one of them.

So, although FFS doctors would never raise a hairline, here she is... Tori Spelling with the changes I made to her in an earlier post, and Tori with a taller forehead and narrower nose.

Approximate facial proportions in the "before" and "after" photos.

	Before	After
Top Third	30%	33%
Middle Third	35%	33%
Lower Third	35%	33%

Do you think the higher forehead makes her look more masculine?

Are high hairlines really a masculine trait?

A while ago I saw photos of a Swedish MTF transsexual who had facial feminization surgery by Dr. Yaremchuk in Boston, Massachusetts. (All the photos and YouTube videos have since disappeared though.) I have to say that I have been amazed at his skill and the quality of work, but I believe he was working outside his level of expertise when he took on this patient because the hairline was left too low, among other things.

But in the field of FFS, it seems that patients are routinely expected to get hairline lowering. I've seen hairline lowering that actually left the hairline looking higher than it had been previously. For example if the patient has a widow's peak (not a receding hairline, just a little widow's peak) and that is removed, it makes a difference in the overall look of the forehead.For example:

Vanessa William with her widow's peak, and without it.

But my question is whether high hairlines really look masculine. I once read a statement on a doctor's web site that it's better to go too low than too high. Alexandra, at Virtual FFS doesn't believe that men's hairlines are higher than women's (she explains why here) and I agree with her. She has visual evidence to back her up, after all. Doctors' web sites don't refer to anything. They don't cite sources. So until I see proof otherwise, I will trust the evidence I can see.

But the one thing that doctors don't mention, but I find true, is that short foreheads look weird. For example, the "before" photo is Teresa Giudice's natural forehead. Her scalp hair grows directly on the flat area of her forehead above her eyes. In the "after" photo, I made her hairline too high. 

I think her forehead looks too high in the "after" photo, but it's not especially weird looking, aside from being huge and unnaturally flat. Also, if a doctor lowers a hairline too much, then it's not like one can remove the hair by laser or electrolysis because a massive scar will show.

Ok, enough on hairlines, but I have one more photo. Tyra Banks with a low forehead like Teresa Giudice. (This is young Tyra, before her nose job and the wigs that cover up her naturally high, very high, hairline.)

Would she have made it in modeling with the very low hairline?

Reese Witherspoon #2 - Forehead Reduction

I was looking at my earlier photo of her in which I had given her a chin reduction and thought... if she were to get facial feminization surgery, she would probably also get a forehead reduction as well. So I gave her one (in addition to the chin work).

I didn't change her forehead to match any concept of ideal facial proportions though. I just eyeballed it. It could be a little to short, perhaps.