Our Philosophy and Dr. Philip Young’s Theory on Facial Beauty : His theory has been reviewed by his peers and awarded the Sir Harold Delf Gillies Award for Best Basic Science Research Paper in the field of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery 2005. Read his publication on Facial Beauty Article here, which was featured in the Archives of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Another article that is more suited for the non-medical person can be found in the Cosmetic Surgery Times article on his Facial Beauty Theory here . Find out how Dr. Young incorporates his fascinating theory in our Breakthrough Incision Less Face Lift Alternative Called the YoungVitalizer on New Day Northwest with Margeret Larson .
Hi. I'm Dr. Young. I would like to talk about my new theory on facial beauty and how it's going to impact the plastic surgery industry. I really think this is exciting new way to think about how we assess one another when we try to determine if there's beauty present in our face. And previously, we haven't figured out the answers. And knowing the answers to facial beauty is essential to formulate the goals that plastic surgeons use to improve the patients that we see.
Now, I wanted to bring up a case presentation. Now, if you're going to hire a particular person between these two people, all things being equal, you are likely going to choose this person. Now, I know that's really superficial. But we essentially make decisions like all the time.
And I want to tell you that that's OK. And it's really based on our desires for self-preservation and also our desires for order. It's sort of a very simple reason why we decide to choose one particular person over the other based on looks.
And with that question, there's other questions that can also be attributed to that more attractive person, including who is healthier, who would you marry, who has a better personality, who is more honest even. And so you can see how looks can have a major impact on a person's life. It's in every aspect of our lives, in the social arena, our work environment. And the relevance is obvious.
Even at birth, our mothers are more likely to give us more attention based on how attractive we are. They did this study by USA Today or some TV show that I recall, a couple of years ago, where they had varying degrees of beauty in a child and they timed how long the mother would be away from that child. They showed that if that child was better looking, the mother was more likely to come back to check on that child.
And the question is does it fit into Darwin's theory of evolution because is beauty propagated through our generations, because Darwin's theory is based on function preceding form? But form is a element of beauty. But what I'd like to tell you is that beauty is a marker for a pathogen-free state. And it also tells us how healthy we are based on how we look. Because it takes more energy to make us beautiful.
It happens in the other kingdoms of the animal kingdom. For example, the butterfly, beautiful colors and spots on the butterfly. How big antlers in the deer. It can really give clues to the opposite sex, whether we're healthy, whether we're going to propagate quality genes, and the status of our immune system. So beauty is a way that we can assess how our child or our children are going to turn out.
And there are studies in our neuroanatomy that have shown that our neuroanatomy is wired to actually appreciate beauty. We appreciate beauty more on the right hemisphere of our brain and our right retinal fields, which essentially sees the left visual space or the right person's face when we see a particular person. So this shows that we have in our neuroanatomy, that we are wired to appreciate beauty, and thus select for beauty based on Darwin's principles.
Now, there's lots of studies called chimera studies which take one part of a face and make a whole face. And they've shown that the right face is more attractive. And that also correlates with our side of our brain that appreciates beauty, our right brain which sees the person's right face. And these have been proved in many different studies. So there is a asymmetry in our appreciation.
What about previous theories? Well, previous theories are based on external landmarks that we don't actually pay a lot of attention to. For example, the number phi. This is a magical number that Europeans use to discuss or correlate and quantitate how limbs should be proportioned. But it's really essentially 1.5 or 3/2. And almost any living object or being can almost be broken up into thirds.
Now, even a more famous theory on facial views, Leonardo da Vinci's neoclassical canons. And Dr. Farkas and colleagues have shown that doesn't really explain beauty. And in fact in one of the canons, one of the canons was only present in 10% of the population. It wasn't even present in our population in a high degree, let alone explaining beauty and the difference between average and what is really beautiful.
Now, Dr. Symons did a study where he took a compilation of many different people in jail to try find a characteristic that would insinuate that that person would likely commit crimes. And he showed that the average montage of those pictures was actually more attractive. So the theory of averageness became popular as beauty.
But Perrett and colleagues showed that that wasn't the case. Because they took a group of really good people and they enhanced those features and showed that it wasn't average. There was something else.
So what is it? What was wrong with previous theories? Well, previous theories were based on external landmarks that we didn't really concentrate on. For example, this is one of Leonardo da Vinci's canons. And see how they're based on external landmarks. Now, we hardly ever spent time looking at the corners of the eye. We really look at something in the eye. But what is it that we're looking at?
If we can find out what we concentrate on, maybe we can discover what is beautiful. And there are other reasons why we couldn't identify beauty. For one thing, we appreciate on our right side. But it's our left brain that actually analyzes things and assesses things in a mathematical and analytical way.
So our brains are separated. And hence that continental divide sort of caused some confusion on how to figure out what beauty was. Because our brains are connected by a very small area called the corpus callosum. And a lot of things get missed in that transfer of information.
