Beautifully formed eyebrows are the hallmark of a youthful and glowing face.
Apart from playing an important role in facial aesthetics, eyebrows are also important for
displaying emotional and non-verbal cues.
The role of eyebrows in nonverbal communication has been demonstrated in one such experimental
study that was conducted with the objective of understanding facial cues and how eyebrows
can be used to express these cues.
In this study, the researchers found that proficient lip readers assess the whole face,
especially the lips and the brows to understand every aspect of the conversation.
While we have always known that eyebrows are important to non-verbal communication, it’s
only recently that we’ve realised just how important they are to aesthetics in framing
the face as well.
Eyebrows are a distinguishing feature of the face unique from one person to another as
proven by research conducted at MIT.
The study has shown that eyebrows are as important as the eyes for facial recognition.
Absence of the eyebrows disrupted facial recognition software from recognizing faces and significantly
impaired performance.
To much surprise, the study also found that when eyebrows were absent, there was a more
significant impairment in the performance of facial recognition software compared to
when the eyes were absent.
In other words, these early studies are pointing at the brows being more important than the
eyes on the face Maintaining the shape of the eyebrows can
be a tedious task as they require constant attention.
The brow itself is controlled by the frontalis muscles which sags downwards with age.
This is why high brows are a youthful feature as the ptosis (sag) of these muscles is very
distinctly noticeable later on and It’s also why brow lifts are a quick fix to rewind
a few years through plastic surgery.
The forehead and brow muscles work together as one complex, where excessive movement of
the brows are linked with forehead wrinkles, glabellar wrinkles or frown lines and brow
sag.
Keeping up with the trends of changing eyebrow fashion is not as easy a task.
In our video on historical beauty standards here, we covered how a blurred monobrow was
the standard but nowadays its not about the size of the eyebrows but rather how they’re
positioned.
A 2016 study from the journal of craniofacial surgery looked at this evolution of eyebrow
shapes based on pictures published in British Vogue between 1916 and 2015.
The study found that the only thing that didn’t change overtime was the relative width of
the eyebrow while every other feature, especially the arch type has changed significantly.
In it, they defined 5 brow arches from the Westmore to the Hwang named after their respective
plastic surgeons who preferred that style.
The 6th and last style, British Vogue, was the style most commonly seen in its namesake
magazine and it’s characterized by exaggeratedly long brow lengths well beyond any proportion
tests we would commonly use.
The most common guidelines we at QOVES use for our facial reports is the westmore standard
defined in detail in Yalcinkaya et al’s paper as one of the more preferred shapes
universally which itself is based on further aesthetic research from Gunter 1997 on what
makes an attractive eye from which he gave his own set of 8 guidelines.
We’ve covered most of this on our video on eye aesthetics but the most important are
numbers 1, 2 and 7 and so we won’t be covering them again here.
Before we go back to Eyebrows, let’s talk about the sponsor of today’s video, Skillshare
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Previously, we discussed that the study of British Vogue identified 6 brow types and
that we at QOVES prefer Westmore's shape as it’s one of the most universal.
Westmore’s Brow shape proposes that: 1.
The medial end of the eyebrow (the part closer to the center of your face) should be in line
with its respective nose wing.
2.
The arch of the eyebrow should be inbetween the iris and lateral canthus (outer eye corner)
3.
A line drawn from the lateral end of the eyebrow to the nose wing should pass through the lateral
canthus There is still a lot of debate over how high
the eyebrow should be from the eye and the brow ridge itself but Mckinney 1991 suggests
5cm for females and 6 for males at an average height of 2.5cm from the pupil.
He also suggested a gap of 15mm or 1.5cm from the upper eyelid crease to the base of the
eyebrow that surgeons should maintain for a brow lift.
More contemporary research puts this value at 1.6cm and while it may seem little the
positioning of the brow is incredibly sensitive and most female celebrities seem to prefer
a relatively higher position while males prefer a lower position directly on the brow ridge,
because looking happy and excited all the time doesn't exactly strike fear into your
enemies.
Now obviously the Westmore brow shape isn’t a one size fits all, it’s definitely more
biased towards feminine features and Cook et al criticised the distinct outward arch
as giving it a surprised look.
