Here are the prototypes I have created including the profile prototypes:
The easiest way for a human to
see the differences between 2 faces is to superimpose them and flick
between them so I have animated the images to do this
Lets now look at the
differences between male and female faces feature by feature as
revealed by the prototypes combined with the established scientific
research.
1. Hairline:
The female hairline is higher in the middle, lower in the
corners and has a rounded shape. The male hairline is lower in the
middle, higher in the corners and has more of a square or “M” shape. It
seems to be widely believed in FFS circles that the male hairline is
lower in the middle but as we can see, it is not.
2. Forehead:
The male forehead has a bony ridge running across it at
about eyebrow level (brow bossing) while the female forehead is
smoother and flatter. The female forehead is also more vertical while
the male forehead tends to slope backwards a little. Male foreheads are
more likely to have more pronounced vertical ridges (temporal lines)
running up either side. The profile prototype suggests that the area
above the bossing in the male may be slightly indented but I would want
to see more profile prototypes to be sure about that.
3. Eyebrows:
The top edge of the eyebrows is at about the same height
(or very slightly higher in females in a minority of prototypes) but
female eyebrows are thinner so that the bottom edge of the eyebrow sits
in a noticeably higher position and creates a bigger gap between the
eye and the eyebrow. This gives the erroneous impression that women's
eyebrows are significantly higher than men's rather than mainly
thinner. The gap between the eyebrows is wider in females but this is
likely again to be down to plucking.
4. Eyes:
Females have larger eyes in proportion to the face and the
eyes have a more open expression with the top lid lifted a little more
than in the male. The prototypes suggest that females have a stronger
“canthal tilt” than males which means that female eyes are more
slanted from the outer corners down to the inner corners than male eyes
are. Internally, female orbits tend to be larger in proportion to the
rest of the face and more rounded while male orbits tend to be smaller
and more square. The inner edge of the orbit is sharper and rougher in
females than in males. These differences in the orbits are unlikely to
be relevant to FFS. In white people, the base of the nose seems to be
about the same width as the eye for females but somewhat wider than the
eye in males.
5. Cheeks:
The fleshy part or “apple” of female cheeks contains more
fat than the male and is therefore fuller and rounder – male cheeks
tend to be much more hollow here. The width of the cheekbones is about
the same in men and women when compared to the distance between the
eyes. Internally, the female cheekbone reaches back as far as the
opening of the ear and the male cheekbone reaches a little further back
than the opening of the ear. The male cheekbone is also thicker.
These internal differences are unlikely to be relevant in FFS – I
believe the apple of the cheeks is the key and therefore that the
emphasis in FFS should be on fat grafts to the apple of the cheeks
rather than augmentation of the cheekbone with implants.
6. Nose:
In the front view, the nose is narrower in females with
smaller, less flared nostrils. There is some evidence from prototypes
that the columella (the bit between the nostrils) sits a little lower
relative to the nostrils in females. In the profile view, the base of
the female nose has more of an upwards angle than the male. The female
nose has a shorter (more blunt) tip than the male. The male nasion
(the area where the nose meets the forehead) stands further forwards of
the eyes than in the female because the nose is larger. Internally the
nasal aperture in the skull in higher and narrower in males with a
sharper angle where the 2 sides meet at the top.
7 Mouth:
The female mouth sits in a higher position than the male
mouth. In the frontal view, the prototypes suggest that the female's
lower lip has slightly more of a "V" shape while the lower lip of males
is a little more "U" shaped. I have not seen that mentioned in any
other studies. However, this difference is very small and may be
irrelevant in FFS. Male and female mouths are actually very similar in
the frontal view with very similar sized areas of vermilion exposed.
This lead me to question why fuller lips “seem” more feminine but we
can see the answer to that in the profile view of the prototype where
the female lips are fatter, bulging forwards (anteriorly) a little more
than male lips despite the amount of vermillion exposed being pretty
much the same in the frontal view. I have not seen this mentioned in
any other studies. In real life we would see the additional fullness
from the front also because we see in 3D - it's only in a 2D frontal
picture that the fullness is invisible. A lip lift which rolls the top
lip out exposing more vermilion is still relevant in FFS because
although women don't actually have a greater exposure of vermilion,
having a little more exposed could help give the impression of
fullness.