The other reason is that we appreciate beauty deep within our brain, where our bodies are controlled, for example, our blood pressure and our heart rate. When we reassess someone is beautiful, our heart rate rises. And that sort of also separates our appreciation of what beauty is and our understanding of what beauty is from our left brain. Because the appreciation of beauty is separated in all different elements in the brain.
Now, some more confounding factors include that there are different extremes of beauty. And there are many different variations at the extreme of very, very beautiful. And those minor variations sort of confounded our ability to know what was actually ideal, because one person could be very, very beautiful but would just be a millimeter off of one aspect. And we weren't really able to understand or pick out what is it or what is the ideal actually that we're looking for.
Now, the question is, is there an ideal? Because that's what we're looking for when we talk about facial beauty. And I'm going to venture to say that there is an ideal. Because if you can say that one person is more beautiful than the other, there has been an extreme of very beautiful and not beautiful. And that very beautiful the ideal that we're actually looking for.
And its been shown that culture has a less effect on our appreciation of beauty. Because babies as young as three months old are able to distinguish between a beautiful person or a less beautiful person because they spend more time looking at a more beautiful picture of a person.
Now, I want to explain you that our appreciation of beauty is really inherent in our cellular level. We want everything in our lives to be ordered. For example, when we are born, we want to be changed on time, we want to use the bathroom on time.
And this is a great example. For example, if you asked a large group of people where to put a circle within a box, a large percentage of people would choose that circle to be in the center of the box. And it's just our inherent desire for everything in our lives to be ordered.
And that same principle applies to the face. We want everything in the face also to be ordered. So there's something in the face or objects in the face that need to be organized. And could those be the eyes, nose, and mouth? And that might be obvious because those are some of the main structures in our face.
But what is it about the eyes, nose, and mouth and what objects within those structures is important? That is a central question. Because then you can order the face in the right way. So there's something in the eyes, nose, and mouth that is central in those sub-anatomic locations.
Drs. Yarbus and Riggs did a study where they asked people to evaluate a picture of a boy. And then they asked those people to just look at the picture of a boy. But what they did was they marked where those eyes came. They had a way to quantitate or know where those eyes were looking at.
And this is really interesting because it allows us to see where we actually spend most of our time looking. And what we see is that there's something here, here, and here that we really concentrate on. And notice the majority of the dots are on the right side of the person's face, or the left visual space, which correlates with our right side of our brain, which appreciates beauty.
Now, and you can see the concentration of dots, especially in the eye area, is located in this area. Now, that location is essentially the iris. And that's one of the central principles of my theory. Everything on the face has to have some ideal between zero and infinity.
For example this, if this was just not there, you could be very beautiful. But just having this not present would give you a much lower aesthetic value in terms your beauty.
But everything has to have an ideal between and infinity. And in between that zero and infinity, because we spend so much time looking at the iris, that's our measuring stick. The iris is the key to figuring out beauty. Everything in the face has to be in some way a proportion of our iris width.
For example, in this beautiful lady here, the width of her nose, the size of her nasal tip, the size of this nostril area, the distance from her nose to her lip, and the height of her lower lip should all be an iris width. And it's really just logical that it is that way, because we spend so much time looking at the iris. And it's really the only way that our brains can figure out some sort of correlation.
And this goes on to show you in just a diagram that same principle that I just talked about. In addition, the distance from the eyebrow to the eyelid margin should also be an iris width. And that's essential to our understanding of how we want to determine where the eyelid is going to sit in a person in the most ideal way. As you see in many results that sometimes those eyebrows or eyebrow lips can raise the eyebrow to a surprising kind of appearance.
And we never knew really why that was or what quantitatively determined whether that person was going to look surprised or not. But this theory answers that question. Anything above an iris width is going to be assessed as being sort of a surprise.
Now, the eyes, nasal tip, lower lip, and lower part of the chin are the center areas. And each one of those areas should be separated by three iris widths. The distance from here to here, from here to here, from there to there, and from there to there should all be three iris widths.
Now, also this diagram shows that because the eyes and nose and mouth our central in our organization, the eyes and nose form an association called an oblique, a first oblique, that I term the first oblique. And that determines the other locations of the other arrangements, for example, the bottom of the lip and the top of the ear. And then also the shadowing below that line should correlate with that line here. It should increase here and increase there.
Now, there are many different elements in the mouth and eyes. The size of the lower lip should be about the size of the eye. And the puckering should be about the width of the eye. And it goes on to show that all the elements in the mouth and the size of the mouth should be approximate to the size of the eye. And any time we smile, we'll constantly enhance the sensation and the vitality of the eye when we talk and smile.
And everything in the face has to be related in some way. The distance between the eyes should be the same distance as the half face and also the width of the mouth.
