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About Face

Chapter Seven The Lips The Shape What Can Be Done Chin Surgery Lip Surgery The Paris Lip

The Shape

Lips are upper and lower parts divided by the “oral orifice”: the mouth. Each part is further divided into red and white segments at what is called the “vermilion border”. This border is well dined by the contrast in colors and by the change in skin texture. The color contrast is most noticeable in Caucasians: the write flesh part of the lip blends with the skin of the face; the red part is a thin membrane, rich with blood. When you look at someone from the side, the red segments are more noticeable that the flesh because they project further from the face in a kind of pout. Cosmetic surgeons describe the lips as arching backward. The lips are joined together at the “commissures,” otherwise known as the corners of your mouth.

The skin of the upper lip hangs like a curtain from the base of the nose. It is defined on either side by the lip-cheek grooves. In the middle of the flesh-colored upper lip, there is a vertical depression called the “Philtrum,” which is accentuated on each side by “philtral crests”; the philtral area resembles one of the decorative depressions you make in the edges of a piecrust.

The red upper lip has two lateral wings with a small red nodule in the middle, called a “tubercle,” that hangs over a corresponding groove in the lower lip. The place where the red and flesh-colored skins of the upper lip join is shaped like a flattened M and it is called the “Cupid’s bow.” Few other places on the body are as important to our sense of sexuality as this seven millimeters of skin.

The flesh-colored segment of the lower lip is anchored to the chin by a horseshoe-shaped groove just under the middle of the red segment. Again, the lip is defined on either side by the chin-cheek grooves. The red segment of the lower lip has two lateral lobes (fuller than the lateral wings of the upper lip), joined by a shallow groove in the middle. When the upper and lower lips are at rest, they should just touch each other, without a gap.

This kind of technical description should offer a new perspective on the popular romance-novel expression, “she parted her lips.” She parts them, puckers them, smiles, or does anything else with her lips by using ten muscles paired into five groups: those that raise the upper lip; those that raise the commissures, or corners: those that pull down the commissures: those that pull down the lower lip: and those that act to contract the circumference of the lips as a unit.

Depending on how these groups of muscles are used, they will interact to produce the three classic smiles that a human being is capable of: the Mona Lisa smile; the canine smile; and the full dental smile. The Mona Lisa smile is characterised by a minimal display of teeth. It is similar to the enigmatic smile in the famous Mona Lisa portrait by Leonardo da Vinci. Interestingly, this small smile requires the use of the three paired muscles coming from the cheekbone. Perhaps this is why such a smile is sometimes referred to as “strained.” The canine smile is known as a more aggressive smile; it shows more of the upper front teeth. And the full dental smile, as its name implies, shows both the upper and lower teeth - it is generally the last smiling step on the way to an all-out, open-mouthed laugh.

As I mentioned in an earlier chapter on facial assessment, a well-proportioned face should divide into three equal parts, measured from the hairline to the top of the eyebrows, from the eyebrows to the bottom of the nose, and from there to the bottom of the chin. Lips, which occupy the bottom one-third of the face, should be measured for proportion starting at the exact point where the “tubercle” (the small nodule of flesh that sits at the center of the upper lip) meets the corresponding shallow groove in the lower lip. Up from this point to the bottom of the nose should measure one-third of the bottom third of the overall face; down from this point to the bottom of the chin should measure two-thirds of the bottom third.

There are other ways to measure proportion in the area of the lips, many of them named for their inventors. For example, the Frankfort plane, which is a straight, horizontal line drawn from the front of the ear, will intersect with the Gonzalez-Uloa zero meridian line to reveal whether or not the chin is too prominent in the bottom third of the face. (See below.) Legan’s angle of facial convexity, on the other hand, measures the projection of soft tissues, like lips, in the bottom third, while Rickett’s E-line measures the relationship of the upper lip to the lower lip. By adulthood, the upper lip should be about four millimeters behind the E-line; the lower lip should be about two millimeters behind.

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