Relax, Everyone Who Isn't Cary Grant: There Is No Ideal Chin

Does this sound familiar? “Grow. Just grow. Why won’t you grow, you stupid piece of trash stuck to the bottom of my face. Yes, you’re garbage. You’re a garbage chin.” No? How about this? “You hulking monstrosity. It makes me sick to look at you. How does my jaw even support you? You’re so huge, chin. Why do you have to be so huge? Can’t you see that you’re ruining my life?”

Chances are that one of the previous conversations is a part of your daily mirror pep talks where you angrily whisper at your own reflection and cruelly chide your flaws on the hopes that they will listen and improve themselves on their own motivation. While these monologues are a very productive way to deal with your self esteem issues, I’m here to tell you that you can lay off your weird chin already because, as it turns out, there is no ideal chin. It’s science!

A new paper published in the online science journal PLOS ONE asserts that while some types facial features are found to be universally attractive — presumably because they signal high-quality mates — the chin is not one of them. While in Western culture, broad chins on men and narrow chins on women are generally considered more appealing, anthropologists at Northwestern and Dartmouth found that this is not a case of universal sexual selection. Using the chin outlines of 180 people (90 women and 90 men) from around the globe, they observed that chin shape widely varied based on region that they came from as did the way that people in various locations responded to them. The anthropologists then concluded that there is no such thing as universal facial attractiveness or superiority when it comes to our jaws.

Those far off wails — do you hear them? That’s Danny Zuko realizing that he now has nothing, nothing at all.