And if the face or the structures of the face don't fit into the obliques that I showed you earlier, they're going to be associated in some way. For example, the eyebrow should be approximately associated with the lower face in some way. Or in this example, the eyebrows should be about 18 degrees and the slant of the eye should be about 9 degrees.
So essentially, every part of the face should fit into either 0 degrees, 90 degrees, 18 degrees, 9 degrees, or 45 degrees. So in some way, every element in the face has to be ordered. And that constantly reminds us of the order in the face, and hence order that we appreciate and desire on a very cellular level.
Now, do I approve of all these theories. And I do. I wrote a paper called "The Circles of Prominence," which I published in the Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery. And I received the Sir Harold Delf Gillies award for this scientific paper that was published in a peer-reviewed journal article.
And I basically took a group of pictures in a clinic and a group of pictures of very beautiful people. And I was able to correlate how people assess a particular picture was how people beautiful it was and the variances from my theory. And so I was able to correlate that my theory had a strong suggestion that my theory was correct.
Now, this theory applies cross-culturally. As you can see in this lady, although she's definitely Asian, she is going to have some of the same elements that fit my theory.
Now, I wanted to bring my picture into play because I wanted to show when you go into a surgeon's office they always tell you all these different things that you can improve. Well, I wanted to bring me into the discussion, to be fair.
And as you can see, my nasal tip is larger in that my lower third gets bigger because this distance is increased. But lower lip is about ideal.
But I wanted to also show you something else. As the distance goes into my lower face, I markedly get larger. So that sort of detracts from my aesthetics. But that's OK, because I'm a male. And males are distinguished by the lower third, a larger lower third. And as [INAUDIBLE], you can see that the mouth area is a lot larger than my eye structures.
But in Katie Holmes, things just fit very close, the width of the nose, the size of the nasal tip, the distance from here to here, and the height of her lower lip. And look at the shadowing. It's markedly in this area. And it all emphasizes the eye. And her distance doesn't increase very much.
And I'll show you through the circles that her mouth circles are very close to her eye circles. And as I showed you, the width of her face, the side of her face should be about the distance between her eyes and her mouth. And as you can see in her mouth area, they are very close to correlating.
So thank you very much. And this is my theory on facial beauty. And I totally believe that my theory is going to change the way plastic surgery is practiced. And I'm really excited about it. Thank you.
At Aesthetic Facial Plastic Surgery, Dr. Young and the rest of his team will ensure you are in the best of hands. Their philosophy begins and ends with 100% patient satisfaction and care. This belief transcends to every aspect of their business. Dr. Young invests in the most effective and advanced technology the industry has to offer. The entire team believes in the power of knowledge and educate themselves on the latest facial reconstruction and rejuvenation research. Dr Young hand-picks the very best doctors and staff members, to guarantee every procedure strives for perfection and every patient leaves with a new found confidence. We believe in communication and honesty, we want to find out how we can treat you better. Any suggestions will be met with a positive attitude. We see all challenges as a way to improve. When you have a procedure with us, you’ll find that there are many ways to reach out to us either through email, cell phone, our work phone, and even text messaging. Our answering service can get a hold of your doctors at any time in the day. You can also contact us here also at any time through email: Aesthetic Facial Plastic Surgery Contact Page . We fully believe in our mission statement:
Our Mission is to Deliver Unwavering Quality Care to Improve People’s Lives Through Facial Plastic Surgery and the YoungVitalizer.
Dissatisfied with the current beliefs on the harmony of beauty held by many of the top doctors in the industry, Dr. Young spent years studying the patterns of beauty and its relationship with nature. His lifelong work research has culminated in groundbreaking theory, The Circles of Prominence , which has been acclaimed around the world.
Dr. Young established key areas of the face where our eyes are immediately drawn, which convey the most about who we are and how attractive we are. Interestingly, we look for clues in one another’s eyes, as well as around the nose and mouth where we take our breaths and communicate. Attractiveness is certainly in the eye of the beholder, but it is not random; it is governed by our inherent perceptions of beauty that we appreciate from the day we are born.
Clinical and academic studies support Dr. Young’s theory that, starting with the size of your iris, the arrangement of facial shapes can be seen as aesthetically pleasing based on simple geometry and mathematics. He also uncovered the tendency for these features to subtly manifest themselves in circular groupings – areas particularly sensitive to the effects of contrast and light, like history’s greatest works of art.
Why is this theory on facial beauty so important? The knowledge of facial beauty and what makes a particular face beautiful is like knowing the architectural plans for a house. A theory on facial beauty is our drawing board for knowing how we carry-out a certain procedure. Prior to Dr. Young’s Circles of Prominence theory, plastic surgeons relied on theories of beauty that Leonardo da Vinci formulated back in the 1400s. Dr. Young provides a fresh, and more accurate approach to bringing out the most beautiful and natural looking you.
