Multi- racial Facial Golden Ratio Ancient Greeks have attempted to understand
the meaning of beauty and believed that the world is beautiful because of a certain order,
harmony, measure and proportion between its elements.
For centuries, the Golden Ratio or Golden Proportion has been considered as the perfect
or ideal ratio for beauty.
Interestingly, the golden ratio is also prevalent in nature, where it can be seen in the skeletons
of animals and humans, in the arrangement of branches along the stems of plants, in
the spirals of sea shells and in the wing dimensions and location of eye-like spots
on moths.
So, the golden ratio of beauty seems to be quite a universal law of attraction across
the world, so how come there has been such a eurocentric dominance in the research?
Today we are looking at the association of facial proportions and their relation to the
golden ratio.
For those of you who may not know, the ‘golden ratio’ is a special number that represents
a fraction which is meant to represent the most aesthetically pleasing facial proportions
to the human eye.
First termed by Euclid, the ratio, which is 1.618, relates the size of one specific facial
feature to another.
As the ratio is greater than one, the facial part represented on the numerator (or top)
of the fraction, is a greater size than the facial feature represented on the denominator
(or bottom) of the fraction.
A great example of this is the golden ratio of the nose to the lips.
Under the rules of the golden ratio, the perfect size proportion of nose to lips is one where
the size of the nose is 1.618 times greater than the size of the lips.
A.K.A, the nose is approximately 60% larger than the lips.
This ratio has many important applications in the facial aesthetics industry, as it is
a quantifiable measure of beauty which experts can strive for.
The golden ratio has been criticised, like most elements of the facial aesthetics industry,
for its eurocentric bias and lack of experimental evidence on a range of ethnicities.
The main implication of this is that the field of facial aesthetics is limited in a range
of populations due to the lack of scientific evidence on it.
As well as this, the lack of cultural diversity in measurements means that clinicians can
only draw upon eurocentric evidence to further their own understanding, which may lead to
the further spreading of eurocentric beauty standards across the world.
For all these reasons and more, a study by Alam and colleagues in Malaysian universities
investigated the association of facial proportion and its relation to the golden ratio and its
relation to facial attractiveness across a Malaysian Malay, Chinese, and Indian sample.
The aim of this research was to further the ethnic diversity of research for the golden
ratio.
Essentially, the researchers wanted to know if the golden ratio for facial appearance
in western populations was transferable Malaysian populations.
This study has seven main aims that all map onto the wider concept of strengthening the
diversity of samples for facial aesthetics research.
The specific aims of the study include attempting to define ‘normal’ measurements of facial
features in Malaysian’s, attempting to identify the most common facial shapes of the Malaysian
population, and to measure whether these common facial shapes map onto the ideologies of the
golden ratio, and to see if objective measures of facial attractiveness positively correlate
to the desired ratio of facial proportions as instructed by the popular golden ratio.
The subjects of this study consisted of a total of 286 subjects, including 100 Malay,
100 Malaysian Chinese, and 86 Malaysian Indian males and females in early adulthood.
Interestingly, subjects of mixed ethnicity, subjects with craniofacial deformity, and
subjects with a history of orthodontic treatment or facial surgery were excluded from this
study.
The purpose of this was to maintain as much strength in the findings of the study as possible,
allowing the researchers to make specific inferences about ethnicities based on the
data they collected.
First, measurements of all 286 subjects were taken.
If we look towards the image here, the specific measurements included the upper facial height,
measured as the length between the start of the hairline (Trichion) and the middle of
the two eyebrows (Glabella).
This upper facial height measurement looks like a normal forehead measurement.
The second measurement is the middle facial height, measured as the middle of the two
eyebrows, priorly defined as Glabella, and the bottom of the nose, seen in the picture
as Sn.
The lower facial height measurement is from the bottom of the nose (Subnasale) to the
apex of the chin (Menton), and when added all up, the three measurements equal the total
facial height.
As a width measurement, the distance between the two extremes of the upper cheekbone were
taken to give the Bizygomatic Width.
Now while I can all imagine that everyone listening can not get enough of me saying
Trichion, Glabella, Subnasale, Menton and other seemingly made up words, I am going
to stop for a second, as should you, to make sure that you all like this video and subscribe
to the QOVES channel.
This all helps with ensuring we can continue to make as much quality content as possible.
After measuring, each participant was assigned a ratio that corresponded to a particular
facial shape, and this facial shape ratio measure tracked to a specific category that
was comparable to the golden ratio.
This ratio measurement compared the total facial height, from the Menton to the Trichion,
to the Bizygomatic width.
As an example, a total facial height of 20cm and a bizygomatic width of 12cm would be the
equivalent to a ratio of 1.67.
When comparing these ratios, the researchers discovered that a ratio of 1.6 to 1.699 was
considered an ideal shaped face, one that was less than 1.6 was considered short, and
anything greater than 1.699 was considered a long face.
Rest assured, no “Why the long face?”
jokes were undertaken throughout the research procedure.
After the tedious measuring, participants filled out a questionnaire about their demographics
and were then asked to rate the facial appearance of photographs of other participants.
On top of this, the subjects were instructed to look back at their own photograph taken,
and were asked to respond to their own facial appearance, giving an answer that ranged from
satisfied to very unsatisfied.
With all the measurements that took place, including the anthropological measures of
Malaysian Malay, Chinese, and Indian faces, as well as the demographic questions, the
responses of individuals, ratings of other peoples faces and of their own faces, there
was a lot of data output that can be looked at.
First, we can see that Malaysian Chinese subjects have the greatest facial height in both men
and women.
As well as this, we can see that they also had the greatest facial width.
As a preliminary interpretation, we can say that Malaysian Chinese people have the greatest
sized faces.
We can also see that for every ethnicity, the difference in total facial height and
facial width for men and women is significant.
This shows that the overall facial height is a highly sexually dimorphic trait.
When looking at these pie charts, we can see that for Malaysian Malays, a majority of men
and women have a short face (50% in men and 60% in women), with only a minority having
an ideal shaped face (24% of men and 8% of women).
If we look towards the Malaysian Chinese pie graph, we see a similar pattern, with the
largest category of facial shape being short, and only the minority being ideal (16% for
males and 20% for females).
Finally, the trend perpetuates for Malaysian Indians, with around 56% of males and females
having a short face, and the minority having an ideal sized face.
As we can tell by the numbers, only a minority if Malaysian’s fit into the ideal ratio
that is defined by the golden ratio.
However, this did not significantly correlate to the greater majority of Malaysian’s who
were satisfied with their own facial appearance, and the ‘ideal ratios’ that are talked
about in the golden ratio do not positively correlate to peoples ratings of others facial
attractiveness.
As such, no significant association was found between the golden ratio and facial evaluation
score among Malaysian population.
For me, the implication of this is that we need to redefine and reevaluate where emphasis
is placed when attempting to objectively measure beauty standards to make sure that these standards
positively correlate to a range of cultures and to assure that they are not eurocentric.
As well as this, an important avenue that this study took was actually asking the subjects
about their own facial satisfaction.
As we know, improving an individual's facial aesthetics is primarily about improving the
satisfaction of the individual who is undertaking the changes.
Overall, the association of facial proportions and their relation to the golden ratio
and the relation of individuals' facial satisfactions seems to be negligible in
a Malaysian population.
Research like this needs to be utilised to help the cosmetics and
facial
aesthetics industry continue to grow and develop to be more inclusive of a range of populations.