Big breasts, a big butt and big lips. Excessive features have been “in” for almost a decade.
However, several studies published by in recent years have shown that bigger isn't always better when it comes to breasts and buttocks.
And now research has shown that lips can be added to the list of features that work better in moderation – a blow to Kylie Jenner and the millions of women who use high doses of lip fillers.
Researchers asked men and women to rate five pairs of lips of different sizes superimposed on the same woman's face. They found moderation was key – not too tall and not too thin.
ADD RANK: The above shows the lips that ranked fourth (left) and the lips that were ranked least attractive (right). Researchers said people prefer more natural lips
Dr. Sebastian Cotofana, an anatomist who formerly worked at the Mayo Clinic and was involved in the study, said, “It's all about proportions.”
“If you take big lips and put them on a slimmer face… it might not look pretty.”
For the study, researchers in Germany recruited 59 men and women – mostly with no medical background and white background – who were in their 30s.
Participants were shown five digitally altered images of a woman “in her 20s” – each with different sized lips.
They rated the images based on their attractiveness on a scale of one to five, with one being the least attractive and five being the most attractive.
Kylie Jenner is pictured above left in 2010 and right in 2023. She is known for using large amounts of lip fillers
Their answers were then averaged to determine which lips were the most appealing.
The winner was the woman's natural lips, which received an average rating of 4.56 out of five.
Second place went to lips, which were 15 percent larger than their natural size, with a score of 4.48.
And in third place were lips, which were 15 percent smaller than their natural size, with a score of 2.52.
The largest lips – a third larger than normal – came last with a value of 1.56.
The study also tracked participants' eyes to find out what they found most appealing.
This showed that people stared longer at bigger lips – but Dr. Cotofana said this could actually indicate that they found her less attractive.
He suggested that people have an “inner ideal of beauty” and when something doesn't match that, they need to gather more “visual information” – stare at it longer – to understand the “mismatch”.
A number of celebrities are known for filling their lips with filler to give them a much plumper and fuller look, such as Kylie Jenner and Ariana Grande.
And her star power is prompting others to get the injections — nearly 1.4 million American women got lip injections last year alone, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons' annual report.
No age breakdown of patients is available – but the fillers aren't just popular with teenagers.
Ariana Grande, pictured left in 2010 and right in 2018, has previously tearfully admitted to having lots of lip fillers
Jessica Simpson pictured above in the early 2000s and again this year with much fuller lips
Andrea Ivanova from Sofia, Bulgaria, a former philosophy student, began her transformation in 2018 and says she's not afraid of her lips ever bursting
Doctors say more and more older women are getting fillers to make their faces appear younger.
The latest study has many limitations.
For one thing, all of the lips shown in the study had a 1:1.6 ratio—that is, the lower lip is about 60 percent larger than the upper lip—which is considered the “golden” or most attractive ratio among Caucasian women.
The fact that the example woman already had a perfect ration may have skewed the results, the researchers admit.
Dr. Cotofana told that the scientists used an archival image of a woman who appeared to be in her 20s for the study.
“We just made it our standard that the lips, which are part of the face, are 100 percent present,” he said, “We went from 100 percent to 70 percent or more.”
“But we didn’t change the facial proportions. “We just changed the lip volume.”
In the paper, written by scientists at Ludwig Maximilian University in Germany, they wrote: “Our results may potentially suggest that attention metrics may not be associated with the “beauty” or “aesthetic appeal” of the content presented.
“Rather, it could reflect the cognitive processing of the observers.” [time needed to adjust].
“Less attractive content grabs the viewer’s attention more quickly, but takes more time to process.”
“For the same reason, receiving a lot of attention after an aesthetic procedure in real life may not reflect a “beautiful” result.”
The study was published in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.