People talk a lot about attractive features. What looks good and all that. But what about unattractive features? What features do most people consider unattractive? We’ll discuss the main things that look unattractive in today’s time.
“Unattractive” features include prey eyes, a low hyoid, small lips, large teeth or misaligned teeth, a recessed chin, a unibrow, a large nose, and the list goes on.
Something that many people find themselves worrying about is whether they are attractive or not. And while it is valid to worry about those things, the answer to that question is much more difficult to answer than we think.
Attractiveness is not just picking out a single feature and judging a face based on that. If anything, it is the complete opposite. Symmetry and proportion hold far much more value in attractiveness than just a single trait. However, this does not mean that individual features don’t matter because they do.
What we think is attractive today is not always objective. Beauty and attractiveness are social constructs that change a lot over time and depend on the region. What is attractive in the west right now may not be what is attractive in the east. Similarly, what was attractive in the early 2000s is not the same thing that is attractive today.
While it is easy to get caught up in ideas of unattractiveness and which features are not attractive, it will help to remember that most of these things are products of our thinking. In one study by Schneickert et al. (2020), they said that unattractiveness is related to social and cultural capital.
That said, this article will analyze unattractive features based on what is going on today. This analysis gives us the context that we need to discuss attractiveness properly.
Attractiveness Throughout the Years
To give a little insight into what it means for beauty standards to change, let’s look at the current trend of full lips. A decade or two ago, this feature would have been deemed unattractive. Because at that time, thinner lips were all the rage, like Jennifer Aniston’s. Today, many women get lip fillers to achieve that overdone full lip look.
One major celebrity known for their lip fillers is Kylie Jenner. In her youth or early teens, she had very thin lips that she despised and was a source of a lot of insecurity. To help with that, she got lip fillers, and it was a huge deal back then. If she were a teen in the early 2000s, she would not have had the same trouble.
Contrarily, Angelina Jolie was bullied in her youth because of her thick lips, the same lips that would look incredibly attractive today.
The same goes for a lot of features. For example, back a decade or two, the eyebrow was attractive if the person had thin eyebrows. But in the mid-2010s, the eyebrows that were all over Instagram brow had clear cut lines and were thick. Today, the brow that looks most attractive is the feathered and natural brow.
What we see as attractive is constantly changing. It is important to analyze beauty in the context of time, ethnicity, and region.
Unattractive Features
Now that we’ve discussed a little about what it means to understand the word unattractive, let’s discuss what we can say is unattractive today.
Prey Eyes
Attractive eyes are meant to reside deep within the skull, like this:
Those are Hunter Eyes. Prey eyes, on the other hand, stick out of your head and make you look bug-eyed.
Too much upper eyelid exposure is an unattractive trait:
For more info on the eye area, check out our article on how to get attractive eyes.
Thin Lips
Unlike in the 1990s and the 2000s, thin lips are no longer attractive. These days, a lot of celebrities get mocked online for their thin lips. Tom Holland, for example, gets a lot of comments on his disappearing lip.
The dislike for thin lips may have gotten worse because many celebrities get lip fillers and augment their lip shapes. Nonetheless, it has impacted today’s perception of lips.
Today’s ideal lip would be a full upper and lower lip, while not being excessive in size: not too thin, but not too thick either. For women, many girls compensate for thinner lips by using makeup and overlining their lipstick. There are many tricks to using makeup to create fuller lips, and many women use them worldwide.
Large Nose
A large nose is almost always unattractive. Our perception of noses has changed little over time. The ideal nose today is small and does not look flat. One of the problems with a generalized definition of beauty is that it ignores the fact that there are ethnicities worldwide. World standards for beauty largely revolve around caucasian or western standards of beauty. For the nose, this means a straight and narrow nose bridge and a level base. The nostrils should not flare.
When we think of attractive noses without analyzing them across ethnicities, we have a chunk of the world who thinks they are unattractive because their ethnic differences are too different. There is little we can do about this since beauty, again, is a social construct. And it just so happens that it has been eurocentric throughout most of the world.
Recessed Jaw or Chin
Another universally unattractive trait is a recessed chin. It may have something to do with how meek and timid someone looks like if they have a recessed chin. It is much better to look at a person who is confident and exudes a strong personality.
And while not all recessed chins are so extreme to the point that it would render someone unattractive, in itself, it is not an attractive trait. The jaw is an essential part of the face, and it is even more crucial (aesthetics-wise) that the jaw is prominent.
Large and Misaligned Teeth
Generally, anything that is out of proportion (too large or too small) is unattractive. The same goes for large teeth. People who have buck teeth and an overbite or underbite will look less attractive than if their bite and teeth were normal.
This feature is also something that hasn’t changed much in the last few decades. For more info on how malocclusions and bite problems influence aesthetics, check out this Looks Theory episode:
Unibrow
The eyebrows are meant to frame the rest of the face. A unibrow is something that many people consider unattractive, and this hasn’t really changed. It’s too unconventional and throws off the balance of the face. One of the most striking people in history with a unibrow was Frida Kahlo. Unfortunately, the unibrow made her look masculine, and she would have looked better with proper grooming.
Low Hyoid
A low hyoid bone is what’s responsible for giving you the turkey neck look. People with low set hyoids look like they have double chins, even at low levels of body fat.
For more info on the hyoid bone and neck fat, check out our article.
What You Can Do About Your Unattractive Features
Fortunately, we also live in a day and a time where there are tons of procedures available for cosmetic purposes. How you can fix your unattractive features will depend on what those unattractive features are.
If you have prey eyes, check out our article on how to get hunter eyes.
If you have a large nose, you may opt for rhinoplasty. A surgical process that involves reshaping the nose to make it look much better. It does come with some risks, though, so you have to be careful with it and do a ton of research beforehand.
If you want to fix your chin and jaw problems, you may want to take a look at mewing. If you’re noticeably recessed, you need surgery or orthodontic intervention.
As a general catch-all to many facial features, dermal fillers can fix many cosmetic issues. There are now filler options for the nose, the lips, the cheeks, and even the jaw. It’s a non-invasive procedure, so it’s probably the easiest and most convenient way to make your face look more attractive.
Mewing also moves your face in the right direction and is a great option for fixing a low hyoid. If you don’t have any major flaws, you should be mewing. We have a full guide for it here, but mewing is essentially exercising proper oral posture to get a more defined jawline.
