﻿Back by popular demand, we’re doing Analysing Celebrity Faces again on the channel and if
you want it to continue, show your support by liking the video. For today’s episode,
I’m looking at one of the most requested faces for the past few months, Michael B. Jordan.
To me Michael’s appeal is extremely unique and I’ve been meaning to make this video for a while
now, but for a completely different reason. As we’re going to discuss in this episode, his
facial features aren’t very strong or striking, in fact they’re plain and in some places quite
lacking like his jaw and lower third. However a combination of his on screen portrayals, social
status, loveable persona, neotenous facial features and body muscularity
actually make him very desirable in the sense that he seems like an above average person you might
realistically expect to see walking down the street one day. This is the same phenomenon
discussed with Ryan Gosling’s appeal, where despite lacking many of the ideal characteristics
that make a face attractively masculine and striking, like a strong jaw and wide midface,
Gosling is still considerably desirable which comes from a combination of his on-screen personas
blending into his off-screen lifestyle. A better example of this is Robert Downey Jr. who
after starring in a number of Ironman films, is now synonymous with his on-screen namesake. He
is quite literally, the suave Tony Stark both on and off-screen, and so this larger than life image
these actors create for themselves make up for any shortcoming in their physical appearance to make
them hollywood sex symbols, despite not having all of the conventional features needed for men
to look attractive. A man’s desirability is said to depend on a Looks Money and Status scale, and
while I personally don’t agree with the equal weighting of each, these men have abundance of
all three of these desirable traits, despite not being masters of any. A male model may be maxed
out in looks, whereas the Queen is about as high as one can get in status and Mr Bezos or any other
Oligarch may have vast amounts of hidden wealth to be maxed out in financial resources.
It would be inaccurate to say that Michael B. Jordan’s appeal comes entirely from his physical
looks, because it certainly doesn’t and fairplay to him, we shouldn’t expect it to, because he
is paid to act but I harp on this because it’s important to understand the influence celebrity
status has in making a man more desirable. The best way to illustrate this is to compare his
features to that of a black male model who does make their living from their looks alone. The
most notable difference is his recessed chin and I’m certainly not the only person to notice it,
this has been a topic of discussion on the orthotropic, orthodontic and dental subreddits
for as long as Jordan has been popular. Having a recessed chin pushes the submental fat downwards,
giving his face a double-chinned look, even though he is remarkably lean. On the other hand,
having a sufficiently long mandible body, which also includes the chin protuberance,
pulls the submental, in other words under-chin fat much more tightly and doesn’t allow it to hang as
much. This is significant, and one of the key characteristics of both male and female models,
where in previous videos we’ve harped on the modelling industry’s bias in choosing women
with stronger jaws and more masculine features. A defined lower third is important because it gives
the impression of leanness which is important when runway clothes are made to a certain size.
The degree of tautness of the underchin region can be measured with the mentocervical angle
running form the menton, or the base of the chin, to the cervical point where the throat
and face meet, hence the name. With Michael, his jaw ends here, as outlined by his jaw gonion,
or the most laterally outward part of the jaw, and all of this is soft tissue that hangs downwards.
In most movies, I’ve noticed that he pulls his mandible forward to hide some of this recession,
but this type of chin and mandible recession is not uncommon in those with African decent, where
we covered the statistics in this video. Biracial ex-felon Jeremy Meeks, also has a recessed chin
and mandible and part of this look is genetic with bimaxillary protrusion leading to larger
than average lips which throw off the balance of the face if the jaw is not defined and long
enough to match. One way to measure this degree of discrepancy is with what’s known as the Esthetic
E-line test, proposed by Ricketts Et al, where a line drawn from the nose tip to the chin tip
should not pass through the lips. In other words, the lips should be ideally 2-6mm behind the line,
to keep the nose and chin the main features of the side profile, and not have the lips overpower the
face which is what’s causing the disharmony we see here. With the male model his features also
fail the test, but by a much smaller number of 1-2mm, and with African faces having generally
larger lip vermillion, this is expected and still within an acceptable range. However, I dont think
Michael B. Jordan’s jaw recession bother him all that much. Correcting it would be practically
easy with his finances, and something as simple as chin implants would make a huge difference,
but then think to yourself, when was the last time you saw an actor’s side profile?
