The Science Behind Facial Harmony, TikTok’s Latest Beauty Trend
A public assessment of beauty through your phone screen, what could possibly go wrong?
“Can you judge my facial harmony?” users across TikTok beg, vulnerably opening themselves up for a beauty evaluation from onlookers. Close-ups of their lips, nose, forehead and eyebrows follow, with a finale that exposes their entire portrait. The consensus: “Good features, but bad facial harmony,” with thousands of likes supporting the viewpoint. The conclusion validates that the features may be great individually, but together, harmony or cohesiveness is lacking.
Welcome to the facial harmony side of TikTok, an ecosystem where beauty is up for critique, singled out as “good” or “bad,” and everyone can share their take. Users put their faces on display and encourage the assessment of their attractiveness through public interpretation. Here, beauty is attained only through harmony and doesn’t exist outside this formulaic lens. It’s limiting, restrictive and, most importantly, harmful. It also begs the question of whether these claims hold validity and how facial harmony is interpreted outside this online bubble.
@louska.v♬ MTG CHIHIRO by Mulú – luck
Dr. Geeta Yadav, a board-certified dermatologist and founder of FACET Dermatology, a full-service dermatology center in Toronto, confirms that although facial harmony is a crucial aspect of aesthetic treatment, it doesn’t equate to beauty. “There is something called the ‘golden ratio,’ a measurement known as Phi, that is considered aesthetically ideal and found in nature, architecture, art and the face,” she says.
The ratio is 1:1.618 and can be applied to the entire face — its length and width, the distance between the nose and lips and the space between the eyes. Yadav offers the following example: “A lower lip should have 1.6x the volume of an upper lip to be considered harmonious.” She shares that although all aesthetic professionals consider facial harmony in their services, a good provider goes beyond just that and aims to enhance and maintain the integrity and character of the patient’s facial features.
@chanagoyons1Bad facial harmony♬ MTG CHIHIRO by Mulú – luck
She references the infamous “Instagram Face” — characterized by overfilled lips, buccal fat removed to reveal high cheekbones and lifted brows — and says it can be harmonious when done well but leads everyone to look alike. This was evident in the recent season of Love Island UK, with commentators facing difficulty distinguishing the contestants from one another due to their surgically enhanced resemblance. “When it comes to the ‘Instagram Face,’ after a certain point, we go past the golden ratio and into the uncanny valley, creating something that looks so perfect that it looks inhuman to the point of being creepy,” Yadav shares.
Of course, beauty cannot always be measured by ratios and equations. For example, some supermodels have successful careers despite not necessarily having the “golden ratio,” and individuals with features classified as “imperfect,” like diastemas (space between the front teeth) or heterochromia (eyes that are different colours) can still look incredibly beautiful, Yadav shares. Debunking that harmony can still exist with “imperfect” features or a lack of golden ratios isn’t easy within the TikTok community, where Eurocentric beauty features are often the reference point.
@isseypovsMy head is so roud lol♬ Fade Into You – Mazzy Star
For cosmetic surgeons Dr. Michael Brandt and Dr. Ron Somogyi at FORM Face+Body, facial harmony is not seen as a trend but a rule. They even argue that much of facial harmony is intangible. “It’s like talent; you know it when you see it,” the business partners shared. Although patients may enter their clinic with a desire to embody or chase a particular beauty trend (for example, buccal fat removal), they are often dissuaded from trying to achieve a specific look if they can effectively point out that this will change the balance of their beauty and ultimately result in facial features that stand out unnaturally. “Chasing trends will result in many future treatments to redo or undo some of the changes that are made,” they say.
Although facial harmony is used in aesthetic practices, it lacks merit when professional voices are missing from the conversation on TikTok. Online, it’s classified in a more limiting way as “good features but bad facial harmony” or the opposite, “bad features but great facial harmony,” which is truly a subjective view.
@nikkippatelGlow up advice : good facial harmony is more important than good features♬ original sound – Nikki 🦋
Clinical psychologist and professor at York University, Dr. Jennifer Mills, says this TikTok trend is interesting because it taps into our brain’s innate desire to determine how we measure up. But there’s a fine line between viewing yourself through a critical lens and obsessing over it. With facial harmony, we quickly learn which features are shunned and rewarded. “There are all these rules around facial harmony that we are implicitly or explicitly told, which can lead to a constant preoccupation in the back of people’s minds or trigger a negative fixation,” she says, “this gets concerning when it takes mental energy away from other aspects of our life that add value, like friends, family, and work or school.”
This harmful form of scrutinization can quickly get out of hand, as it cranks up the spotlight on our features by zooming in and out on them. “Many people don’t have access to the time, money, or techniques needed to make your appearance align with the standards at play,” Mills says. An open forum on facial harmony analysis can ignite a never-ending rat race of chasing beauty trend after beauty trend that can themselves change overnight. We can drown in the expectations of what is perceived as attractive, yearning for unattainable feelings of perfection packaged and sold as “facial harmony.” And there’s nothing harmonious about that at all.
