Why do facial features change

And of course, there are the wrinkles. These outward changes are caused by seismic moves happening beneath your skin to your facial bones, muscles, and fat as you grow older. Gravity and genetics dictate some of what happens, but two significant factors that speed facial aging are within your control: lifestyle and the environment. Unhealthy behaviors like excessive tanning, smoking, substance abuse, and stress and poor nutrition that cause an imbalance in hormone levels take a toll on a youthful appearance.

Despite their rigidity, they migrate, lose mass and spur major changes in your face. Facial bone loss can lead to retraction of the jawline, which emphasizes jowls and an unstructured neck. Widening eye sockets give your eyes a more sunken appearance and make you look tired. When bones give way, the muscles follow behind — losing their volume, strength and elasticity. Laxness of facial muscles and loss of muscle mass are two major contributors to facial sagging, especially in the cheeks.

Muscle weakness also causes droopiness around the brow and upper eyelids. The biggest changes typically occur when people are in their 40s and 50s, but they can begin as early as the mids and continue into old age. Even when your muscles are in top working order, they contribute to facial aging with repetitive motions that etch lines in your skin.

However, sun exposure and cigarette smoking are likely to make them develop more quickly. The number and size of blotches and dark spots on the face increase as well. These pigment changes are largely due to sun exposure. Missing teeth and receding gums change the appearance of the mouth, so your lips may look shrunken. Loss of bone mass in the jaw reduces the size of the lower face and makes your forehead, nose, and mouth more pronounced.

Your nose may also lengthen slightly. The ears may lengthen in some people probably caused by cartilage growth. Men may develop hair in their ears that becomes longer, coarser, and more noticeable as they age. Ear wax becomes drier because there are fewer wax glands in the ears and they produce less oil.

Overall, participants selected the high contrast face in These results are shown in Figure 4 , as a function of the ethnic origin of the faces and the cultural origin of the participants. The high percentages observed for French and Chinese participants for each group of faces Caucasian faces: The effect of the manipulations was significantly but slightly stronger in French participants than in Chinese participants, regardless of the ethnic origin of the face. There was no effect of the ethnic origin of the face and no interaction effect as predicted.

Figure 4. Percent of trials for which the high contrast face was judged younger than the low contrast face. These studies addressed the general question of whether facial contrast is a cross-culturally valid cue for perceiving age from the face. This general question contains two parts: does facial contrast decrease with age in women of diverse races or ethnicities, and do people from different cultures use facial contrast as a cue for perceiving the age of the face? Using four different samples of faces drawn from four different racial and ethnic groups on four different continents, we tested the hypothesis that aspects of facial contrast decrease with age.

Then with two different participant groups drawn from different racial groups and different cultures on two different continents, we tested the hypothesis that people use facial contrast as a cue for perceiving age from the face. We found support for both hypotheses with all our face and participant samples. First, there were consistent decreases in facial contrast in all four face samples that we tested.

Second, both participant groups perceived faces with increased facial contrast as younger than the same faces with decreased facial contrast. These results are both consistent with the idea that facial contrast is a cross-cultural cue for perceiving facial age.

While we confirmed that aspects of facial contrast decrease with age in Caucasian, Chinese, Latin American and black South African female faces, there was also some variation. Three of the nine aspects of facial contrast decreased with age in all four groups: the luminance contrast around the eyebrows, the red-green contrast around the mouth and the yellow-blue contrast around the eyes.

Two aspects of facial contrast were decreased or tended to decrease with age in the majority of faces but not in the Chinese set. These included the luminance contrast around the eyes and the red-green contrast around the eyes. Finally, four aspects of facial contrast varied with age in diverse ways according to the ethnic origin of the face.

Those were the luminance and yellow-blue contrast around the mouth and the red-green and yellow-green contrast around the eyebrows. It is also noteworthy that most aspects of facial contrast seven of nine decreased with age in the Caucasian and black South African faces, whereas the changes observed with age were more diverse in the Chinese and Latin American faces.

The results from Study 2 gave clear evidence that aspects of facial contrast are used as cues for perceiving the age of female faces in both French and Chinese participants. When we tested these groups with faces from the four racial groups and from a large range of age, female faces with increased facial contrast were judged younger than those with decreased facial contrast.

The effect was robust and largely above chance regardless of the ethnic origin of the face or the cultural origin of the participant; with French participants selecting high contrast faces slightly more often than Chinese participants.

Collectively, these findings are consistent with the idea that the aspects of facial contrast that decrease with age in the majority of female faces are cross-culturally valid cues to the perception of women's age. While aspects of facial contrast decrease with age in all women, the application of cosmetics serves to increase the luminance and color portion of facial contrast Russell, ; Etcoff et al.

For example, the application of lipstick increases red contrast around the mouth Jones et al. The present work advances our knowledge of how cosmetics are applied by women to enhance their beauty, by increasing the contrast between the facial features and the surrounding skin.

