The concept of the ideal female eyebrow has changed over time. Modern studies examining youthful brow aesthetics are reviewed. An analysis of ideal female brow characteristics as depicted in the Western print media between 1945 and 2011 was performed. This analysis provided objective evidence that the ideal youthful brow peak has migrated laterally over time to lie at the lateral canthus. There has been a nonstatistically significant trend toward lower and flatter brows. These findings are discussed in relation to current concepts of female brow aging, with repercussions regarding endoscopic brow lift and aesthetic forehead surgery.
Key points
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The ideal modern female brow aesthetic is becoming lower, flatter, and with a more lateral peak.
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There is likely an interaction between a woman’s age and the perceived ideal brow position.
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volumizing the brow upper lid complex will likely supplant many of the traditional open brow lifting techniques.
The computer can’t tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what’s missing is the eyebrows. —Frank Zappa
Introduction
Few facial features are as powerful as the eyebrows. Sclafani recently called them “the superior aesthetic frame of the eyes.” This statement is significant because vision-tracking studies have shown that when viewing a face, people spend the most time looking at the periocular region. The eyebrow can express wide-ranging and subtle emotions, even when the rest of the face is neutral. Elevated brows suggest surprise and, when lowered, they express fatigue and aging. Medially angled brows indicate anger, whereas laterally angled brows connote sadness.
Given their importance in facial aesthetics and emotional expression, it is not surprising that women have sought ways to change the appearance of their eyebrows to better project youth, beauty, and energy. Plucking and dying can achieve modest changes, but more permanent and impressive alterations require surgical intervention. Browplasty was initially described nearly a century ago and became significantly more popular recently because of more effective and less invasive techniques. There are several potential indications for aesthetic forehead surgery, including the reduction of forehead rhytids and the repositioning of skin and soft tissue in the upper lid–brow complex ; however, it is difficult to perform significant forehead surgery without changing the location of the eyebrows. Most women undergoing aesthetic forehead surgery simply want to look younger and more alert. It will be difficult for them to more specifically articulate a goalresting brow position. Hence, it is important for the surgeon to possess an understanding of the ideal youthful female eyebrow.
Introduction
Few facial features are as powerful as the eyebrows. Sclafani recently called them “the superior aesthetic frame of the eyes.” This statement is significant because vision-tracking studies have shown that when viewing a face, people spend the most time looking at the periocular region. The eyebrow can express wide-ranging and subtle emotions, even when the rest of the face is neutral. Elevated brows suggest surprise and, when lowered, they express fatigue and aging. Medially angled brows indicate anger, whereas laterally angled brows connote sadness.
Given their importance in facial aesthetics and emotional expression, it is not surprising that women have sought ways to change the appearance of their eyebrows to better project youth, beauty, and energy. Plucking and dying can achieve modest changes, but more permanent and impressive alterations require surgical intervention. Browplasty was initially described nearly a century ago and became significantly more popular recently because of more effective and less invasive techniques. There are several potential indications for aesthetic forehead surgery, including the reduction of forehead rhytids and the repositioning of skin and soft tissue in the upper lid–brow complex ; however, it is difficult to perform significant forehead surgery without changing the location of the eyebrows. Most women undergoing aesthetic forehead surgery simply want to look younger and more alert. It will be difficult for them to more specifically articulate a goalresting brow position. Hence, it is important for the surgeon to possess an understanding of the ideal youthful female eyebrow.
The ideal female brow
Beauty is an evolving concept specific to a particular time and population. Contemporary ideas about the ideal female brow (in North America) originated with makeup artists like Westmore in the 1970s. His formulation placed the medial and lateral brow at the orbital rim, with the peak located above the lateral limbus (LL) approximately 1 cm above the bony rim. Over the past 40 years, investigators have proposed several changes to Westmore’s model.
Ellenbogen stated that the inferior aspect of the medial eyebrow margin should start 1 cm above the supraorbital rim. Whitaker and colleagues thought the brow peak should be at the junction of the middle and lateral thirds. This idea was supported by Byrd, who added that this point corresponded to the intersection of the brow with a line connecting the nasal ala and LL. Byrd also recommended that the peak should be 8 to 10 mm superior to the medial brow. As far back as 1989, Cook and colleagues stated that the peak of the eyebrow should be above the lateral canthus (LC) not the LL because a more medial peak yielded a surprised look. Several investigators have proposed even more strict numerical guidelines for the brow position. Connell and colleagues recommended 1.5 cm between the eyebrow and the upper-lid skin crease. McKinney and colleagues evaluated 50 young women and found an average of 2.5 cm from the midpupil to the superior brow. They concluded that a brow less than 2.5 cm from the midpupil was ptotic and sought to raise the brow to 2.5 to 2.8 cm above the pupil with a forehead lift. Matarasso and Terino essentially reiterated the values proposed by Ellenbogen, Connell, and McKinney. These values were all based on extensive personal experience but remained largely subjective.
