Makeup for a Moderate Mid-Face Length

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Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel. This is part two in my series where I look at the relationship between makeup and mid-face length. In the first installment, I went over longer and shorter mid-faces, and in this video, I’ll go over makeup looks for a more moderate mid-face length.

A Quick Disclaimer: If you tend to be very obsessive and critical or overanalyze your face, I don’t recommend watching this video or post because as it may be detrimental to your mental health. If you’re always scrutinizing your photos, picking yourself apart in the mirror, then this might lead to excessive analysis. But if you genuinely get enjoyment out of studying your features, and contemplating the different ways that makeup can exaggerate and distort your image, then I hope this gives you some food for thought.

I also want to be clear: I don’t believe in balancing the face to comply with an artificial beauty standard, but I do believe in understanding how makeup can distort our features. In this video series, I really focus on presenting all of the features of the face harmoniously.

What Defines a Mid-Face?

Before we get into the makeup looks, briefly, what is a mid-face? In popular terms, the mid-face is the section from the brow bone to the upper lip. Mid-face length is its proportion relative to the other thirds of the face: the forehead and then the lower face.

  • If one has a longer mid-face, that section from the brow bone to the upper lip tends to take up more space compared to the overall facial length.
  • If one has a shorter mid-face, that section takes up less space.
  • If one has a moderate mid-face, it’s somewhere in between those two.

How is mid-face length affected by makeup? Here is a very simplified example of how different makeup—specifically, eyebrow definition and lip definition—can create the illusion of a shorter or a longer mid-face. This also talks about how different makeup can kind of compress the visual interest centrally or expand the visual interest outwards. Where is one drawn to looking? Where is attention distributed on the face?

In terms of the biggest patterns seen in the longer and shorter mid-face video, the shorter mid-faces benefited from a more central, kind of compressed distribution of makeup or emphasis of the features where it goes kind of inwards. There’s a little bit more verticality up and down so that it stays within this triangle. And for longer mid-faces, they look best with more expansive, widening, sweeping makeup that emphasizes width, not verticality.

Honoring the Natural Balance: Celebrity Examples

For those with a more moderate facial proportion, a more moderate strategy or approach to makeup, I think, looks best. This preserves that balance that is just such an inherent quality in these very moderate beauties.

Jessica Alba

My first example is the beautiful Jessica Alba, who has a very balanced face. For Jessica, her makeup looks best when all of her facial features are equally prioritized and presented so that beautiful symmetry and natural harmony just come through very cleanly and very crisply. This uses a mix of both the short and long mid-face techniques.

Successful Techniques:

  • Central Blush: More centrally applied blush to start with.
  • Verticality: A little bit of verticality with the lashes.
  • Brow Origins: Slightly more inward brow origins, not too much of an arch or too wide.
  • Elongation: A bit of width from the elongation of the eye makeup towards the outer corners.
  • Moderate Lip/Cheek: The lip and cheek are a little bit more moderate, not heavy or overly matte, plus a little bit of sweep from the center of the cheek upwards is great.

Less Successful Techniques:

  • Elongated Brow: A more elongated, heavy brow that seems to be even straighter than her usual brow.
  • Outward Emphasis: A lot of outward emphasis with a vertical emphasis. This creates a tension that takes away attention from the rest of her face, emphasizing the eye region above all else.
  • Heavy Makeup: A much more arched, bolder, heavier, wider brow with a lot of emphasis on the eyeshadow above and below the eye, and a lot of lashes more towards the end. This emphasizes the eye region disproportionately.
  • Excessive Contour: A ton of contour on the sides, which takes away from the lovely, natural face shape that she has.

Kate Winslet

It was so hard for me to find a picture where her makeup is not honoring her features because her makeup usually just does such a beautiful job of emphasizing and enhancing the natural shapes of her face. She looks great with soft definition, a softer, more gentle arch in the brows, and very moderate eye makeup. Nothing too heavy, nothing too crazy. The cheeks get a pop of color and a pop of contour, and the lips get soft definition as well.

Less Successful Techniques:

  • Overdone Arch: Overdoing the arch on the brows, which messes with the mid-face proportion, making the mid-face look a little longer and more angular.
  • Lower Lash Emphasis: The eye makeup has more emphasis on the outer corners and the lower lash line.
  • No Cheek Color: No color on the cheeks to connect the top and bottom halves of the face.

Monica Bellucci

So this one is going to definitely be a nitpicky example. We have the gorgeous Monica Bellucci, and obviously she is just so gorgeous, but I think that her makeup on the left is just a little bit more successful at enhancing the flow of her face because the more refined brow shape mirrors her more refined, rounded, but slightly angular facial structure. She has that fine, delicate, angular bone structure, but on top she has more of that soft, rounded, fleshy face. So the brows here are really enhancing that, and the eye makeup is just subtly extended to the sides a bit.

