Types of facial profile - how to improve your facial profile

Someone takes a photo of you from the side. You are not posing, you have no time to set your head at your favourite angle.

Then you see that photo and for a moment you do not recognise yourself.

The nose seems longer. The lips smaller. The chin as if it had slipped backwards. And yet in the mirror you see something completely different every day.

This is not an illusion. The profile really does show more — and that is exactly why almost nobody chooses that shot for a profile picture.

Why the side view is more merciless than the mirror

Because from the front we look at the face flat. We see the eyes, the symmetry, the smile.

From the side you see the relationships between the elements: how the nose relates to the chin, how the lips fall against both of them, where the jawline ends. Every disproportion becomes obvious then.

Before you develop a complex, though, count to ten.

The perfect profile does not exist. Every one of us has some flaw.

The finger test that even celebrities fail

A few years ago a so-called "beauty test" was doing the rounds online, based on the 3:1 rule. The chin, the lips and the tip of the nose should line up in a single line.

It is simple to check: you hold a straightened index finger up to your face. It touches all three points — a perfect profile. It does not touch — well.

Well, and that is that. Because neither Princess Kate's face nor Angelina Jolie's passes this test.

Every woman looks different in profile, and beauty very rarely fits into templates. If, however, looking at your photo from the side you see something that really bothers you, it is worth taking a closer look at it.

Six types of profile — which one is yours

Profiles are usually divided into six most common types:

• Regular — Proportions preserved, no element dominates.
• Round — A flattened forehead, a small and rounded chin.
• Convex — A distinctly protruding middle part of the face.
• Concave — The nose slightly set back, the forehead and chin pushed forward — the so-called flat face.
• Slanted — A strongly receding forehead, sometimes with a more protruding chin.
• Bird-like — A small, receding chin next to an overly prominent nose.

Every profile that departs from the regular one can be corrected with non-invasive aesthetic medicine treatments.

Just watch out for one thing: correction rarely means reducing what dominates. It is usually about restoring the proportions of the whole face — and that sometimes means working in a completely different place than you expect.

The exception is the bird-like profile. It is most often caused by a malocclusion, and then the best results come from working together with an orthodontist.

The nose: it does not have to be shortened to look shorter

Too long, too short, too sharp, hooked, aquiline, humped, crooked. The list of nose flaws can go on for a very long time.

Aesthetic medicine doctors most often correct them with fillers — cross-linked hyaluronic acid or calcium hydroxyapatite.

Both of these substances occur naturally in the human body. The first is a glycosaminoglycan that binds water in the skin and is responsible for its hydration. The second is a mineral present in our bones and teeth.

They are administered with a sterile microneedle or microcannula, exactly where the tissue deficit has to be filled. Beforehand the skin is numbed with an ointment that effectively minimises unpleasant sensations.

The effect lasts — depending on the product — from about 6 to 18 months (hyaluronic acid 6–12 months, calcium hydroxyapatite 12–18 months). It is best visible two weeks after the treatment, when the filler has settled well in the place where it was administered.

One thing has to be said plainly. The nose has a dense and unusually interconnected network of blood vessels, which is why correction with a filler is carried out there more carefully than anywhere else on the face. Vascular complications are rare, but serious — so after the treatment one simple rule applies: severe, increasing pain, paling or bluish discolouration of the skin of the nose, or anything at all happening with your vision, is a signal to contact a doctor immediately, not to wait until morning. This treatment should be performed only where a product that dissolves hyaluronic acid is available.

Lips in profile: two routes, not one

From the side the lips most often seem not full enough.

The first solution is hyaluronic acid. The procedure runs much like nose correction — a small amount of product administered subcutaneously with a fine needle.

Here, however, particular sensitivity is needed. Lips swell and bruise very easily, and the marks after the treatment can last as long as a week.

Hyaluronic acid is absorbed naturally over time, so for the result to be permanent the treatment has to be repeated — on average every 12 months.