Objective analysis
Objectively defining an ideal female eyebrow position is challenging, even beyond the fact that aesthetic trends are constantly changing. Who determines what is ideal when there is no gold standard? In such instances, it is helpful to analyze a problem from many different perspectives.
Observer Scored
Several investigators have used a group of observers to evaluate the brow position of women in photographs. Schreiber and colleagues asked 100 individuals to rank 21 female and 6 male photographs for attractiveness on a 10-point scale (10 = most attractive). The photographs that were given a score greater than 7 were then analyzed for various eyebrow dimensions. Their measurements were all in relation to eye width to allow comparison between photographs. They measured medial canthus to medial brow, LC to lateral brow, and the location of the eyebrow peak in relation to the eye width. Observers preferred the brow peak at 71% of the distance across the eye width, which is roughly at the LL. A strength of this study was its large number of raters. One weakness is that only a few photographs (fewer than 10) were analyzed for the ideal female eyebrow characteristics.
Freund and Nolan used Adobe Photoshop (Adobe Systems, Inc, San Jose, California) to alter the eyebrow characteristics in photographs of young Hispanic, Anglo-Saxon, and Slavic women. Two sets of images were generated. In the first set of images, the eyebrow shape was kept constant, but the medial brow was placed at, below, or above the supraorbital rim. In the second set, the eyebrow peak was placed medial or lateral to the LL, or the eyebrow was made completely flat without a clear peak. The altered photographs were then scored for attractiveness by 11 plastic surgeons and 9 established cosmetologists. Surgeons and aestheticians preferred a medial brow at or below the supraorbital rim; medial brows above the rim were considered unattractive. In the second set of images, both groups of raters preferred laterally peaked brows, then flat brows, then eyebrows with a medial apex.
Baker and colleagues used Adobe Photoshop to create 4 facial shapes (round, square, oval, and long) for 5 different models. They erased the eyebrows and asked a modern makeup artist to draw new appropriate eyebrows on each face. In a second set of images, they used eyebrows using Westmore’s original criteria. They then asked 78 individuals to compare the makeup artist’s and Westmore’s eyebrow position for each of the 20 face/shape combinations. In the oval and round faces, the two eyebrow locations were each preferred by essentially 50% of the participants. However, 58% and 62% of participants preferred the makeup artist’s brow in the long and square faces, respectively. The makeup artist altered the height, severity, and location of the peak to better complement the long and square faces.
Biller and Kim photographed 4 women (a 30-year-old Caucasian, a 30-year-old Asian, a 60-year-old Caucasian, and a 60-year-old Asian) and used the Mirror Suite (Canfield Scientific, Fairfield, New Jersey) to alter brow position, nasal tip width, and nasolabial angle. Five unique eyebrow shapes were created for each model, with the eyebrow apex at a different location: midpupillary line, LL, halfway between limbus and canthus (HF), LC, and the lateral brow margin (LM). The images were rated by 171 observers. Each brow position, except LM, was ranked very similarly, with a nonstatistically significant trend toward preferring more lateral brow positions in the two younger models (highest ranking for HF) compared with the two older models (highest ranking for LL).
Self-Evaluated
Only one study has asked people to try to create their own sense of a perfect eyebrow position. Sclafani and Jung asked 23 women and 7 men to place their eyebrows in the optimal position and then took measurements. Patients had a ruler taped to their nose so actual measurements could be performed on the photographs. They found that women preferred their brow peak 13 mm (SD: ± 4 mm) above the medial brow height. There was no measurement taken of the brow peak in relation to the eye width, the LL, or the LC, which makes it difficult to compare this study with others. It is difficult to know how accurate self-positioning the brow is, particularly when there is a ruler taped to the nose, which alters the sense of facial proportion.
The Ideal Female Brow as Portrayed in the Media
The studies discussed earlier used patients or observers to determine the characteristics of an attractive female eyebrow. A completely different approach is to analyze the eyebrow dimensions of models and actresses—women who are widely thought to be attractive.