Baker Et al argued that it is dependent on the face shape and is not suited for long
or square faces.
In longer faces, a flatter brow with less angular curvature is suitable.
Going back to the study on vogue magazine, the researchers found considerable difference
between british vogue and korean print in preferred brow type, especially for the Hwang
shape.
Men can get away with larger bushier eyes that have less proportion and are rough around
the edges.
In fact, the more manucirued the brow is, especially the arch angularity, the more metrosexual
it looks, often having the opposite effect of decreasing facial masculinity.
However, with the clients we get for our aesthetic reports, the problem is the exact opposite
with not enough eyebrow or more commonly, those lacking in colour and darkness at the
edges.
Thankfully that’s easier to fix with permanent eyebrow dyes and research has shown topical
minoxidil to be effective in increasing the growth of caudal eyebrow hairs
So what exactly is the ideal brow shape nowadays?
Over time, the brow peak has migrated more laterally, towards the side of the face.
This migration has resulted in the brow peak now lying either, right over or just medial
to the edge of the eye.
Along with that, lower and flatter eyebrows are considered more attractive, compared to
the pointed and high-rising eyebrows that were the high point of fashion in the last
century.
Overall, a lower eyebrow with a slight lateral peak is the ideal brow shape in the West.
In the East however, research by Jung and colleagues found a greater emphasis on femininity,
with softly curved eyebrows with thin black hairs as most ideal.
In other words, the east prefers to have the eyebrows blend in with the face rather than
standing out as they do as a fashion statement.
The West, in particular the anglosphere prefers more masculine characteristics for both men
and women In order to keep up with the standards, many
women undergo cosmetic procedures such as BOTOX injections or endoscopic brow lift procedures
to achieve the laterally lying brow peak.
An open brow lift is also possible but less common, by cutting along the forehead from
ear to ear and lifting the skin higher.
While this may improve the brow position quickly it’s at greater risk of having too dramatic
of an effect that you won’t realise until after its healed.
One of the biggest pitfalls to be aware of, is over lifting the brow.
For aesthetics, it gives the impression of an unnatural, unintelligent look and especially
for men, raising it even slightly beyond the brow ridge heavily feminizes the face.
Also, as research has shown, the arch is the most important aspect of facial expression
and the way the tail end is shaped influences the look of the entire brow.
For men, a tail-up horizontal is preferred whereas for women the arched shape has the
best of both worlds, being slightly intimidating, but not enough to invoke feelings of an RBF.
To determine the aesthetic structure and shape of the eyebrows while also taking into account
the gender differences, a clinical trial was performed by taking pictures of 40 subjects
in five different poses.
The aim of using photographs with different poses was to evaluate the aesthetics of eyebrow
mobility as well as the resting eyebrow.
According to this clinical trial, women preferred a lower eyebrow, with the starting structure
being just under the orbital rim.
They preferred an accentuated, yet low -brow peak that is just medial to or right above
the lateral edge of the eye, whereas men preferred a lower eyebrow with a less accentuated brow
peak, again supporting the previous findings.
There weren’t many differences between what either of the genders preferred apart from
the height of the brow peak.
However, there was a difference in the thickness of the brows with men generally favoring thicker
and bushier brows on themselves.
Even when women choose to have bushy eyebrows, they are still groomed to be thinner and flatter
to fit into the sexual dimorphic features of the brow.
For western standards, Margot Robbie is closest to the ideal brow shape for women, being downward
tilted to not seem overly placid but with a highly emphasised arch at the very edge
of the eyes for feminine character.
For men, I’d say that male model Mariano Di Vaio is very close to ideal, with his brows
being very full and dark which is arguably the most important aspect for men as the brows
are a function of eye shape and so if your periocular region is weak and lacking brow
support, then it doesn’t matter how good your brows are, as they’ll never be wide
enough to change your look significantly.
You can change the darkness and density to increase facial masculinity which is why Mariano
is a good example of how dark facial hair frames the face for men.
For women, colour is less important than the positioning.
If you like aesthetics based research, subscribe to the channel and check out our instagram
where we put out morphs of different faces to illustrate our points after a video.