Ode to Straight Noses - Part 6 (straight profiles by artists)

Since I usually post photos of people I thought I'd post something different. So here are profiles of beautiful women as portrayed by artists.

Charles Dana Gibson

This is Gibson Girl. She is gorgeous. I don't think she could be any more feminine. Feminine, but adult. Not child-like. Full lips, small mouth, beautifully shaped face, perfect nose, high cheekbones... She was the  personification of the ideal woman of his era, but I think she could be the ideal for an era with that bone structure.

Charles Dana Gibson's Gibson Girl

The Gibson Girl in profile (notice the straight nose)

Harrison Fisher

Harrison Fisher was an artist known for his illustrations of beautiful women. This is what the man did for a living. He drew beautiful women.

 

A very beautiful woman as drawn by the illustrator Harrison Fisher.

Another Harrison Fisher illustration (although this woman has a tiny bump on the bridge). Clearly beautiful though. Clearly feminine.

McClelland Barclay

He was another illustrator. I just thought I'd include this since it shows a comparison between a masculine and the feminine nose.

 

Feminine and masculine noses (both straight) by McClelland Barclay

Thutmose 

This is Nefertiti, as portrayed by an artist well over 3,300 years ago. It is believed that the sculptor is Thutmose. Anyway, Nefertiti was an Egyptian queen known for her beauty (as if this wasn't obvious).

Nefertiti - 3,300 year-old proof that straight noses have always been considered beautiful =)

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.

Ode to Straight Noses - Part 5 (models only)

 Yes, more straight-bridged noses but this time they all belong to models.

The gorgeous Paulina Porizkova. I believe she was, hands down, the most beautiful of the '80s models.

Paulina in an Estee Lauder ad. Notice the straight nose.

More of the extraordinarily beautiful Paulina

The beautifully feminine Monica Bellucci - She started modeling at 13, although that doesn't necessarily mean she's good looking. Runway models are often odd looking or masculine. But Monica is clearly NOT one of them.

More Monica Bellucci

Monica Bellucci in profile

As usual I have to mention that if she visited FFS doctors, many would suggest surgery to correct her profile to make it more scooped and pig-like. But in my opinion, if beauty means being able to see up a person's nostrils while viewing her straight on, give me ugliness =)

Heidi Klum won her first modeling competition, against nearly 25,000 other contestants, with a classic, straight, non-piggish nose.

Jennifer Aniston without George Clooney's chin

George Clooney and his very masculine chin

Ever wonder how Jennifer Aniston would look without that chin? Me too. I've even checked out photos of her parents. Neither one of them has it. Anyway, below is the by-product of my curiosity... more before and after photos. Notice that in the "after" photo, her chin is:

• shorter
• pointier
• an extension of her jawline instead of a protrusion from it

I think she's unrecognizable.Maybe I should have made it longer.

Jennifer Aniston "before" Photoshop surgery (with her natural, masculine-shaped, square, long chin) and "after" (with a pointier, shorter, more feminine chin)

Do I think this makes her face more feminine? Yes, I do. If she were my friend, I'd consider her my "pretty" friend, whereas before she would have been my friend with the good body and great legs.

Ode to Straight Noses - Part 4

Yes, more straight noses.... If your FFS doctor tries to convince you that in order to pass or be beautiful, your nose needs to have a scooped bridge and be turned up like a pig snout (ok, my words, not theirs), remember these lovely women and their straight noses.

Rita Hayworth

I

Rita Hayworth

It's also worth mentioning that this hairline on Rita Hayworth is not natural. It was created through electrolysis. Her original hairline was lower in the corners. So in order to make her more attractive they gave her a hairline that FFS doctors would consider more masculine, but it worked.

Lucille Ball (She started out as a model and showgirl before doing comedy)

More Lucille Ball

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alicia Keys' great profile (she may look even better than she does from the front) and perfectly straight nose

 

Liv Tyler and her straight nose

High prenatal androgens cause boys to tilt their heads up when having their photos taken... or, Are square jaws a masculine trait? - Part 2

I was just looking at the abstract for the article "Second-to-fourth digit ratio and facial shape in boys: the lower the digit ratio, the more robust the face" by Meindl, Windhager, et al., and also looking at the accompanying photos which can be seen in an earlier post or here. And although I don't have access to the article, so cannot be sure, based on what I can see I'd say that the methods were faulty and the results should just be thrown out. The photographs were not taken consistently, which means they have no baseline to work from. No baseline means crap data.

