A determination of face shape and an assessment of facial features enters into any assessment of what styles would be most flattering to an individual.
With that in mind, it is fascinating to read the cover story in the August 21, 2008 issue of New Yorkmagazine, entitled “The New New Face.” Jonathan Van Meter writes that Madonna, Demi Moore, and even the Olson twins have this face, and that you can have it too, for about $30,000.
The article focuses on new techniques of plastic surgery that “volumize” the face, giving it a softness not seen in the early days of face lifts, which tended to give the face a tight look. Van Meter writes about the preferred standard of beauty today: “We tend to like large eyes, high cheekbones, a small nose, a large smile, and a small chin. What the scientific literature doesn’t mention is that we like it all to be as young as possible.” The new look prefers thin bodies and baby fat in the face.
The article includes a brief pictorial history of 3,378 years of the “it” face, a fascinating study. Van Meter discusses the Golden Ratio of the Greeks, which involved the measurements of the lines and triangles formed by a beautiful face. He also reports on a study done recently by scientist Michael Cunningham, “Measuring the Physicalin Physical Attractiveness,” in which Cunningham reportedly concluded that: “the width of an eye, if it to be part of a beautiful face, should be precisely three-tenths the width of the face, and the chin ought to be just one-fifth the height of the face, while the total area of the nose had better be less than 5 percent of the total area of the face or … you is ugly!”
The preferred face shape of the moment, by the way, is the inverted triangle, as seen in Madonna and Naomi Campbell.
With or without plastic surgery, faces change over time, and what a good jeweler can do is to help his or her clients keep the focus on the features that the customer wants to highlight. The other thing a jeweler can do is not to be so closed-minded as to believe that there is only one standard of what is beautiful. See the beauty in all the faces of all your customers.
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