Moving onto his midface, one of the things that stick out to me is how large his orbital opening
is, in other wards, his eyeball opening. In this skeleton model, your eyeball sits in a
small portion of this orbital opening, so it wouldn’t be necessarily correct to say
that those with large orbital openings must have large eyes and vice versa, because the anatomy
of the periocular region is much more nuanced. The forward projection of the undereye region
is much more important and is influenced by the projection of your cheekbones, aka malar
projection. To visualize this, lets go back to the male model. His midface face is wide and short, in
other words it is said to have a high facial width to height ratio. On the channel we’ve covered why
this FWHR ratio is important, where many studies have shown that wider, shorter faces correlate
with increased fighting ability, perceptions of social dominance and facial dimorphism,
in other words, it’s a characteristic trait that makes men, seem more like men on the androgenicity
chart. Wide, short faces aka Euryprosopic faces like most male models, have their cheekbones
much further apart with increased bizygomatic width, where the zygomas can be thought of as the
lateral peak of the cheekbones. The cheekbones are often slightly lower too, as they extend
laterally outward, rather than forward as is the case with Michael B. Jordan. One way to test this
is with evaluating Malar prominence as proposed by Powell Et al to find the most outward part
of the cheeks and how far they are from a fixed reference landmark such as the outer corner of the
eyes. Why is any of this important? It gives the male model a much smoother undereye contour with
no unusual depressions or dips which ultimately makes the eyes seem far more deep set nestled
within the a set of sharp cheekbones and strong brow ridge, compared to Michael’s features which
does have a contour dip, with his cheekbones being forward positioned. This dip is more apparent
from the front, where the demarcation between the lower eyelid and the rest of the undereye
region is much darker. With most models the lower eyelid is almost flush with the undereye region
but this is quite a rare trait and so many try to mimic this with under eye fillers.
Having forward facing cheekbones disrupts the undereye region by creating a valley
in contrast to the hill of the malar mound which is your main takeaway here. As a result,
Michael’s eyes are more forward set and another way an Aesthetic surgeon may test for this is
by evaluating the orbital vector where a line drawn from the Cornea of the eyeball should be
behind the undereye features such as the cheekbones and nasojugal pad. While for both,
there eyes are behind, the male model has his eyes far behind his cheekbones, whereas
Michael’s are much closer in line which makes the eyes less deep-set and thus less striking.
Another reason why Michaels’ eyes are quite neotenous, where neotenous refers to Juvenile
or immature is because of his flat brow ridge. Generally men have a much thicker and more
projected brow ridge which is a remnant of our primate ancestors who had more robust facial
characteristics to give them a better fighting chance. If you remember from a few minutes ago,
one of these characteristics is the FWHR which makes the eyes more deep set
to avoid them being gouged out by an attacker's claws. With Jordan, the large orbital opening
paired with the lack of bridge ridge gives his eye region a very soft, feminine appeal
with greater eyelid exposure, thinner brows and rounder eyes. Many makeup channels praise having
higher eyelid exposure for women as it provides more coverage to make the eyes appear larger.
However larger, rounder and less deep-set eyes on men, make them appear as harmless as Bambi,
but this isn’t necessarily a negative you see. If you’ve seen 73 questions by Vogue, a lot of the
women who commented focused on his soft natured persona, his love for his parents and his
displayed intelligence through his love of reading. The softness of his face is disarming and
relatable as someone you can reasonably fantasize about having a meaningful relationship with,
just like RDJ. Gosling and Driver, compared to say an NBA player who’s either going to
date Kendall Jenner or Kourtney Kardashian. These NBA players have very masculine characteristics,
both financially and physically and so their appeal comes from money and
looks rather than status, where I could name every big name Hollywood star like Michael B.
Jordan, but barely more than 2 NBA players if I don’t watch regularly.
Fantasizing over a handsome but high-maintenance NBA player is far more unappealing than
fantasizing over the objectively less handsome but more relatable Michael B. Jordan.
He looks like someone that could be your personal trainer or your local business professional,
and these so called imperfections in his features, the very ones that make him appear less masculine
and more neotenous, more feminine and soft are precisely what make him more appealing and
relatable as a potential partner rather than a sex symbol like how male models are portrayed.
Perhaps you’ve seen Never Have I Ever on netflix. The lead hot guy, Paxton, is played by a 30 year
old actor, and no-one in their right mind would think that this guy is a highschool student.
Granted that he is handsome and has some of the very same masculine facial traits that
Michael B. Jordan lacks. The lead ‘average looking guy’ Ben, looks much more like a
high school student and is far more relatable, and this appearance of looking young and boyish
is because he has neotenous features such as a flatter brow ridge, larger orbital openings,
juvenile hairline and a more leptoprosopic face (tall,narrow) which make him appear harmless.
For the sake of time we’re going to skip any meaningful discussion on his symmetry,
which is surprisingly strong, the koinophilic averageness of his features or the proportion
between regions, however I do recommend you bring it up on the r/qovesstudio subreddit
if you’re interested.To close this episode out, Michael B. Jordan is certainly attractive,
make no mistake that he is above average, even if you did see him walking down the street. A
large part of this comes from his musculature and masculine haircut balancing out his feminine
features which really gives him the best of both worlds. Overly masculine looking men with
sharp robust features are unattractive for being at one end of an extreme and overly gracile men
with no testosterone ornamentation appear unviable as an indicator of genetic health.
The large majority of men have features similar to Michael, of a mildly recessed jaw,
flat browridge and large orbital openings. If you would like to find out for yourself,
or get a detailed analysis, then I recommend that you order a QOVES Aesthetics report,
where we go through your submitted images, applying cephalometric and
geometric standards and provide a full 24 page assessment written by a consulting doctor,
outlining your surgical and non-surgical options and potential regions of improvement.
You can find that over at the QOVES website, along with our Tiktok and Instagram content which
uses photoshop morphs to highlight how features change how your face will look. Also, subscribe
to our Patreon podcast, to learn more about the psychological aspects of why we care about beauty.