I get this comment a lot, but for some reason
many consider American actor Adam Driver to be a case of unconventional beauty. Someone that is attractive despite not having
the archetypal Hollywood face. I disagree that there is such a thing as conventional
and unconventional beauty because these terms create misnomers and confusion. Rather facial attractiveness and genetic health
is determined much more simply with symmetry, proportion and facial dimorphism. As I’ll come to explain in this video with
Adam’s face, he passes two of these three categories, whereas most Hollywood stars pass
all three with flying colours. This is what the ordinary person would consider
unconventional beauty, but the word beauty in itself implies that he’s still attractive. Not all features rank equal for attraction
for men and women and some harm your aesthetic appeal more than others. Being relatively recently cast as the dark
and foreboding Kylo Ren, Adam Driver is very large and wide so it makes sense that his
face would be so too. In F.B. Naini’s guidelines for clinical aesthetics,
he proposes that the human facial length is 1/10th of their standing height. Although I have no way of scaling and measuring
the length from the photos, standing at 190cm his face is spot on to what a 19cm face looks
like from experience. Also, given that his hairline hasn’t moved
backwards at 36 helps his face stay in this proportion. From this image and many others like it, it’s
clear to see that he has broad shoulders and a thick neck, both of which are strongly masculine
dimorphic traits that few men actually have. Moving on, Adam’s nose has a very unique
shape. From a side view, it has a long projection
outwards which itself widens the dorsal base. Men normally have a wider dorsal base than
women but with Adam’s nasal bridge being narrow at the top this characteristic triangular
shape is only made more apparent. We’ll use Jon Hamm who I feel is a close
comparison by facial height and dimorphism, what one would consider quote on quote conventionally
attractive. His dorsal base is also very wide but his
nasal bridge is too like most men, so the resulting shape isn’t as jarringly unique. Another reason that Adamn’s nose is such
a salient aspect of his face is because of the asymmetry on either side. Larger noses tend to be more crooked as a
considerable portion of the nose builds on soft cartilage instead of hard boney support. His nasal contour isn’t straight, the nose
alar’s are asymmetrically aligned and the nasal tip is biased towards his right. As humans asymmetry is one of the first things
we notice on a face as we determine genetic health based on it (G. Rhodes). Although we can’t always pinpoint it without
artist-like detail, we register it as something feeling off, in this case ‘unconventional
beauty.’ Moving on let’s talk about proportion. In Mommaert’s 2016 study of the ideal male
jaw, he provided 3 proportion guidelines to recreate the top rated jaw shapes. A) The gonion of the jaw passes through the
mouth corners. The gonion being the outermost lateral part
of the jaw, where from his side photos it’s clear to see it does pass through. B) The jaw width (bigonial width) should be 90%
of the facial width (bizygomatic width), which even without accurate measurements is very
clearly the case here. Lastly C) The angle formed between the nose
and lateral eye corner should ideally be the same as the jaw inclination. In Adam’s case they're not perfectly parallel
but still closer than most men. It’s safe to assume that his jaw is very
proportionate. Now, being 36, he’s done a remarkable job
of keeping his hairline healthy. In doing so, his facial thirds aren’t exactly
perfect with his upper third being shorter than his midface. However, this actually works to his favour
as a shorter forehead is a juvenile trait and considering he has many masculine features
such as his nose and jaw, it keeps his face looking young and boyish. A good comparison here is Adrian Broody who
is also regarded as unconventionally attractive. When his hairline was in check for the last
2 decades he was handsome, but as it moved backwards with age, the roundness of his upper
third became apparent and this acted against his features. Instead of looking like a mature, well put
together man, it becomes a strange mix of baby face features on an aging face. The hairline is incredibly important for both
genders because it frames the face. To Adam’s credit, his face does have good
transverse proportions. Given that he has wide narrow, deep-set eyes,
which are the masculine ideal, it balances the distribution of his features across his
wider than average face. The long hair suits him incredibly well because
without it his ears stick out a lot, having an unaesthetic helix mastoid angle. We’ve already done a full breakdown on ear
