Beautiful Eyes in Different Races

The eyes play a very important role in the perception of general facial attractiveness but is there a universal standard for beautiful eyes? The study by a group of Korean plastic surgeons show that though there are some shared features of attractive eyes across races there are also particular features of attractiveness that are race specific. (Biometric Study of Eyelid Shape and Dimensions of Different Races with Reference to Beauty. Seung Chul Rhee, Kyoung-Sik Woo, Bongsik Kwon. Aesth Plast Surg 2012: 36: 1236 - 1245.)

 

They analysed the eyes of average versus attractive female faces in the Koreans (which can apply to Chinese and Japanese too), Caucasians and Africans. Some of the interesting results are mentioned here.

 

 Diagram showing the structures measured: 1= interpupillary distance;

2 = intercanthal distance; 3 = palpebral fissure width;  

4 = palpberal fissure height; 5 = skin crease height and

6 = fissure obliquity (slant of the eye).

Average Korean face (right) and attractive Korean face (left).

The study shows attractive Korean faces have relatively wide-set eyes (the intercanthal distance) and bigger palpebral width (bigger eye opening). The double eyelids of the attractive face is higher than average and  have less epicanthal folds with more exposure of the nasal eye white. In additional, the eyes are less slanty (8.87 in attractive eyes versus 9.77 in average eyes).

Average Caucasian face (right) and attractive Caucasian face (left).

Average African face (right) and attractive African face (left).

 

For the Caucasian and African, attractive eyes seem to share the same features. The attractive eyes are described as having acute shape like that of  Jaguar's eyes. They have slightly narrower eye opening and more interestingly unlike the Korean eyes, attractive eyes are more slanty than the average eyes (for Caucasian eyes, the slant of attractive eye is 7.13 degrees versus 4.12 in average eye and for African eyes, it is 9.98 versus 5.39)

Attractive African and Caucasian with Jaguar's eyes.