It’s been long overdue, but considering I use this face so much in showing ideal spatial
proportions, it’s worth giving Australian male model Jordan Barret an episode of his
own.
Jordan comes from the humble coastal town of Byron Bay, Australia.
If you’ve never been to Byron, this place is quite literally what the rest of the world
thinks all of Australia is like.
Beach blonde surfers, pristine beaches and lavish beach houses.
I won’t lie in saying a lot of Australia is like this, but the people of Byron are
especially laid back.
Plus, you can catch Chris Hemsworth and a number of famous celebs running about.
Apart from the obvious tourism ad, this background context is important in explaining part of
Jordan’s appeal, especially internationally as a free spirited icon.
Firstly, lets breakdown his aesthetic appeal.
While his face is handsome and proportionate it’s also very androgenous which gives him
the pretty boy look that matches so well with his personality.
What I mean by this is that his face looks very similar to a number of masculine female
models, the closest of which I can think of is Kelly Mittendorf.
Normally I would compare a male face to another male but for this video Kelly is a better
analogue to show what each other lacks that makes their faces subtly different.
Jordan’s jaw inclination is a lot shallower while Kelly's is more obtuse.
Jordan’s jaw has a feminine shape whereas Kelly’s has a masculine one.
In fact all of Kelly’s face is tall but wide throughout, being virtually rectangular
and very masculinely dimorphic.
Being a woman, this is uncommon and is what gives her a unique appearance, much like Karina
Kapoor or Angelina Jolie who are also celebrated as beauty standards despite having a masculine,
squared off face shape.
Jordan on the other hand also has a wide, proportionate jaw, but it’s shape and appearance
are feminine by Mommaerts 2016 study on male jaws.
Part of this is due to how short and compact his face is which is actually a feminine dimorphic
trait.
For instance, the gonial angle, or the jaw angle is around 140 degrees, which is on the
feminine end and beyond the ideal 130 proposed by the study.
Although this ideal, as found in the paper, is a more feminine angle, because as it turns
out, women prefer more feminine pretty boy jaws, over strong drill sergeant jaws of less
than 130.
This is a big generalization but there is truth to people preferring the most average
bell curve gonial angle of 130, rather than 90 or 150 which are on either ends of the
masculine feminine spectrum and don’t reflect a koinophillic face.
All of this was covered in the defining beauty video on jaws, so visit that for more context.
For posterity, Karina Kapoor’s jaw is virtually 90 degrees which is very masculine and Kelly’s
is roughly 130 which is still below the quote on quote feminine ideal of 135 for women.
There’s also an article write up on female jaw aesthetics at the qoves site.
Before we move on from the jaw, because it is a very big part of his appeal, I should
also mention the jaw width (bigonial width) is basically 1:1 with his facial width (bizygomatic).
Mommaerts paper suggested that the jaw width should be 90% of the facial width and if you’ve
been following the channel for a while now, virtually every attractive face passes this
criteria, male or female.
Having a wide jaw is necessary for producing a hollow cheek look and no amount of leanness
can emphasise the ogee curve, which is this line here from the cheek to the mouth, if
there isn’t something beneath it to provide visual contrast.
I’ve also covered this concept in detail using Bella Hadid as an example in Episode
1 of Analyzing celebrity faces so visit that too after.
The last point I want to make about his lower third that many might miss is just how wide
his neck is.
Browsing Tiktok, as 1 in 3 people do apparently, I came across a man with similar bone structure,
but his neck is a lot skinnier which makes the head look like it’s floating.
In Jordan’s case it’s the same width as his face even though he’s stated that he
doesn’t need to work out and is very lean anyway, so he’s genetically gifted in that
regard.
Anyone can widen their neck through muscle hypertrophy.
but it would benefit men the most, having the wider faces of the two in balancing their
proportions.
Moving up to the midface, Jordan is basically the gold standard for facial width to height
ratio.
This is a concept that’s talked about on the channel all the time and is studied extensively
in scientific literature as it has a strong influence in how we perceive people initially.
Research shows that faces with wider, more vertically compact midfaces are seen as more
masculine and dominant whereas the opposite holds true in taller, narrower faces.
Part of this is due to wider midfaces typically stretching the eye canthus out further to
create intimidating, deep set eyes.
A good counter to that argument might be former basketballer Marko Jaric but if you look closely,
his eyes are still wide with appropriate exposure, but only appear beady because their interpupillary
distances are small.
In other words, they appear too close together.
That’s a more niche problem to have, with most people having appropriate spatial proportions
anyway.
Jordan’s eyes are also hooded which is great for making them appear even narrower and more
masculine.
They also have a slight positive canthal tilt which means that the eyes slant downwards.
Narrower eyes have less rotational symmetry but his come to be around 5 degrees which
is the Caucasian average.
Unsurprisingly Keating 1985 found that men with smaller, masculinized eyes are perceived
as more mature or more socially dominant.