In the first image below, the boy's head is tilted down and his ears line up at his eyebrows. In the middle photo, his ears line up below the eyebrows, and in the last photo his ears line up with his eyes. The difference can be seen by looking at his nose, too.

Here's a clue. It's not prenatal androgens.

What does this mean? It means I should start moonlighting writing scholarly articles for Proceedings of the Royal Society :) The image below shows the photographic evidence from the 2012 article, but with Angelina Jolie's face where the little boy face should go.

Photo showing that when Angelina's head is tilted down (look at the ears in the 1st photo), she suddenly has a more feminine, V-shaped face. And when her head is tilted up, a masculine, squarer jaw. But this is NOT due to prenatal androgens. It's just how things work, which is why taking photographs consistently is important. For more info, look up foreshortening.

Also, I returned to check the 2005 article and it doesn't include ears in the images so I cannot guess the accuracy of its findings. Under the 'Methods' section it says it just asked the men to look straight ahead. But its drawings don't have the telltale signs of inconsistency shown in the 2012 article. For example:

1. In the first image (shown above), the boys nose is pointy, in the last it isn't.
2. In the first image, the eyebrows are straignter (much like Angelina's) and the last image they are more arched (like Angelina's). 
3. In the first image the mouth is curved up, in the middle straight across, and in the last one curved down (again, like Angelina's)..

These are effects caused by tilting the head, and none of them appear to the degree they do in the image from the 2005 study shown below.

So, in a nutshell, the 2012 article's results cannot be trusted (just my opinion, of course). The 2005 article appears legit though, which would mean that higher levels of prenatal androgens result in a squarer, broader face whereas lower prenatal androgens result in a pointier chin and a face that is less square overall (longer than it is wide).

To be continued....

Are square jaws a masculine trait?

Recently I was asked my opinion on square jaws by a reader of this blog. I really didn't know where to start though. I thought I knew what the reader was getting at, but didn't think there was a good enough definition for the term, really. Sometimes "square" seems to refer to a square shaped face and at other times a defined jaw line.

What "square" means in the fields of medicine and anthropology...

But John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist and professor of anthropology, has a web site that gets to the point nicely. The angle of a person's jaw, shown below, differs somewhat between men and women. "In males, the angle [sic] is closer to 90 degrees. In females, this angle is greater, up to 110 -120 degrees." Hence the term "square jawed", I would assume.

mandibular or gonial angle

Other articles say this isn't a reliable determinant of gender though. Ethnicity and other factors play a role in determining the gonial angle. But since these articles are written by forensic anthropologists, their interest lies in being able to determine sex from skeletal remains. Our interests are different. We are looking at people face to face so have visual clues regarding age and ethnicity.

Jaw angle does affect face shape...

Another thing I learned from reading books on anthropology and forensic facial reconstruction is that the gonial angle definitely does affect that shape of one's face from the front. The squarer the jaw, the more likely the person will have a round or square face, as opposed to an oval or triangle-shaped face.

Androgens affect face shape...

We know this. We can SEE this. But here are some articles that show the difference prenatal testosterone makes. When a person's ring finger is longer than his or her index finger, this results in a lower 2D:4D ratio (2nd digit to 4th digit ratio) which signifies higher androgen exposure in the womb.

'Manly' Fingers Make For Strong Jawline in Young Boys (Note that this 2012 study had a very small sample size of 17. See the abstract here.)

Less prenatal androgens resulted in a more feminine, triangular, face shape, as seen on the left. This differs greatly from the masculine face, which is square-shaped.

Second to fourth digit ratio and face shape (2005 study of 106 volunteers)

Again, the more prenatal exposure to androgens, as seen on the far left, the squarer the face shape.

To be continued...