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Kraken
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Jaw Anatomy
The Mandible
When plastic surgeons and orthodontists prepare for jaw surgery, they consider a few key parameters that influence the jaw’s final shape. The first and most well-known one is the lower mandible, or what’s commonly known as the jawline or jaw body. In art anatomy, it’s often taught that the mandible should line up with the naision of the face.A longer, more prominent mandible, within reason, is more beneficial to increasing bite force as the pterygoid (ter-e-goid) muscles have a longer lever arm to generate more torque with. This is one of the proposed reasons for why we’ve always found strong jawlines attractive from an evolutionary survival point of view.
The Ramus
The next important part is the ramus which again helps with bite force, but not as much as the mandible. Men have a steeper ramus which goes downwards and doesn’t help make the lever arm longer to amplify force. The length of the ramus largely determines the face shape from long and oval to short and square. In men rammus length determines, for lack of a better word, how ‘masculine,’ your jaw looks and vice versa in women, as it’s one of the main points of sexual dimorphism in the jaw. Sexual dimorphism referring to biological differences in men’s and women’s anatomy.Gonial Angle
The ramus does play a role in attractiveness as it forms the next parameter, the gonial angle. The gonial or jaw angle is the angle the ramus makes with the mandible and can vary from 90° to 140° with the population average being in within 128° +/- 2.36° for males and 126° +/-2.41°. More acute gonial angles result in square, masculine faces while larger, more obtuse angles result in a rounder, feminine appearance.Bigonial Width
Bigonial width is a measure of jaw width from gonion to gonion (the apex of the mandible and lower jaw). Men tend to have larger bigonial widths while women have smaller ones. Interestingly, some may mistake large masseter muscles as being the bigonial width, however this is strictly a measure of bone structure and so muscles which vary in size day to day, cannot be included.The majority of men who go in for jaw surgery are concerned with improving their bigonial width. It’s the last milestone for the Brad Pitt’esque jawline, where many have strong mandibles, but few have the Hollywood width to acheive the masculine square face look.
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