What makes the most attractive female lips?

A new study conducted over a six-year period at the University of California, Irvine has found a way to calculate the most attractive female lips.

Researchers wanted to figure out this measure of beauty in the sciency way that scientists work. So they determined the most attractive lip dimensions based on the surface area of the lips, most attractive ratio of upper to lower lip, and the surface area of the lips compared to the lower third of the face.

Phase one began with 150 participants, 130 over the internet and 20 in person. They were shown pictures of 20 different digitally rendered females between the ages of 18 -25 with five different lip structures, totaling 100 pictures and were told to rank the pictures based on attractiveness. Scores for each face were noted and used to help determine the perfect surface area.

Phase two used the 15 most attractive faces as per phase one, and created four versions of the female faces by changing the upper to lower lip ratio but made sure to maintain the same facial surface area as before. 428 people then ranked them by attractiveness 408 over the internet and 20 in person.

What makes most attractive female lips? It’s all about the ratio…

In phase three, the researchers used all the above data to determine the perfect lip surface area for the lower third of the face. A roughly 53 per cent increase in area was deemed as most attractive, which equals out to be about a 1:2 upper to lower lip ratio and 9.6 per cent of the lower third of the face, while the reverse 2:1 ratio was deemed as most unattractive.

Plastic surgeons, of course, can now use the information provided by this study to help improve their client’s facial features while hopefully not going overboard like some celebrates have in the past.

“Unfortunately, some celebrities are trying to create a trend that violates that aesthetic,” said Brian J.F. Wong, one of the authors of the today.com. “We advocate preservation of the natural ratio or achieving a 1:2 ratio in lip augmentation procedures while avoiding the overfilled upper lip look frequently seen among celebrities,” continued Wong.

Based on our back of the napkin estimate, there are several well-known celebrities who qualify for the honor of having “perfect lips”, including Angelina Jolie, Miranda Kerr, Kendall Jenner, and Megan Fox.

According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), in 2015 there were over 14.2 million minimally-invasive cosmetic surgeries performed, and 2.4 million of those were soft tissue filler surgeries, up 6% since 2014. Soft tissue filler/dermal filler has an average cost of around $800 for injections.

“We live in the age of the selfie, and because we see images of ourselves almost constantly on social media, we’re much more aware of how our lips look,” Said David Song, the president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) in a press release in 2016.