Midface Ratio.

What the midface is

In facial anatomy, the midface is the middle third of your face, vertically:

• Top boundary: the brow line (specifically the glabella, the point between your eyebrows)
• Bottom boundary: the base of the nose (subnasale, where the columella meets the upper lip)

The midface contains your eyes, cheekbones, and nose. Above it is the upper third (forehead). Below it is the lower third (the philtrum, lips, chin).

The “midface ratio” — which has a few different definitions in the literature — is most commonly:

Midface height ÷ lower-face height

In a face that perfectly hits the classical “rule of thirds,” all three vertical thirds are equal, so the midface ratio = 1.0. In reality, faces deviate.

What ratios mean

• Midface ratio < 1.0 (short midface): midface is shorter than the lower face. Reads as neotenous, youthful. Strongly preferred in female attractiveness research; mildly preferred in male research.
• Midface ratio = 1.0: classical proportional ideal.
• Midface ratio > 1.0 (long midface): midface is longer than the lower face. Reads as adult/mature/long-faced. Penalized for both sexes once it pushes past ~1.1.

Short midface is one of the most consistently rewarded traits in modern face-rating research. It’s part of the neoteny package and contributes to the “compact, blocky” face geometry that also drives a high fWHR.

Why short midface is rewarded

The short-midface preference has been replicated across cultures and rating populations. The leading explanations:

1. Neoteny signal — midface elongates with age and male puberty. A short midface is a clean signal of youth (in both sexes) and of low testosterone exposure (in female faces).
2. Eye-prominence — when the midface is short, the eyes sit closer to the upper third, making them appear larger relative to the rest of the face. Larger relative eyes are a top neoteny marker.
3. Cheekbone-to-jaw compression — short midface packs the cheekbones and the jaw closer together, intensifying side-profile contours like the ogee curve.

Longface syndrome

“Longface syndrome” is the looksmaxxing community’s name for an excessively long midface, often combined with a long lower face. Anatomically it usually involves:

• Vertical maxillary excess (the upper jaw grew downward too much during development)
• A retruded mandible (lower jaw set back)
• A high gonial angle (soft jaw corner)
• Often paired with a long philtrum

Visually it produces a long, narrow face with a “horse-like” or “tired” impression. It’s one of the hardest face complaints to fix because the underlying problem is the vertical position of the upper jaw, which only orthognathic surgery (specifically, Le Fort I impaction) can change.

The looksmaxxing community has built a small industry around long-midface fixes — bimaxillary surgery, custom implants, “facepulling” devices — but for adults the gap between non-surgical and surgical interventions is enormous.

Causes of long midface

Most cases trace to childhood:

• Chronic mouth-breathing during the growth window stretches the midface vertically. The mandible drops, the maxilla follows it down rather than forward.
• Allergies and adenoid hypertrophy that force mouth-breathing
• Genetic predisposition — some families just grow long faces
• Insufficient chewing-load during development — soft modern diets are blamed (often controversially) for downstream growth patterns

This is the developmental theory behind mewing and orthotropics — the idea that early tongue posture and chewing-load can keep the maxilla growing forward rather than down.

Can you fix a long midface?

In children: yes, sometimes dramatically. Treatment of mouth-breathing causes (allergies, adenoids), expansion appliances, and orthotropic therapy can redirect maxillary growth.

In adults: limited options.

• Orthognathic surgery — Le Fort I osteotomy with impaction shortens the midface. Major surgery. Real results.
• Filler in the chin and cheekbones — visually rebalances proportions without changing midface length
• Hairstyle and beard — vertical hair, taper fade, longer beard all add apparent lower-face length, rebalancing the ratio
• Camera angle — slightly above eye level shortens apparent midface; below eye level lengthens it

Most non-surgical interventions are about rebalancing the look rather than truly shortening the midface.

What Fazly does

The scan measures midface height in mm and reports the midface-to-lower-face ratio plus the midface-to-overall-face ratio. The app flags whether a long-midface result is driven by:

• True maxillary excess (visible in the side profile)
• Just a slightly long midface within normal range (often a hairstyle fix)
• A short lower face making the midface look proportionally long (chin work helps)

Sex-conditional scoring: a midface ratio of 1.05 costs more points on a female-presenting scan than on a male-presenting scan, because short midface is more heavily weighted in female attractiveness research.

Take front-on scans with head level and camera at eye height — even small camera-height changes swing apparent midface ratio by 5–10%, which is enough to ruin tracking across scans.