What I’d like to point out in this candid shot of him are some of the cosmetic flaws
that even a top tier male model has in reality that are hidden in a posed shot like this.
Lighting does matter and In this photo, his cheeks aren’t nearly as defined or hollow,
his skin tone has some erythema at parts (skin redness) and there are small blemishes and
age lines forming, especially near his paranasal and mouth.
Also, the harsh lighting exposes some of his submental from the front, which is obviously
not something you would ever be able to see if he’s posed and ready for a shoot.
He does smoke, drink and live on a few hours of sleep from his interviews and social media,
so its dubious how well his skin will age at least, especially being very pale and focused
heavily on tanning as part of his modelling look.
As explained in the last video, sun damage, with the amount of hours Jordan gets if you
follow his social media has very adverse effects on skin ageing, especially those with less
melanin.
Dr Sony Sherpa has written an article on choosing sunscreens and their limitations over at the
QOVES website to checkout.
In the posed photo he looks drastically different.
The photo quality is granier, likely added in post production because this isn’t 1990
anymore, which reduces the appearance of skin blemishes.
Also, the photo has a clear retro filter on it judging by the off-black colour of his
jacket and the red of the background.
This would likely be a colour look up table in Photoshop which individually changes colour
values to whatever you’d like rather than a basic instagram filter which just changes
everything to a few shades darker or lighter.
That would be my guess for his tanned skin tone.
Lo and behold this is the original shutterstock image and this is the one from his Project
Zero profile page.
Still very handsome but the skin colour is overexposed and shiny which is more of the
editors fault than his.
Lastly, in virtually all of his candid photos on the red carpet he doesn’t have hollow
cheeks so he’s very clearly posing here by sucking it in slightly, clenching his jaw
and resting his tongue on the roof of his mouth which is a common technique to get the
blue steel look.
Something fewer people would notice is how he deliberately keeps his head level and creates
space with his body because that accentuates his jaw width more.
Had he not done this, his jaw would blend in with his neck and we wouldn’t be able
to demarcate where it begins to fully appreciate it.
All small things that he and most models do to look otherworldly attractive.
One thing that I noticed about him in making this video is that his transverse proportions
are not ideal, as is common with people with very wide faces at the outer fifths.
It’s rare for the eyes to be too close together but it is common for the eyes to be too far
from the facial boundary, especially when the face in question has a lot of extra mass
pushing it outwards further in the form of zygomatic projection.
Jordan’s very high set cheekbones add a lot of extra width to his midface which furthers
his facial width to height ratio in appearing more aggressive.
Using Powel Et al’s method of measuring cheekbone prominence, his most prominent part
is very far outwards laterally from his eyes, which is still desirable because for most
people the cheekbones project forwards rather than out.
This outward projection again helps to define his ogee curve which is a sign of youth.
Another striking feature on Jordan are his eyebrows.
Thick eyebrows are a sign of virility and for someone who’s naturally pale, blonde
and blue-eyed having dark eyebrows is a striking feature that goes against the norm which modelling
loves.
A better example would be Cara delavigne.
Also, his eyebrows strongly extend past the alar to canthus line whereas for most people
that i’ve seen, it barely touches it or thinly tapers off.
This is one of the guidelines created by Yalcinkaya Et al 2014, but there are numerous studies
on ideal eyebrow proportions to cover for a future video.
According to Morgilski and Welling 2018, 1000 participants rated faces with thicker well
kept eyebrows as more attractive.
In fact I quote: both eyebrow thickness and jawbone prominence were more important than
cheekbone prominence and eye size when ranking faces for attractiveness.’
This is unsurprising as eyebrow thickness is a sign of circulating testosterone and
desirable grooming qualities.
The study also noted that eyebrow thickness, face height and jawbone prominence were the
more important factors in attractiveness, all of which are things that Jordan’ face
excels in.
While there are a number of proportion tests that we could cover, that would be beating
a dead horse.
His face is very proportionate and close to the ideal masculine shape for modern men.
It has a strong mix of feminine and masculine features and isn’t overly to one side or
the other which is what makes androgenous faces such as his so unique to look at.
Instead, the bigger change to his appearance over the years has been his skin tone.
When Jordan started off, he was very pasty and pale, looking like 2012 Justin Beiber
in the Boyfriend Music video.
Nowadays, a portion of his time is spent tanning to maintain the look.
It’s part of playing up his persona as a laid back Australian surfer on the international
market and quite honestly being tanned does make a difference in his shoots when it's
done correctly.
In fact his editors go far to play up this role as much as possible, trying to mimic
the skin flushness caused by the hot sun (erythema), the fair blonde locks turning darker with
greater eumelanin production and skin graininess which is a sign of sun damage.
When done incorrectly he looks incredibly sunburnt as his skin fights back.
It’s important to identify the ways the modelling industry can make models look better
through posture, posing and editing, while also recognising that it takes a certain level
of bone structure and proportion to make it in the industry.