A facial analyst is going on the record to say that people are “becoming less attractive”, reports the Daily Mail.
Shafee Hassan, founder of Sydney facial aesthetics consultancy firm QOVES, took to YouTube and TikTok to detail the physical phenomenon and the many reasons we are getting uglier.
One of Hassan’s followers questioned why an old high-school yearbook “contained [so] many attractive people... was it something in the water?”
In the video’s caption, the facial analyst explained: “The average person’s face is becoming increasingly disadvantaged by modern diets, sleeping patterns, pollutants and orofacial habits creating a greater inequality in ‘the attractives’ vs ‘the unattractives.’”
Hassan asks if anyone had contemplated why teens back in the 1950s look “so much older” than teens now.
Showing an example of a young man, Hassan identifies the teenager’s “defined” gonion (the apex of the lower jaw) and his “projected” zygoma (the cheekbone).
A facial analyst has offered up a theory as to why it seems people are becoming 'less attractive,' sparked by a follower's question about it. Photo / TikTok
“There are multiple theories about why this is the case, but the one that makes the most intuitive sense at least to me is presented in Contemporary Orthodontics by [US orthodontist William] Proffit and colleagues using what’s known as the functional matrix hypothesis,” Hassan revealed.
He goes on to say that this theory proves that the “development of the face is dependent on the forces you put on it, for the upper and lower jaw,” which are the two main features that make someone look “handsome or attractive”.
The facial analyst says that the tongue or “other forces” may affect the development of the jaw, “pushing it downwards or outwards” before the new bone growing in.
In the video, he claims that a little girl’s sinus infection affected the growth of her lower jaw, which was backed up by photographic examples.
Because the young girl was always breathing through her mouth, it was therefore not closed often enough for that part of the body to “develop properly”.
He claims in the video that a little girl's sinus infection affected the growth of her lower jaw. Photo / TikTok
To conclude, Hassan said: “With 70 per cent of the Western world, having some kind of malocclusion or recession, much like this, it’s a very good explanation for why faces are becoming less and less attractive as time goes on.”
Malocclusion is when your teeth don’t line up perfectly and recession occurs when your gums pull away from your teeth.
According to Colgate, roughly 22 per cent of people globally have an overbite, referencing a global study published by the Dental Press Journal of Orthodontics.
He said there were multiple theories, but the "most intuitive" to him was known as the functional matrix hypothesis, which theorises the development of the face is dependent on the forces you put on it. Photo / TikTok
Social media users flooded the comments with their take on the theory and whether they agree with the claim or not.
“Worth noting that everyone looks better on a film camera compared to an iPhone, it brings out the features and makes a face look more defined,” one person wrote.
“People are definitely not getting uglier. You haven’t seen enough old pictures if you believe this,” another shared, with one YouTube user chiming in: “Exactly lol I actually think it’s the opposite.”
A third user offered an alternative theory: “Beauty bias, the pictures of ugly people are less likely to be seen/publicised compared to their more attractive counterparts”.
One commenter believed diet was the reason for our changing facial features: “One thing people don’t think about in regards to this is diet. Your jaw gets a lot stronger if your diet consists of whole meat, whole vegetables, whole fruit, etc. Things you have to chew with force. Lots of people have replaced good home cooking with softer, processed foods and snacks and it takes its toll.”