This visual feature is related to two known factors of beauty: age and sexual dimorphism. By increasing this feature, cosmetics can alter an important universal factor of beauty and make women look more feminine and younger.

This provides evidence for biological influences on the pattern of cosmetic use, in addition to cultural influences. The scientific study of the ways that makeup changes the appearance of the face has begun only recently, and there is little published research on the topic.

To our knowledge there are no studies that have systematically compared the ways in which women of different racial groups use makeup. We predict that women of a particular race use makeup to modify or should use makeup to modify their facial contrast in the ways that facial contrasts change with age in their particular race.

Here we observed some specificity according to races in the way aspects of facial contrast vary with age i. Only Chinese women and Latin American women have higher luminance contrast around the mouth with age; their lips appear darker with age. These observations suggest possible reasons for cultural preferences in makeup shades used by women and that the shades of lipstick may have different effects on perceived age in women from different races and cultures. Because we observed some similarities but also some specificities in the way facial contrast varies with age according to the origin of women; this points toward a rational approach to the development of cosmetics and to the personalization of cosmetics.

Although the evidence from this work is clearly consistent with cross-culturality, the findings will need to be extended to other groups of participants e. Finally, our focus here was the difference between races rather than gender. Because of the known sex differences in facial contrast, we sought to test large samples of faces that differed in terms of race but not gender.

A recent study showed that the decline of facial contrast is very similar in male and in female faces Caucasian population Russell et al. Future work will have to confirm whether facial contrast is also a cross-cultural cue for perceiving the age of male faces. Similarly, we have no evidence regarding changes in facial contrast before the age of 20 or after the age of 70, or 80 depending on the sample of faces.

All of these questions deserve to be investigated in order to provide evidence for the universality of facial contrast cues to age. This is the first study in the age perception research field in which large samples of faces from diverse races taken around the world are tested with participants of different racial and cultural origins.

We have shown that several aspects of facial contrast decrease with age in all racial groups, though some other aspects of facial contrast vary with age in racially-specific ways. Globally, older faces have less facial contrast than younger faces. We have also found that artificially increasing those aspects of facial contrast that decrease with age in diverse races and ethnicities makes the faces look younger, independent of the ethnic origin of the face and the cultural origin of the observers.

These findings are consistent with the idea that facial contrast is a cross-culturally valid cue for perceiving age. All study participants have granted their written informed consent in accordance with Helsinski declaration. In France, this study required the information of the National Data Protection Authority or CNIL which is in charge of ensuring respect for the French law on data processing, data files and individual liberties.

The consent of the study models and participants was required before processing personal data. Informed consent ensures both respects for voluntary participation in the study and for the person's right to privacy and data protection consistent with the requirements of applicable law French national data protection authority CNIL.

In addition, all models who participated in this study signed an informed consent form, stating that their facial images could be used by CE. S for research purposes or used for research under the CE. S responsibility. S is the skin research center of Chanel PB. Study 2 was approved by an ethical comity in Zhejiang Sci-Tech University. Data analysis: EM and FS. There are also structural rearrangements going on behind the scenes.

When we're young, fat in the face is evenly distributed, with some pockets here and there that plump up the forehead, temples, cheeks, and areas around the eyes and mouth. With age, that fat loses volume, clumps up, and shifts downward, so features that were formerly round may sink, and skin that was smooth and tight gets loose and sags. Meanwhile other parts of the face gain fat, particularly the lower half, so we tend to get baggy around the chin and jowly in the neck.

And, of course, there are the wrinkles. Those deep ones in the forehead and between the eyebrows are called expression, or animation, lines. They're the result of facial muscles continually tugging on, and eventually creasing, the skin. Other folds may get deeper because of the way fat decreases and moves around. Finer wrinkles are due to sun damage, smoking, and natural degeneration of elements of the skin that keep it thick and supple.

Even if you have great genes and look much younger than you are, age-related changes in our facial appearance are unavoidable. Those changes reflect our joys and challenges in life. One approach is to simply celebrate our age and appearance for what they are. Not everyone is comfortable with that, and some might like to postpone embracing those changes.

The age-defying facelift, which surgically removes excess tissue and lifts sagging skin in the lower part of the face, is one way to try to stem the tides of time. Facelifts have improved, so the results tend to look more natural. But the surgery is expensive, and other procedures may be needed to achieve the desired results.

The facelift procedure is just one of the more popular cosmetic procedures; there are plenty of alternatives for altering the aging face. Although most of these rejuvenating procedures are nonsurgical, they're not inexpensive — especially when you factor in the need for repeat treatments. Here is just a sample of some of the things that you can do — or get done — to give your face a more youthful appearance:. Sun protection.

Protecting your face from the sun is the single best way of keeping it youthful.