It’s not uncommon for new lingos to take over our TikTok For You Pages. With the rise of short-form content like TikToks and reels, trends come and go fast.
Before we jump onto the next trend, let us cycle back to something that dominated our social media feeds recently — the discussion of facial harmony, more specifically, “good features with bad facial harmony,” and vice versa.
@thairysia good harmonie 🤔🔥
In this article, we explore the concept of “facial harmony”, what it means to have good or bad “facial harmony,” and how we can healthily navigate the influx of social media content of this nature.
What Is Facial Harmony?
According to these viral videos online, “facial harmony” refers to how balanced our features look and whether they come together harmoniously.
While it’s difficult to determine the basis of a harmonious face, many have spoken about the “golden ratio”, also known as the ideal proportion between the width of the face and its length, as well as the proportion between the distance between the eyes and the width of the mouth.
Facial harmony is also often confused with the term “facial symmetry”, which alludes to having facial features that mirror each other on both sides of the face.
@roses_are_rosie Why does it look like I have a wig on lol
If you’ve been around in the early days of TikTok, you’ve probably seen the inverted filter on TikTok, which had set off a wave of people lamenting about their asymmetrical faces (which, by the way, is totally normal!)
Credits: @em.ilyclare/TikTok
The recent discourse on facial harmony teeters on the same line, pushing out a narrative that can be detrimental to one’s self image.
As if worrying about our facial symmetry wasn’t enough, we’re now posed an even more complex question, “do we have good features, or more importantly, do our features look harmonious together?”
The Relationship Between Features and Facial Harmony
Credits: @pavlataletskaya/TikTok
The term “good features, bad facial harmony” refer to features that are considered typically attractive, but do not come together harmoniously.
In other words, this trend claims that someone can possess several “good”, or conventionally attractive features (e.g. a tall nose, defined jawline), but still not be considered attractive because they lack facial harmony.
On the flip side, having “bad features with good facial harmony” means having features that do not fit conventional beauty standards, yet still looking attractive as a whole.
What Determines “Good” Features and Facial Harmony?
Before we can conclude whether someone has good facial harmony, it’s a challenge to determine what features are considered “good.”
While we can use a face symmetry filter to show us whether our faces are symmetrical, there’s no concrete guideline to determining a harmonious face.
Who dictates the criteria for “good” features, and are certain features only considered attractive because they fall into Eurocentric beauty standards?
More important, what exactly is the benchmark for features that look harmonious together?
Many TikTok users don’t know the answer to that either, which is why they’ve taken to the app to ask other users if they have good facial harmony or not.
@yeppinini
What this means is thousands of social media users, many of which are young, impressionable teenagers, leaving their self-image in the hands of strangers all over the world.
Focus on Enhancing Your Features Instead
Instead of hyper-fixating on an intangible concept, mulling over features you cannot change, learn about things like your visual weight and what makeup style suits your features best instead.
Credits: @krystallee2222/TikTok, @maxinesrevenge/TikTok
TikTok does not only bring about these concerning trends, it also spreads the word about helpful tools that can improve our appearance and self-image.
Just like how we are encouraged to dress for our body type, taking your visual weight into consideration helps us identify the makeup style that suits us best.
Your blush placement can completely change your face, just like how the way you wing your eyeliner can alter your eye shape.
Instead of agonising over where your features stand on the scale of “good” and “bad” features, we use makeup as a tool to spotlight our best features.
