Triangular Cat Face

As a man, what do you find attractive about a woman's face?
Which general face shape do you find interesting?
For example: A square face? An oval face shape? A shape of an inverted triangle (a face-triangle or ‘cat face’)?

Image A: Abstraction of a Cat Attractor [triangular face] (©RGES).

Some men find a triangular face in a woman very beautiful, especially in combination with an upward curve of the eyebrows.
If you view a woman's face from the edge towards the centre, the following emerges: The curves of the eyebrows running downwards from the outside inwards, form attention-directing lines for the observer in the direction toward the nose bulb.

Image B: Abstract representation of possible triangular line play, form relationships, and repetition in the human face, resembling a cat face.

Image C: Artist impression of the evolutionary trend towards a cat face in a woman.
(Image by Rheanun from Pixabay [AI-g] )

Disadvantages

There is also a downside on the emergence of the 'Cat-Face'.

Micrognathia

The triangular human face has a major disadvantage: the size of the chin and the (lower) teeth is reduced; this occurs after many generations of intrinsic selection for the ‘cat face’ model. Human dentition has been undergoing a degenerative phase for a very long time in human evolution. For example, due to the invention of fire in the era of early humans, people can roast or cook food. This has finally led to our ancestors having to crack and chew very few hard foodstuffs with their teeth. The lower jaw slowly loses its gnawing function over hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution.

In the evolution of body forms, those parts that are not regularly used, appear to gradually become smaller (or even disappear). Slowly in evolution, genes (of unused traits) disappear, or they become accidentally deformed (at the DNA level) or deactivated (an epigenetic phenomenon?). A large jaw with strong teeth is becoming increasingly less important in the evolution of humankind.

If, therefore, the degenerative trend of dental weakening during human evolution coincides with sexual selection (from male to female) for a triangular, ‘cat-shaped’ facial form, then these two trends reinforce each other.

Intelligence and Beauty

In addition, there is a third factor at play: because humans began to excel in intelligence during their genetic evolution, this led to explosively overgrown brains. The large human brain led to greater skull growth. This skull growth had a negative effect on the growth of the lower jaw for hundreds of thousands of years. A ‘friction’ arose between two genetic developmental trends: a strong jaw or a larger skull. Some people preferred to see a powerful lower jaw in the face of their reproductive partner. Others, on the other hand, found the triangular shape of a cat-like face more attractive; that is to say, a small lower jaw figuratively emphasizes the triangular relationship between the two eyes and the mouth.

Social Acceptance

Another evolutionary trend that has led to micrognathia is the following:
People with a small lower jaw are perceived as less threatening by others. In a social group, it is important to be accepted. If you come across as less threatening during a first meeting with an existing group of people, the chance of being accepted into the group increases.

In other words: the sexual selection mechanism between men and women has led many people to choose each other based on the trait of ‘intelligence’ (large skull) combined with the ‘cat face’ (triangular face shape). This evolutional trend has been going on for thousands of years.

The combination of these two trends has accelerated the other evolutionary trend, namely the degeneration process of human teeth and especially the lower jaw.
Only now, in our modern era, have people come to realize that a triangular female face also has disadvantages.

Dental Beauty

Nowadays, many parents have their children's teeth corrected by the dentist. The children must wear braces for years in order to correct the human path of devolution.
This artificial dental correction in children masks the original trend of shrinkage of the lower jaw. When they reach the 'mating-ready' age, they have beautiful, straight teeth. In this way, the sexual selection mechanism is deceived during the reproductive period of adolescents.
Perhaps our future culture will adapt to new insights regarding the biologically functional design of beauty: natural intrinsic sexual selection by man and woman.