The second route is Botox, that is microdoses of botulinum toxin administered at specific points. The toxin does not stop the production of acetylcholine, only its release: it cuts the SNAP-25 protein, without which the ready vesicles cannot let the transmitter out at the neuromuscular junction, that is, at the place where the signal passes from the nerve to the muscle. That is why the effect is reversible — the supply of acetylcholine does not go anywhere. The result: a safe and reversible loss of muscle strength at the motor end plate. The nerve endings do not release the neurotransmitter, and the muscles stop contracting excessively.

In practice this gives two things: the lifting of drooping corners of the mouth and the relaxation of the lip muscles, thanks to which the lips become more pronounced.

The effect usually holds for 3–5 months, and around the mouth — an area that is mobile and treated with microdoses — rather closer to the lower end of that range. During this time new neuromuscular endings form, so this treatment also needs repeating.

Cheeks that have slipped downwards

In profile this is most clearly visible: the cheeks look hollow, the features sharpen unnecessarily, the whole face loses its harmony.

One of the solutions is volumetry and calcium hydroxyapatite. Also excellent are dissolvable PDO threads made of polydioxanone — a synthetic fibre implanted under the skin with very fine needles.

With single punctures the doctor inserts 10–15 threads. They form a stable scaffolding that holds the drooping cheeks in place.

The first effect is visible immediately after the treatment. After 2–3 weeks it becomes clearer, but the full result appears only after 2–3 months. The threads stimulate regeneration and the production of new collagen fibres, and rebuilding the skin simply takes time.

The fibres themselves are absorbed within a few months, and what remains afterwards is the effect of the collagen remodelling they have stimulated. The best documented period of improvement is about a year — there is little longer follow-up, which is why we treat threads as one element of a plan rather than a solution for years to come.

The chin: before we start, we take photos

The chin can spoil the profile too — either too prominent or too small.

Here, as with the bird-like profile, working together with an orthodontist often gives the most. But an aesthetic medicine doctor also has something to work with.

Before I start correcting a chin, I always take photos: from the side and en face. Without them it is impossible to establish the right proportions. Sometimes it turns out that to improve the line of the chin you have to work in a completely different place — for example, enlarge the nose slightly.

A small chin is shaped with fillers: hyaluronic acid and calcium hydroxyapatite.

An overly prominent chin or a so-called double chin is a job for injection lipolysis — a non-surgical, non-invasive method of fat reduction.

With a fine needle the doctor injects a combination of sodium deoxycholate, which dissolves the membranes of fat cells the way a detergent does, and phosphatidylcholine, which holds the mixture together. The product also contains an anaesthetic, so the treatment is bearable.

The released fats travel to the liver, where they are metabolised and removed from the body.

It is worth knowing what comes next. After the treatment swelling may appear, along with painful, burning redness, itching or small bruises. These are typical signs of fat cells breaking down and there is usually nothing worrying about them.

Apart from swelling and bruising there is one more symptom worth knowing about in advance: temporary asymmetry of the smile. It comes from irritation of a nerve branch running close to the chin area, affects a few per cent of patients and resolves on its own, usually within a few weeks. It is not dangerous, but do not sit it out in silence — report it to the doctor, so that the next session can be adjusted.

Sometimes all it takes is one treatment. It happens, though, that it has to be repeated two or three times.

What else works on skin tension and the facial contour

Apart from injections there are also devices that improve skin tension and the line of the contour.

What we do in our clinics:

• Fractional microneedle radiofrequency — Microneedling combined with a radio wave — firms the skin and improves its structure.

Finally: do not choose the treatment on your own

There really are a lot of options and it is easy to get lost in them.

That is why the last word should belong to the doctor. Not because they know better what you want — but because they look at your face rationally, without emotion and slightly from the side. And with a profile it is precisely the view from the side that decides everything.

We most often correct the profile without a scalpel: nose correction with hyaluronic acid evens out a hump and lifts the tip of the nose, and facial volumetry rebuilds the line of the jaw and chin.

This article was prepared by Aneta Bembenek, MD.