Sexual dimorphism

Facial sexual dimorphism refers to the average differences in shape between male and female faces within a population. The features usually named are a more prominent brow ridge, a wider and squarer jaw, a longer midface and thinner lips on the male average, and the reverse on the female average. The important word is average: the distributions overlap heavily, so any individual face sits somewhere on a continuum rather than in one of two categories, and a measurement that is typical of one average is common in people of the other. The research linking dimorphic features to rated attractiveness is mixed and depends strongly on the population doing the rating. Most of the underlying features are bone and set in adults; the ones that move — soft-tissue fullness, body composition, hair — do most of the work in how a face is read.