Few millimeters of bone
"Few millimeters of bone" or "A few millimeters of bone" is a catchphrase, and a central meme of the incelosphere and anti-lookism activists. This meme pokes fun at the social and sexual advantage men and women with just the right facial proportion are thought to experience. The meme mainly attributes this to bone structure, but cartilage structure, skin texture and hair patterns etc. are of course also involved in giving shape and size to certain facial features. Humans’ aesthetic sense is also very sensitive to hair patterns and hairlines.
The earliest "a few millimeters of bone" meme was posted on August 21st, 2016 on Twitter by user @alexlayko (see the picture below).
Ideal aesthetics[edit | edit source]
The ideal male facial aesthetics include hunter eyes with little to no upper eyelid exposure, positively or neutrally tilted eyes, prominent high cheekbones, thick eyebrows, a large skull, compact midface, killer long chin, defined squarish jawline, long vertical ramus, gonial angle of approx. 120 degrees, forward growth of the mandible and the maxilla, a short straight nose, an ideal philtrum to chin ratio (with the philtrum being shorter), clean exotic skin, healthy bite with white teeth, and lastly, low body fat (below 15%).
Science[edit | edit source]
Many falsely conclude that good looking people have various positive attributes (halo effect), but studies have revealed that physical appearance is actually only very weakly related to health and ability, and accordingly, looks are also only weakly related to socioeconomic status.[1]
Research suggests, that good looks open doors and matter especially in the beginning, but there are no particularly strong associations between looks and lifetime sexual success. It is an open question whether just the right facial proportions are preferred because they slightly do signal health or certain abilities (good genes hypothesis), or due to sexual selection, or whether the human preference for aesthetic appearance is merely a fluke or spandrel of human cognition. Lookism is probably not a main cause of the rise in inceldom, but online dating, social media and the shift of dating opportunities toward short-term encounters in bars etc., possibly did increase the importance of looks.