In her other photos with more rounded brows and a slightly shortened eye makeup style, she still looks amazing and beautiful, but I don’t think it does as good of a job at reflecting the themes of her face. This makeup is just missing that little dose of elongation and refinement.

Halle Berry

Another example is the insanely gorgeous Halle Berry.

Successful Look:

  • Beautiful Makeup: On the left, we have just beautiful makeup, perfect brows, a perfect balance of width and elongation along with a vertical opening of the eyes.
  • Honored Contours: The cheeks and the lip definition are beautiful. You can see all of the contours of her face being honored.

Less Successful Looks:

  • Bangs and Hair: Here’s where hair really plays a part. Hair, bangs in particular, can really distort proportions, especially if you are so insanely balanced like Halle is. With bangs, it blocks most of her upper face and, instead of framing the eyes, what is seen is a framing of the brow bone. This squishes this part of her face, and we don’t get that lovely verticality.
  • Downward Emphasis: In another look, there’s too much shadow on the outer corners and below the eye, pulling the eye down. Too much contour shadow below the apples of her cheeks. This is slightly mirrored by the glossy lip with two tones. So we get emphasis of the shadows, the shadows, and the shadows. It’s all a little bit downward-oriented.
  • Nude Lip & Outer Cheek Color: With the more nude lip and a more outer-oriented cheek color, it tends to just frame this portion of her face, so we miss all of that beautiful harmony.

Olivia Rodrigo

A final example is the gorgeous Olivia Rodrigo. She looks best with a slightly straighter brow that isn’t super arched, and with makeup that isn’t overly flicked out to the sides. This gives a good mix of verticality and width with good definition distributed along the cheeks and the lips.

Less Successful Looks:

  • Arched Brows & Cat Eye: Her brows are very arched and curved, which brings the visual emphasis outwards. This is mirrored by the cat eye as well. Then you get a lot of “curve on curve” and not enough emphasis drawing the eye inwards, which can disrupt the facial proportions.
  • Over-lined Lip: The over-lined lip also mirrors the curves. I don’t think it’s as connected as the other looks.

Other Proportional Factors to Consider

  • Bangs and Brows: Bangs, with wider, rounder, thicker brows, can make your face look a little bit more round. This would look very good on someone with a more compressed, shorter mid-face because it lines up with those seams. If you are going to mix baby bangs with higher but thicker brows, you are emphasizing the forehead.
  • Earrings: When you wear bigger, but lower-set earrings, it emphasizes this line here, and you can, in a way, elongate the mid-face. If you want to wear longer earrings, make them very long so that they can impose a different scaling on your face. If these were shorter, it wouldn’t do as good a job at making her jawline look as delicate.
  • Lip Line: I know a lot of the videos on the internet say that if you blur the upper lip, it makes your mid-face look shorter. I just don’t think that it’s an effective tip, because you have to look at the entire look of the face.

Amanda Seyfried

Lastly, we have Amanda Seyfried.

Successful Look:

  • Gorgeous Balance: On the right, we have a gorgeous balance of the brows, the eye makeup, the lip and cheek definition, and it’s basically what I mentioned in all the previous videos.
  • Long Earrings: Note here about earrings: If you want to wear longer earrings, make them very long so that they can impose a different scaling on your face. The longer, bigger earrings, and the increased volume on top of the head, make her lower face look a little bit more delicate, which looks great on her more elven beauty.

Less Successful Looks:

  • Thick Brows & Eye Makeup: Very thick brows overextended on the inner corners, but the very extended eye makeup, like with Jessica Alba, messed with the facial proportions.
  • Heavy Hair/Makeup: Very bushy, thick brows with very heavy eye makeup and less definition on the lower face. This very heavy side part puts too much emphasis on this part of the face, and you don’t get all of the beauty of the rest of her face. The more delicate earrings can also put a lot of emphasis on this area; try it out for yourself and see.

To summarize, for a moderate mid-face, a distribution of visual interest is both vertical and expansive. I think an oval best represents the kind of perimeter of the best makeup product application. And just looking at an overall spectrum, we can see with the shorter mid-face, it’s more exaggerated, essentially. And then with the longer mid-face, it’s more expansive. And the moderate mid-face falls somewhere in between.

In the next videos, I’ll go into more specific details, like different features, widespread eyes, more narrow-set eyes, different cheek shapes, all of that. Let me know if you have any requests for that, or if you need any help figuring out your best or most enhancing, check out my style services.

Thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next video.

xx

Nona

Published by Nona