﻿Quannah Rose Chasinghorse-Potts made history as the first Indigenous woman to walk for Chanel.
Originally from Alaska, her face is quite distinct from other household modeling names.
The obvious is that her face is tattooed as a traditional rite of passage in her culture.
We’ve touched on tattoos and attractiveness in a past Qoves beauty podcast,
but here the tattoos do not serve towards improving attractiveness. Aside from that,
her facial structure has a set of proportions and angles that makes her attractive face
look different from many others in the fashion world. Her side profile is especially different
in a good way; so let us begin with that. Quannah’s jawline is unique to most models
because it does not have that traditionally sharp separation between the ramus and mandible.The chin
region is also not as prominent or forward grown as in a Giselle Bunchen. Despite this,
the gonial, or jaw angle still remains in a harmonious range at 129 degrees. The jaw angle
indicates that the jaw is neither too rounded, downward grown, or flat.
Despite a shorter ramus length, her jaw still has an angle that is within an attractive range.
Since women have on average higher gonial angles than men, this also adds some femininity into a
face with such a pronounced zygomatic region. When talking about ‘recession’,
or the face or chin region being recessed, we like to jump to conclusions based on the first
impression. At first glance, it can certainly appear that her chin and mandible are recessed.
However, recession is complex because it does not only have to do with the jaw.How far the nose,
brow bone, maxilla, and lips protrude can all change apparent recession. To help discover
whether Quannah truly is ‘recessed’, a few angles and assessments can be used. The first and most
common is the frankfort plane assessment. What this does is take a line drawn from the ear
towards the lower part of the orbital bone and through the nose. While different setups of the
plane are practiced by different orthodontists and surgeons, the general idea of the assessment is
to standardize the positioning of the head when making cephalometric measurements.The
line is then drawn from the chin(or pogonion), perpendicular or 90 degrees with the frankfort
plane. The chin should lie in line with the nasion at the minimum to not be considered
recessed. Quannah is actually not recessed by this test as we can see that propper alignment.
While using the frankfort plane assessment, we can also draw a line parallel to the frankfort
horizontal line from the mouth to find out how well the ramus is developed. The gonion, or
where the end of the mandible starts to curve up towards the ears, should be set below this line.
Quannah passes both of these tests so clearly she has well above average facial development.
The next couple of assessments are facial convexity and total facial convexity which
basically show how flat or round the profile is. Lower angles are more spherical or convex,
while higher angles are flatter profiles. The difference between the two is that total facial
convexity considers the nose protrusion, while facial convexity does not. While Quannah has a
great total facial convexity, her facial convexity does point to a more rounded profile. Her angle is
quite low; and can clue us into a misalignment in either the lower face, midface, or upper face.
Similar to those angles, we can also calculate the nasofacial and nasomental angle. These do
a similar thing, but instead of the whole face, it considers the alignment between the chin(or
pogonion) and nose. In a study by Naini et al, the nasofacial angle was altered in caucasian
men to find the most attractive silhouette. They concluded near 30 degrees is most harmonious and
this is also right near the normal ranges Reddy et al. found in North Indian women of
31.8-37.4 degrees. Both of these angles are within the normal ranges for Quannah,
indicating a harmonious relationship or lack of recession between her nose and chin. She
also has a slight dorsal hump, which adds a refined and strong element to the nose.
The last commonly used assessment considers the lips. There does seem to be a lack of data on an
ideal nasomental line in American Indigenous peoples; within African peoples for example,
more protrusive lips would throw off this measurement. This is misleading
because all the nasomental line does is help point us towards a more cephalometrically
normal relationship between the chin, lips, and nasal tip. Since the ‘normal’ can vary between
racial groups, they should not all be held to the same standard. Thus, we won’t really come
to any conclusion about Quannah's case, but merely just use it within the context of the other angles
to understand her side profile. In Quannah’s case, the line clearly crosses through the lips
indicating either extremely protrusive lips, a set back chin, or an overly prominent nose. While
she does have prominent lips, the most likely option is that her chin is slightly recessed.
Moving on to her ¾ profile, Quannah has a prominent ogee curve
stemming from her malar bones. These high set and prominent cheekbones lend themselves to
her traditionally modelesque appearance. Perhaps her most noticeable feature is her
cheekbones. Even in the frontal profile they overwhelm the face. There is a stereotype of
Native Americans having powerful bone structures; Quannah is no exception. Even with a slightly
longer middle third and a longer midface region overall, her Facial width to height ratio is still
relatively high at 1.87. This is purely a result of large malar mass and a wide bone structure.
Usually a higher FWHR within reason is attractive, as it indicates a face that is neither too long or
compact. This higher FWHR counteracts a slightly longer midface ratio of 0.95 in a harmonious
balancing act. Neither ratio is too extreme, and thus they balance each other out without any one
proportion looking overly uncanny. -------------
Overall, Quannah does not have a ‘perfect’ face in terms of the most harmonious proportions
and angles. Her strength lies in a uniquely captivating array of non-traditional features
including her dorsal hump, weaker chin region, wide yet slightly elongated face shape,
and facial tattoos. Then of course she has a lot of universally attractive traits like
a good jaw, prominent zygomatic region, striking eye area, and full lips. All of these combine
to make a model-like face that grasps the attention of runway audiences.
That is the end of the video. We try to incorporate some unique faces and
suggestions from the comments. So please do keep suggesting these names as
you never know who could be analyzed in a future video.