When a woman's mouth is open,
her upper incisors are more likely to be exposed by a few mm than in
the male. Internally, the male palate is proportionately wider than the
female palate though this is largely irrelevant in FFS.
Males tend to have more
pronounced and therefore more noticeable muscles around the mouth. The
particular muscles that show are the obicularis oris which encircles
the mouth and to a lesser extent, the triangularis which sits outside
and below the corners of the mouth. The projection of the obicularis
oris is emphasised by the hollowness of the apple of the cheeks in
males.
8. Chin:
The female chin is shorter and narrower than the male
chin. The prototypes suggest that the female chin is rounded rather
than slightly pointed or almond shaped as some people believe. This
mistaken belief may be based on the fact that internally, the female
chin is somewhat pointed and this is therefore how it is often described
in studies. The more relevant view for us in FFS is the external view
and in that, the female chin is rounded. The male chin tends to be
more square with a flat base an 2 corners.
The prototypes suggest that the
male chin projects forwards a little more than the female chin if you
compare to the nearest relevant landmark which is the area between the
nose and top lip (this is relevant because it gives a clear vertical
line by which the eye can judge the chin protrusion). I have not found
any other studies yet giving male and female chin protrusion figures.
I have made a small study that
suggests chin clefts might be a little more common in men than women.
This simply involved counting the chin clefts on 50 male and 50 female
faces – all randomly selected and I found that 58% of males had a
visible cleft against 38% of women. This may be partly to do with the
extra layer of fat that women have although that is just a guess. If it
is down to that then hormones might reduce a mild cleft a little. More
importantly, although they are a little more common on men they are
still very common on women – so common in fact that a chin cleft can
not really be considered a masculinity in my opinion. For this reason I
do not think that they are an important consideration in FFS and are
really more of personal preference issue. I would like to see more
studies on the frequency of chin clefts in males and females as I feel
my study is too small at the moment to be fully reliable.
The profile prototypes also
suggest that the line between the chin and neck is fairly flat in
females and slopes down a little from front to back a little in males. I
suspect this is not particularly relevant in feminisation as it is
not an area we see clearly in most interactions. This may be an anomaly
in my prototypes so I would like to see more profile prototypes to
verify this.
9. Jaw:
The female jaw is more delicate being vertically shorter
and narrower. If you look at a male jaw from the side, the ramus (the
vertical part at the back) is taller and more upright making the jaw
into a right angle with a sharp corner. The female ramus is shorter,
slopes backwards a little and has a rounded corner. Males often have
more pronounced masseter muscles. Many people expect mens jaws to be
wider in relation to their cheeks than women's but in fact women's
cheeks are actually only a tiny bit wider than male's in relation to the
jaw. This is too small a difference to really be significant and
reduction of the masseter muscles from estrogen is likely to be enough
to bring an average jaw to cheek width ratio into female norms. As I
mentioned in part 1, I believe that the importance of the jaw is
sometimes overstated in FFS because the corners are reasonably well
hidden; they do not play a major role in gender recognition and wide
jaws with aquare corners are very common on attractive women.
10. Neck:
The male neck is thicker than the female neck and males
often have a visible Adam's apple. However, despite what many people
believe, women often have a small but visible Adam's apple
11. Ears:
The prototypes suggest that male ears stick out more. I feel this is largely irrelevant for FFS but It is interesting.
12. Skin:
Female skin is paler than male skin in all ethnic groups
and has a softer texture. Male skin is thicker and more oily than
female skin,
13. Beard:
Males generally have a beard and therefore a beard shadow.
14 Other Differences:
The ridges and protrusions where muscles attach to the
bones are generally more pronounced in the male skull. Examples include
the "mastoid process" that protrudes below the ears and and the
"inion" which is a bump on the back of the head and the female skull
overall is smaller and more delicate than the male.
Controversies?
Well possibly: firstly I've shown that the male hairline
is not higher than the female in the middle; secondly that female
eyebrows are not or are only very slightly higher than the male;
thirdly that male jaws are not significantly wider in proportion to the
cheeks than female jaws.
There is more to male and
female facial differences than individual features and in the next
section we will look at how features relate to each other.