Gunter and Antrobus compared eyebrow characteristics between a group of models photographed in popular fashion magazines and a group of women seeking aesthetic facial surgery in Dallas, Texas. They did not report how many photographs were examined, and there was no report of an objective or statistical analysis. They concluded that fashion models’ eyebrows tend to be low medially and ascended in a relatively straight line to a peak near the LC. In contrast, eyebrows of women in the patient group were often more curved and peaked closer to the LL. The article does include an excellent discussion of how to tailor aesthetic forehead surgery to multiple eye types (deep set, and so forth).
Roth and Metzinger performed the best analysis of eyebrow dimensions in fashion models to date. They analyzed the left eyebrow in full-frontal photographs of 100 women portrayed in magazines published in 2001. This group was compared with full-frontal photographs of 105 women aged 21 to 61 years. They calculated 5 measures for each photograph: the height of the lateral brow in relation to the medial brow; the relation of the medial brow to a vertical line through the nasal ala and medial canthus; the relation of the lateral brow to a line connecting the nasal ala and LC; how far across the eye width (medial to LC) the LL falls; and where the eyebrow peak was located in relation to the eye width. In both groups, the LL fell 75% (± 2%) of the way across the eye width at neutral gaze. In fashion models, the lateral brow ended superior to the height of the medial brow; however, the medial and lateral brow were most commonly at the same level in the group of random women. The medial brow fell medial to the alar-medial canthal line in more than half of the models but was most commonly even with this line in the group of random women. The lateral brow in models typically ended right at the alar-lateral canthal line versus lateral to this line in the other group. The brow peak fell slightly more lateral in the group of models (98% vs 93% of the distance across the eye). In both groups, the brow peak was much closer to the LC than the LL.
The evolution of the perfect eyebrow
Some investigators have suggested that the peak of the ideal female eyebrow has been moving more laterally. Roth and Metzinger’s findings, as discussed earlier, certainly support a modern ideal brow peak very close to the LC, as opposed to Westmore’s classic location at the LL. One of Roth and Metzinger’s interesting findings was that in the random women older than 50 years, the eyebrow peak fell at only 87% of the distance across the palpebral fissure or more medial as compared with the distance in the 20- to 29-year-old age group (95%). This finding resonates with the findings of Biller and Kim in which observers preferred a brow peak at the LL in older women but at the LC in younger women.
A person’s preferences for music, movies, and clothing are primarily determined during young adulthood. The authors wondered if the interaction between age and ideal brow characteristics could be caused by changes in the media portrayal of the perfect female eyebrow over time. For example, if models in the 1960s portrayed a different eyebrow than they do now, it could account for some of the differences in the concept of the optimal eyebrow between young and old age groups today. The authors analyzed photographs from fashion magazines over the past 65 years. To their knowledge, there has never been an objective historical analysis of optimal female eyebrow characteristics as presented in the media.
Methods
Microfilm versions of fashion magazines printed between 1946 and 2011 were examined for full-frontal photographs of models or actresses taken in the Frankfort plane. This position is important because even a relatively minimal head turn or tilt will change the apparent eyebrow characteristics. Images were excluded if eyes were closed, squinting, or there was any visible forehead rhytids (representing forehead muscle firing). Appropriate photographs were digitally captured from the microfilm, enlarged as needed in Microsoft PowerPoint (Microsoft, Redmond, Washington), and printed. They were broken into 7 blocks of time for analysis: 1946-1955, 1956-1965, 1966-1970 (the hippie era), 1971-1980, 1981-1990, 1991-2000, and 2001-2011. A line was drawn between the LC to set a true horizontal ( Fig. 1 ). This line usually crossed the inferior pupil. A digital caliper was then used to draw a line 90° perpendicular to this (a true vertical) up to the eyebrow peak. The position of the brow peak in relation to the palpebral fissure was recorded as falling at one of 4 locations: at or lateral to the LC; closer to the LC than the LL; closer to the LL than the canthus; and at the LL or medial to this point. A line was then drawn from the superior brow at the brow peak along the vector of the medial brow segment. The brow takeoff angle between the true horizontal and this vector was measured using the digital caliper. Finally, the height of the brow above the LC was calculated in millimeters. First, the width of both irises was measured in millimeters using a metric ruler, averaged, and set equal to the actual width of the human iris (11.8 mm). This method yielded a multiplier that could be used to transform the height of the brow in the photograph into an actual measurement in millimeters.
Related posts:
Advances in Esthetic Surgery from Four Specialties
Brow and Upper Lid Aesthetics and Rejuvenation: Views from Four Disciplines
Contemporary Concepts in Brow and Eyelid Aging
Technical Considerations in Endoscopic Brow Lift
Adjunctive Fat Grafting to the Upper Lid and Brow
Asian Upper Lid Blepharoplasty Surgery
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