anatomy here to understand what that means for aesthetics. In virtually all of his photos his ears are
covered by hair which brings his transverse proportions at the ears inwards, as we can’t
see them, and makes his face near ideal. Without the hair, they would otherwise be
very disproportionate. So no, a number 2 fade on the sides every
week is not the answer for every guy, despite what men’s influencers try to convince you. That being said, his face does have some facial
flaws too. With age, submental and platysmal fat increases
with weight gain making the jaw appear less defined and robust. This can be improved by getting leaner overall
or with surgery in the case of over-enlarged glands or a low hyoid bone. I’ve already mentioned that his eyes are
aesthetically shaped, but to go deeper, he has a very projected brow ridge. You can tell from the contour outline on his
forehead and notable supraorbital ridge here sticking out, where supra means above and
orbital refers to the eye socket. In the latest defining beauty video, we covered
that this forehead feature is a robust facial trait that’s left over from our high testosterone
neanderthal cousins. This brow ridge makes his forehead overly
masculine which harms his proportion by giving his face a posterior facial plane where his
jaw is recessed behind the brow. Although his jaw isn’t weak per say as we’ve
established, it’s weak in comparison to his brow and in relation to his face. In Photoshop I tried correcting these flaws
by first shaving down the supra-orbital ridge to be flatter and more resemblant of the modern
brow shape. Then sliding the jaw forwards by only a few
mm so that it’s in line with the brow and creates a neutral facial plane makes a huge
difference to appeal. Lastly the nose was brought down to size using
the Esthetic Eline test where a line drawn from the nose tip to the chin should be a
certain distance away from the lips. There are other measures to test nose projection
and harmony, but this was just a rough guess. Some skin retouching was done because blemishes
do hurt appearances and the submental fat that I just mentioned was removed visually. This final morph isn’t excessive in that
it still looks like Adam Driver and granted there are still things to truly make him next
level, this is something that’s achievable with surgery and effort. If you enjoy facial morphs, be sure to follow
@qovesstudio on Instagram. To summarize what unconventional beauty is. At the beginning of the video I mentioned
that attractiveness is based on foundations of symmetry, averageness, dimorphism and proportion. These are the conventions that we assess conventionally
attractive people by. When we say unconventionally attractive it’s
implying that they don’t pass these conventions and follow a different set of rules, which
I disagree with. Biologically, these are the things we as humans
look for in determining facial attraction and if you want proof, there’s an entire
series for citations on research papers. Adam is attractive within these conventions. Much like Adrian Broody and the list of ‘unconventionally
attractive stars’ these people are still all above average from the average joe. Adam’s face has a lot of proportion by facial
thirds and fifths but a few disproportions in his side profile. It has a lot of symmetry, but a few notable
asymmetries at his nose. It has very strong masculine dimorphic traits
such as the brow ridge and jaw, but a few feminine ones such as his low hairline. It’s mostly koniophilically average but
has some skin blemishes which are not average. In his case, men can get away with a wider
range of nose sizes and shapes due to sexual dimorphism, where they have larger noses with
straighter contours than their female counterparts. Likewise, women can get away with a greater
range of eye shapes, where cosmetic flaws like scleral show can be considered cute and
endearing bambi eyes that make the eyes rounder and more feminine. In Adam’s case, the point that he’s most
lacking in, and ill be frank and say that his nose does not suit his face, is also the
part that men are judged less harshly on and so it’s not as meaningful to his aesthetic
appeal. It’s easier to discern what’s attractive
in men like Jon Hamm or Brad Pitt who are conventionally attractive. Unconventionally attractive means that you
cannot pinpoint what makes them attractive unless you understand the more subtle psychological
nuances in how we’ve come to perceive faces. Regardless, they’re both compared against
the same conventional standards. The best comparison would be fine art where
it takes a certain level of understanding to know what to look for, what to change,
what should be there and what shouldn’t be there.
