Deleted member 656
C'est la Guerre
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To begin with, everyone agrees that a wider mouth than average is ideal. It's a basic dimorphic feature and is generally symptomatic of well developed maxilla.
It appears to me that there are two prevailing understandings of what the ideal mouth width is for any particular individual.
In addition, the standard deviations vary based on age group but generally fall around the 3.5 mm mark.
It has also been established that the average adult male's interpupillary distance is around 64 mm;
en.wikipedia.org
So to address the first understanding of the ideal mouth width - that one's mouth width ought to be as wide as his interpupillary distance - one with the average male IPD of 64 mm would need a mouth width that was four standard deviations above average. That translates to approximately 1 man in 31,574. Stop for a moment and imagine how absurd that is. Assuming you had an even greater IPD such as 67.5 mm, which is close to Barrett's measurement, the ideal mouth width would be five standard deviations above average. That translates to 1 man in 3,488,556.
Are we supposed to believe the ideal mouth width is Joker tier? Are we supposed to be Willem Dafoemaxing? I think not.
The second understanding is a little more straightforward because it suffers from the same issue as all other ratios.
When taken in isolation, the ratio does not hold true if the width of your alar base deviates meaningfully from the average.
The average male's alar base is around 36 mm in width, as per FaceBase;
And with that being so, the ideal mouth ought to be around 58 mm in width to fulfill the ratio.
Taking a quick detour, I was recently contacted by @Pendejo, who wrote this high effort thread on mouth widening;
At the time he believed in the first understanding - that the ideal mouth width is more or less the same as one's IPD, and he sent me this picture of Gandy, whom we all know has a wide (and for most near ideal insofar as width is concerned) mouth, and asked me to measure his mouth width to confirm this hypothesis:
This is quite a simple thing to do. You can learn how by viewing the cached version of this Lookism thread:
lookism.net
I measured his mouth width and it came out to around 54 mm. I then measured his IPD for reference, which we know to be around 68.3 mm:
It came out to 63.8 mm. That means there's some distortion with the picture.
That said, 68.3 / 63.8 = 1.07053291536
So I then multiplied 54 by 1.07053291536, which gives you about 57.8 mm.
He's smiling slightly in the picture, which probably increases it by a milimeter or so. From this I feel pretty confident saying his mouth width is in the 55 - 58 mm range. That puts Gandy at (most probably) a little under 2 standard deviations above average, or around 1 in 10.
It's a wide mouth but it's a long way from 68.3 mm, and you can only imagine how absurd it would look if it were to be that wide. That's almost two times the distance between his mouth width and the average man's farther than it is already.
Tl;dr, unless you want to look comical your mouth should not be as wide as your IPD. The 1.618 ratio will give you a very wide looking mouth if you have a normal nose, and a comically wide mouth if you have a wide nose. Around the mid 50's and you're in great territory and a 50 mm mouth isn't as awful as people tend to think.
I hope I've made this coherent.
@FatJattMofo
It appears to me that there are two prevailing understandings of what the ideal mouth width is for any particular individual.
- That the ideal mouth width is as wide as one's interpupillary distance, or as close as possible to.
- That the ideal mouth width is 1.618 times the width of one's alar base, following the golden ratio.
3D Facial Norms Database
FaceBase is the primary data resource for craniofacial researchers worldwide.
www.facebase.org
In addition, the standard deviations vary based on age group but generally fall around the 3.5 mm mark.
It has also been established that the average adult male's interpupillary distance is around 64 mm;
Pupillary distance - Wikipedia
So to address the first understanding of the ideal mouth width - that one's mouth width ought to be as wide as his interpupillary distance - one with the average male IPD of 64 mm would need a mouth width that was four standard deviations above average. That translates to approximately 1 man in 31,574. Stop for a moment and imagine how absurd that is. Assuming you had an even greater IPD such as 67.5 mm, which is close to Barrett's measurement, the ideal mouth width would be five standard deviations above average. That translates to 1 man in 3,488,556.
Are we supposed to believe the ideal mouth width is Joker tier? Are we supposed to be Willem Dafoemaxing? I think not.
The second understanding is a little more straightforward because it suffers from the same issue as all other ratios.
When taken in isolation, the ratio does not hold true if the width of your alar base deviates meaningfully from the average.
The average male's alar base is around 36 mm in width, as per FaceBase;
3D Facial Norms Database
FaceBase is the primary data resource for craniofacial researchers worldwide.
www.facebase.org
And with that being so, the ideal mouth ought to be around 58 mm in width to fulfill the ratio.
Taking a quick detour, I was recently contacted by @Pendejo, who wrote this high effort thread on mouth widening;
At the time he believed in the first understanding - that the ideal mouth width is more or less the same as one's IPD, and he sent me this picture of Gandy, whom we all know has a wide (and for most near ideal insofar as width is concerned) mouth, and asked me to measure his mouth width to confirm this hypothesis:
This is quite a simple thing to do. You can learn how by viewing the cached version of this Lookism thread:
How To Measure Your Face From A Photo
Repost from Looksmax dot net because I don't think it's coming back any time soon Human faces are incredibly varied. Each one is unique. Comparisons between faces can usually only be done in general t
I measured his mouth width and it came out to around 54 mm. I then measured his IPD for reference, which we know to be around 68.3 mm:
It came out to 63.8 mm. That means there's some distortion with the picture.
That said, 68.3 / 63.8 = 1.07053291536
So I then multiplied 54 by 1.07053291536, which gives you about 57.8 mm.
He's smiling slightly in the picture, which probably increases it by a milimeter or so. From this I feel pretty confident saying his mouth width is in the 55 - 58 mm range. That puts Gandy at (most probably) a little under 2 standard deviations above average, or around 1 in 10.
It's a wide mouth but it's a long way from 68.3 mm, and you can only imagine how absurd it would look if it were to be that wide. That's almost two times the distance between his mouth width and the average man's farther than it is already.
Tl;dr, unless you want to look comical your mouth should not be as wide as your IPD. The 1.618 ratio will give you a very wide looking mouth if you have a normal nose, and a comically wide mouth if you have a wide nose. Around the mid 50's and you're in great territory and a 50 mm mouth isn't as awful as people tend to think.
I hope I've made this coherent.
@FatJattMofo
